In Chapter 29, we see the effects of St. Clare's failure to carry out Eva's wishes and free his slaves, for by his death they have passed into the hands of his wife, Marie, who now has complete control over their lives. St. Clare, as he told his cousin Ophelia, had made no will, at least none that decided the fate of the human beings he "owned" — and probably none at all. Now Tom and the rest are at Marie's mercy. We see that St. Clare's "kindness" to his slaves — his indulgence of Adolph's thievery, his refusal to allow Marie to have them whipped — has had an effect opposite what he intended, for Rosa's quick temper (her habit of speaking unguardedly, like a free woman) has allowed Marie to do what she has no doubt always wished to do, for Rosa is a pretty woman and Marie has faded.
Rosa's punishment — sexual abuse by a paid brutalizer of slaves — exemplifies what the narrator has told us, at the opening of Chapter 29, about the corrupting influence of the slaveowner's power. The two women involved here, Rosa and Marie, are both basically thoughtless, shallow, more interested in fashion than anything else. In other words, they are typical products of their culture, unredeemed by real religion or depth of emotion. Slavery has shaped them both, using Rosa as an object, semi-decorative, rather like a household appliance, and convincing Marie that she is the center of the universe. Now slavery has punished Rosa for her thoughtlessness by subjecting her to shameful harm, perhaps ruining her life, certainly changing her already-degraded life for the worse; and it has turned Marie into a monster who can order the rape of a young woman for an ostensible reason even she must recognize as trivial. Marie is now, at the end of our acquaintance with her, capable of doing real evil, and she is totally empowered to do so.
