A Paradox of Love: Motherhood and Evangelical Faith in Kate Drumgoold’s Autobiography: A Slave Girl’s Story

Abstract

This paper explores the portrayal of motherhood in Kate Drumgoold’s autobiography A Slave Girl’s Story (1898). Drumgoold’s narrative stresses her sacred experience partly contributes to its shortage of secular life stories. Drumgoold constructs a world of love in the narrative. She got love from her white mothers, from God, and she got a different type of love from her birth mother. Drumgoold might be the first female slave narrative writer who depicts her white mistress as her mother. But Drumgoold’s depictions of white maternal love partially conceal the violence and suffering that she and her family had suffered in slavery. This paper argues that Drumgoold’s narrative demonstrates ambivalences in depicting the world of love and the hardships she and her family had to overcome. Drumgoold’s helplessness and weakness in slavery induce her to turn to God and God’s love, which helps her find an anchor in her white mother who might extend kindness to her. But Drumgoold also praises her own mother who strived to take care of her children and taught them to fight for freedom. This paper also investigates Drumgoold’s thoughts of the morality of motherhood as she relates that a mother would be rewarded by God when she takes responsibility for mothering work.