2 Matching Annotations
  1. Oct 2020
    1. Few white persons of either sex, who are calculated for any thing else, are willing to spend their lives and bury their talents in performing mean, servile labor. And such is the horrible idea that I entertain respecting a life of servitude, that if I conceived of there being no possibility of my rising above the condition of a servant, I would gladly hail death as a welcome messenger. O, horrible idea, indeed! to possess noble souls aspiring after high and honorable acquirements, yet confined by the chains of ignorance and poverty to lives of continual drudgery and toil. Neither do I know of any who have enriched themselves by spending their lives as house-domestics, washing windows, shaking carpets, brushing boots, or tending upon gentlemen’s tables. I can but die for expressing my sentiments; and I am as willing to die by the sword as the pestilence; for I and a true born American; your blood flows in my veins, and your spirit fires my breast.

      I think this paragraph is really powerful and is a nice summary of who Stewart really was and what she stood for. In this paragraph, she discusses how no body wants to spend their life confined to servitude, but that she can see herself living a separate life, where she is living free. Clearly, she wants this aspect of society to be reformed. If black people were to be free'd and left to live life as a normal American, then Stewert's dream of a democracy is met a little closer.

    2. O, had I received the advantages of early education, my ideas would, ere now, have expanded far and wide; but, alas! I possess nothing but moral capability—no teachings but the teachings of the Holy spirit.

      Here, Maria Stewart points out her lack of access to an education, due to being a black woman. It attests to the unfairness of the society she is living in, and how undemocratic, the democratic nation of America really is. In a nation where people are denied access to simple education based on race or gender, one can not expect that all people would have a voice in government. After all, democracy is a government by the people for the people.