Ellen; Or The Chained Mother, and Pictures of Kentucky Slavery (1853)
Ellen; Or The Chained Mother, and Pictures of Kentucky Slavery (1853)
Mary B. Harlan
Rare Books and Manuscripts Library
PS1794.H6 E4 1853
Mothers are meant to protect, comfort, and nurture their children, but what happens when they are cruelly torn apart with no recourse to reunite them?
Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on the border of a slave and a free state, Harlan was uniquely situated to know and aid slave women as they risked their lives for a chance at freedom. Although this volume is a work of fiction, the stories within it are true, obscured to protect the identities of the women who shared them with her. According to Harlan, at the time this novel was written, the United States was attempting to acquire new territories with the express purpose of making them slave states. Ellen is a plea to the humanity of the U.S. in its depiction of how families, specifically mothers and their children, are torn apart in Kentucky “where…[slavery] exists in its mildest form” (iii). She begins her story with the sale and separation of a slave family and from there follows Ellen, the chained mother who is repeatedly torn from her children. This existence is another form of motherhood denied (see Miracle Seekers), in which a mother’s love, despite its great power, cannot overcome the cruelty of slavery. Although Harlan had to self-publish her work at the time it was written, the well-worn nature of this volume offers hope that it reached a sympathetic audience.