The Greatest Personal Privation (Smith) - LC English TO BE FINISHED!!

Meaning of the title

• Deeply ironic

• Suggests the speakers greatest hardship is not her ownership of other humans but the kids of control over them

Caesura in the middle of line accentuates the hardship of not having autonomy over yourself

It is a painful and harassing business belonging to her

• “trouble enough” - dismissive, exasperation vs empathy

• No comfort or confidence:

  • Slave owners pov: tone of resentment - not humans but unreliable property

  • Slaves pov: they cannot trust their owners not to lash out or separate their family

We have had trouble enough, have no comfort or confidence in them

• Slave owners pov:

  • No doubt - mocking tone, verbal irony = speaker is detached

  • Ascribes suffering to their own actions rather than their enslavement

• Slaves pov: attempt to give the slaveowners some empathy by suggesting that they may feel bad about their actions

And they appear unhappy themselves, no doubt from the trouble they have occasioned

• Slaves pov: they recognise that their family may be torn apart in seconds

• Slav owners pov: they have the ability to tear apart families, yet it is an impersonal transactional decision for them

They could dispose of the whole family without consulting us

Enjambment from the previous line reduces slaves to just their roles and erodes any sense of personality/humanity

Father, mother, every good cook, washer and seamstress subject to sale

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I believe Good shall be Glad if we may have hope of the loss of trouble