The ‘master’ and the slave: an analysis: Professor Rafael Winkler unravels several philosophies of the age that lie behind an anti-slavery 19th century lithograph
The hand-coloured lithograph offers an unambiguous representation of violence. It depicts a white sugar estate slaveholder beating a black slave with a cat o’ nine tails. Essential for understanding the action here is, of course, the combination of slavery as an instrument of exploitation for capital gain and racism as a system of values based on the belief that whites are superior to blacks in all the relevant ways.
Let’s examine the details and composition of the lithograph more closely. The slaveholder’s right arm is raised. The cat o’ nine is swinging in the air. He’s about to beat his slave again. A young white girl intercedes. She’s rushing to the slaveholder, no doubt her father. Her arms are raised in a pleading gesture; it appears she’s importuning her father to put an end to the violence.
Note the symmetry of figures. There are three white and three black characters. The mother, father, and daughter are dressed in expensive clothing in the fashion of the mid to late 19century. The daughter has shoes with heels and a pink dress with a blue ribbon tied round her waist. Her father is clad in boots, trousers, a shirt and bowtie, a vest, a coat and a sun hat. The African characters, all male, are scarcely clad: only one of them is wearing a sun hat and all three are wearing pants.
Its political significance is clear. The young white girl represents the normative standpoint every uncorrupted white person ought to take — uncorrupted by the institution of slavery and by the prejudices that underlie it. She is the image of what’s right and just, of the defence of liberty and equality and of the freedom from oppression. Her representational value suggests the author’s Rousseauism.
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