

Even though this work is physically challenging and her employers beat her if she does not work fast enough, Harriet prefers this outside work to being indoors since she feels freer in nature. Harriet matures into a young woman, and Brodas rents out her labor to other neighboring plantations, where she works outside cutting wood and in the fields. Starving, she returns to Miss Susan, who eventually brings her back to the Brodas plantation, complaining that Harriet is rebellious and unintelligent. Harriet runs away, hiding in a pig pen for days. Her boss Miss Susan insults her and whips her when the baby cries. When she recovers, Brodas rents her out to a different family, where she is required to care for a baby and stop him from crying during the night. Harriet falls ill and is brought back to the Brodas plantation. Cook with his trapline for catching animals, which she prefers because it allows her to work outside (33). Harriet struggles to keep up with weaving, so she is assigned to help Mr.
NORTH BY NIGHT BOOK SUMMARY FREE
Old Rit is frightened by these conversations her great hope for freedom is that Brodas will free her, Benjamin, and their children when he dies.Īt age 6, Harriet is considered old enough to begin working, and she is hired out to a local white couple, Mr. The plantation slaves meet secretly at night and discuss running away to the North and the failed insurrection led by free Black man Denmark Vesey. Harriet’s family teaches her to be subservient to white people and fear the overseer who supervises the slaves during the day and the local patrollers who chase and capture runaway slaves. Growing up, Harriet endures the same deprived circumstances as her parents, receiving few clothes and little food to eat. Brodas makes financial ends meet by selling slaves to traders, who permanently separate them from their families and take them to the deep South. Old Rit and Benjamin already have several children-some of whom Brodas rents out to nearby plantations-and are increasingly fearful of having their children sold to another plantation. The slaves live in windowless, unfurnished log cabins in a separate “quarter” from the Brodas’s Big House. On Maryland’s Eastern Shore, Harriet Tubman’s parents, Harriet Greene (“Old Rit”) and Benjamin Ross, are enslaved on Edward Brodas’s plantation.
