One of the most interesting themes in the novel Family, by J. California Cooper was slave resistance. The methods of resistance used by the characters in Family were personal and individual examples of the resistance historically used by slaves in the South prior to emancipation. Cooper provided powerful illustrations of personal resistance to slavery. Resistance could be active: running away, confrontation, negotiation, entrepreneurship, suicide, and/or subversive: theft, work slowdowns, education, and spirituality. The main characters in Cooper's novel used a variety of resistance techniques and her vivid descriptions made the examples even more profound. The author uses the theme of slave resistance to personalize the historical experiences of slaves in the South and their courageous attempts to retain human qualities within a system that considered them chattel property.
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One of the first and most extreme examples of resistance were suicides committed by the narrator's mother and grandmother. These women were not only required to perform physical labor during the day, but were systematically raped by the owner of the plantation, during the evening. The children that they bore as a result of the sexual contact were sold to other slave owners. During the first part of the novel, the narrator also killed herself. With the self induced death of the narrator, Clora, three women in successive generations had killed themselves. .
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This violent reaction to the misery of slavery was also illustrated in the novel Family. The murder of the slave owner was a historical example of slave resistance. Clora's mother responded to the Master's unilateral control of her life by killing him before she killed herself. When the Master assigned her to have sex with his son, he had gone too far. Although slaves had come to accept many humiliating circumstances, the relationships between slaves and slave owners had formal and informal boundaries.
