With this image we're deeply into the ironies that haunt the novel's account of slavery. In one sense this is the picture of a white man beating a slave child to teach him that he must never resist his master. Small as it is in the margin of page 57, this image could speak loudly about the abuses of slavery. But in fact, although only Roxy and the reader know it, Driscoll is here really caning his own son, who is white and was born free.
The Barrett Collection, UVA PS 1317 .A1 1894