In The Greek Slave, how is the Public reaction discussed?
Public reaction to the statue was mixed.  When the work was first exhibited, many people were scandalized by the figure's nudity; Powers countered much of this criticism by suggesting that the young woman was a perfect example of Christian purity and chastity, because even in her unclothed state she was attempting to shield herself from the gaze of onlookers.  Furthermore, he said, her nudity was no fault of her own, but rather was caused by her Turkish captors, who stripped her to display her for sale.  So well did this reasoning work that many Christian pastors would exhort their congregations to go and see the statue when it was displayed.Some viewers also drew parallels between The Greek Slave and the slaves who were concurrently working on the plantations of the American South.  Such parallels were initially lost upon much of the statue's American audience, but as the American Civil War neared, abolitionists began to take the piece as a symbol. It was not difficult to make the leap from a contemplation of the Ancient Greek slave's circumstances and contemporary American slavery. African American abolitionist, writer, and former slave, William Wells Brown emphasized the comparison by placing an engraving entitled "The Virginian Slave," a depiction of an enslaved black woman, at the feet of Powers's statue. The comparison was, as well, the subject of a poem by John Greenleaf Whittier.  Additionally, the statue inspired a sonnet by Elizabeth Barrett Browning called "Hiram Powers' Greek Slave". Abolitionist Maria White Lowell wrote that The Greek Slave "was a vision of beauty that one must always look back to the first time of seeing it as an era". In 1848, while walking through Boston Common, Lucy Stone stopped to admire the statue and broke into tears, seeing in its chains the symbol of man's oppression of the female sex. From that day forward, Stone included women's rights issues in her speeches.
Hiram Powers' Greek Slave Lucy Stone women's rights Elizabeth Barrett Browning right American South Boston Common Hiram Powers John Greenleaf Whittier plantation Christian Greek Turkish Maria White Lowell American Civil War