Free to go anywhere they wanted. Elizabeth Keckley’s Behind the Scenes: Or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House is both a riveting slave narrative and a fascinating insider’s look at the First Family during the Lincoln administration. Her earliest recollections of slave life come at age four, when she began taking care of her owner’s child. He even asked Lizzie for forgiveness and from that day on he never hit one of his slaves ever again. Because they didn’t have any slaves of their own, at 14 Lizzie was separated from her mom and given as a chore girl to her master’s oldest son, who lived in Virginia. A week passed, and no news arrived of Mr. Rochester: ten days, and still he did not come. She refused. Elizabeth Keckley’s life was an eventful one. These narratives contained fewer descriptions of the horrors of slavery, because they were written after the abolition. 268 pp. Besides, Keckley was also deeply committed to programs of racial improvement and protection. When Elizabeth Keckley concluded her 1868 autobiography, Behind the Scenes, or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House, her parting words made clear to her readers what she had emphasized throughout: she defined success in the form of personal relationships rather than material wealth. Her mother, Agnes, was thrilled when Mr. Burwell made arrangements for her husband to come live with them, and little Lizzie, as her father used to call her, was ecstatic to finally have her family together. 1868 (4)Xiomara Santamarina Feminist Studies 28, no. Because she was consider fair-looking for one of her race, she was abused by a white man for more than four years, when she got pregnant and gave birth to a boy, the only child she ever had. Helpful . Behind the Scenes: Or, Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House by Elizabeth Keckley “ Part slave narrative, part memoir, and part sentimental fiction Behind the Scenes depicts Elizabeth Keckley’s years as a slave and subsequent four years in Abraham Lincoln’s White House during the Civil War. An example of this is the autobiography by Elizabeth Keckley. Living with the minister, she had to do the work of three people, and they still didn’t find her trustworthy. The sixth one was Mr. Farrow, an old friend of hers, and she didn’t think he would refuse her. The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. https://www.geni.com/people/Elizabeth-Keckly/6000000017813440582 by Elizabeth Keckley, ca. One of the most powerful examples of those turning points is the story of Elizabeth Keckley. The family was poor and couldn’t afford a living in Virginia, so Mr. Garland decided to move away from his home to the banks of Mississippi, in search of better luck. Born into slavery in 1818, Keckley learned to sew from her mother. Mrs. Elizabeth Keckley was born a slave at Dinwiddie Court House in Virginia around 1818. You can view our. She was best known as the personal modiste and confidante of Mary Todd Lincoln, the First Lady.Keckley had moved to Washington in 1860 after buying her freedom and that of her son in St. Louis. Each was a close observer of Abraham Lincoln and expressed their views about his legacy. EssaySauce.com is a completely free resource for students. After thinking about it for a long time, he decided to go to Mr. Garland and asked him the price she should pay for her freedom and her son’s. She loved her son enormously, but she always felt it was unfair for the free side of him, the Anglo-Saxon blood that he had, to be silenced by the slave side that he was born with. After one day, he lost his pair of plough-lines, but Colonel Burwell offered him another, a new one, and told him he would be punished if he lost those too. Le Bourgois, one of her patrons, walked in and changed her world around. EssaySauce.com has thousands of great essay examples for students to use as inspiration when writing their own essays. The next day all she wanted was a kind word from those who had made her suffer, but that didn’t happen. It was around that time that the family moved to Hillsboro, in Northern Carolina, where the minister was assigned a church of his own. Mr. Bingham, the school principal, was an active member of the church and a frequent visitor of the church house. "I am not writing altogether the history of myself," Elizabeth Keckley proclaims almost immediately in her 1868 Behind the Scenes. Behind the Scenes: Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House is an autobiographical narrative by Elizabeth Keckley. But a couple weeks later his new pair got stolen and he hung himself for fear of his master’s reaction. Read more. She refused at first, saying that she had to think about his offer, but what scared her was the thought of giving birth to another child that would live in slavery.