Personal Response 2

A Pure Heart:

I never thought there was such a thing as a pure heart. I always thought that someone who is of pure heart is someone who is one hundred percent good and innocent and has no drop of evil in its soul. How can that be possible though? Little children always start out innocent, but because of possibly negative outside influences, like bad family and friends, and their living environment, their innocence is stripped away and they could be bitter and mean as adults. I always had the assumption that everyone has goodness and badness inside. It must be hard to stay good all the time because we all make mistakes and hating someone or something is easy to do.
But then a special little girl named Evangeline ("Eva" for short), daughter of a Southern family of Augustine and Marie St. Clare, made me rethink of the possibility of someone having a pure heart. When Evangeline was first introduced into the story, she was a young child that was described as "the perfection of childish beauty", "an undulating and aerial grace, such as one might dream of some mythic and allegorical being" and she had "long golden-brown hair that floated like a cloud around it", and her "violet blue eyes" held "spiritual gravity" (161). Eva is often described as a loving, kind, and an innocent angel in the eyes of her father, her servants, her relatives, and her dear friend Uncle Tom, who loved her as "something frail and earthy, yet almost worshipped her as something heavenly and divine" (280). Her racist mother thought Eva was "a strange child" (187) and did not understand how her daughter can "put herself on an equality with every creature that comes near her" (189).
Eva had so much love in her heart and she loved and treated her family slaves as equals. Even though she was surrounded by slaves and heard how they suffered, the sorrows of her friends does not make her grow hateful at all. Instead, she gets sad and wishes that she had lots of money so that she could free all the slaves and teach them to read and write.
Her divine love even touched the hearts of those that had hate or prejudice in their souls and changed them for the better. Miss Ophelia, Augustine's cousin, came from the north to help take care of his household. Even though she is against slavery, she had a personal prejudice against African-Americans. Augustine commented that her kind of people "loathe them as you would a snake or a toad, yet you are indignant at their wrongs" (195). To teach his cousin a lesson about slaves, Augustine bought a little slave girl named Topsy, who too had hate in her heart and knew nothing else, for Miss Ophelia to teach and educate. Topsy was a very mischievous little girl and thought she was "the wickedest crittur in the world" (271). She never knew love: "There can't nobody love niggers" (304) she says. But then Eva showed her the love she never knew before: "Oh, Topsy, poor child, I love you!...I love you, because you have n't had any father, or mother, or friends;-because you 've been a poor, abused child! I love you, and I want you to be good" (304). Eva's kind and loving words were like "a ray of heavenly love, [that] penetrated the darkness of her [Topsy's] heathen soul!" (304). Topsy was so touched that she sobbed and vowed to do good. This pure act of kindness even touched the heart of Miss Ophelia who said, "I wish I were like her. She might teach me a lesson" (305).
This fictional character touched my heart too. I even cried when she died. Evangeline teaches readers a very important lesson of love and acceptance of all people regardless of race and color. I admire her for that quality.