ipl-logo

Anne Orthwood's Bastard Summary

1137 Words5 Pages

In addition, the short story included called “Leg Irons” illustrates the life of a African American man named George Washington who runs away from slavery still in chains and manages to get to the Union Lines. Dated on 1861, two years before the Emancipation Proclamation, the union soldiers that captured him didn’t send him back to his master in the south but instead sent him to a camp, where they keep other escapee. The short comic takes us through the series of tests that George had to conquer. One of them presents some union soldiers stopping him and pointing a gun at him however he walks away unharmed until someone else stops him and does the same thing. This shows the heart-breaking ideology that no matter where slaves went, north or south, …show more content…

It shows the vital roles played by men and women in society and the extremities that lay between them. Anne Orthwood’s Bastard: Sex and Law in Early Virginia by John Ruston Pagan highlights the nature of life in the colonial times and how it aided the creation of American law. The strength in this composition of diaries are the primary sources given throughout the book. Primary sources like those evident in Anne Orthwood’s Bastard, allows its readers to come up with their own conclusions and images of what went on because the sources are created from people who lived it. Whenever someone is exposed to primary sources, they are able to stop learning history and actually start doing history because they are researching actual data/evidence. The book helped reveal the reasons why legal systems were created in the first place by documenting the prolongation of social order as well as the preservation of self interest. Anne Orthwood’s Bastard critically examines the role of unfree labor, women, religion and law in colonial life which tends to answer the question of what values and customs were aligned with the start of American civilization. In addition, the way English law was used as a menacing force by the colonial states to help maintain the social order and promote capitalist development as well as renovate social relations. The social and legal systems of the states became closely tied to their religious beliefs, as well as English

Open Document