How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
[Roxy] stuck to her point until she wearied a confession out of him: [Tom] had been prowling about in disguise, stealing small valuables from private houses [. . .] His mother approved of his conduct, and offered to help, but this frightened him. (9.42)
Do we have a problem here? Some readers might worry that the deceptiveness of both Tom and Roxy give black characters a bad name.
Quote #5
[Tom] had a suit of girl's clothes with him in a bundle as a disguise for his raid, and was wearing a suit of his mother's clothing with black gloves and veil. (10.14)
We've got to hand it to Tom: this is one clever disguise. And it makes a culture that defines men and women by differences in their clothing look pretty easily duped and foolish.
Quote #6
Tom forged a bill of sale and sold his mother to an Arkansas cottonplanter for a trifle over six hundred dollars. He did not want to commit this treachery, but luck threw the man in his way, and this saved him the necessity of going up country to hunt up a purchaser [. . . ] the planter insisted that Roxy wouldn't know where she was, at first, and that by the time she found out she would already have become contented. (16.13)
We know Tom isn't exactly the nicest guy on the block. In this case, though, laziness rather than pure evil seems to be at root of his deception of Roxy. And that's kind of a scary thought given how common laziness is.