Dehumanization and Commodification

Where it surfaces

• Preface to the 1853 Edition

  Brown notes that every white person, regardless of wealth, can participate in buying and selling slaves, reducing human beings to common property.

• Narrative of the Life and Escape of William Wells Brown

  Slaves are treated as cargo: chained promiscuously, prepared for market by dyeing hair, and sold at auction like livestock.

• I: The Negro Sale

  Clotel's body, moral character, intellect, Christianity, and chastity are each assigned a monetary value and sold separately at auction.

• Going to the South

  Slaves are treated as commodities: their ages are falsified for market, families are torn apart by sale, and they are advertised like livestock.

• III: The Negro Chase

  Slaves are hunted like animals with trained dogs, and their capture is priced in advertisements, reducing human beings to commodities.

• The Slave Market

  The chapter vividly depicts enslaved people being examined like livestock, with their bodies inspected and their ages manipulated to increase sale value.

• VII: The Poor Whites, South

  The brutal suppression of the rebellious slave, who is killed and mutilated for resisting abuse, illustrates the extreme dehumanization of enslaved people.

• XI: The Parson Poet

  The advertisement for sick negroes for dissection and Mr. Peck's poem treating a child as property exemplify the reduction of enslaved people to objects for profit and experimentation.

• A Slave Hunting Parson

  Slaves are treated as property, drilled to give rote answers, and valued only for their labor, as seen in the toast 'The black folks makes the cotton, And the white folks gets the money.'

• XIV: A Free Woman Reduced to Slavery

  Salome's story illustrates how free individuals could be kidnapped, sold, and treated as property, with her children remaining enslaved even after her freedom is won.

• XV: Today a Mistress, Tomorrow a Slave

  Clotel is sold multiple times as property, separated from her child, and forced to cut her hair—a physical marker of her commodification and loss of identity.

• Death of the Parson

  Georgiana describes how slavery crushes the slave as a rational being, yet the innate desire for freedom persists.

• XIX: Escape of Clotel

  Slaves are treated as property, as seen in the slave catchers' pursuit of rewards and the conductor's attempt to charge William based on weight like luggage.

• XX: A True Democrat

  The chapter describes slaves as property stripped of all rights, and the story of Buddington shows how a black woman's wealth overcomes racial laws.

• Truth Stranger Than Fiction

  The girls are treated as property, sold at auction like cattle, and their value is increased by their lineage; Ellen's suicide and Jane's death highlight the dehumanizing effects of slavery.

• The Arrest

  Clotel is arrested as property, advertised with a reward, and imprisoned to await her master's orders; the massacre of slaves leaves their bodies unburied.

• The Happy Meeting

  The flashback to the slave market describes enslaved people being examined and sold like beasts of burden, underscoring their commodification.