More handpicked essays just for you.
Life of women slaves on the plantation
Women in the south plantation
Sexual abuse and struggle of women in slavery
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Deborah Gray Whites Ar’n’t I a Woman? Explores what it was like to be a female slave. Deborah Gray White provides numerous detailed accounts and anecdotes throughout the book. The whole book seeks to answer the question asked by African American slaves, Ar’n’t I a Woman? In Sojourner Truths speech held in 1851 in Akron, Ohio at the women’s rights convention, she explains her own experience with being a female slave in the plantation south. She, like most black women of the time, plowed, planted and hoed, did as much work as a man, endured the brutal punishment meted out by slaveholders and their overseers, and also fulfilled her ordained role of motherhood.” Moreover, women were still seen as inferior to men. Women were subjected to worse treatment than that of men and this book proves to describe the many ways that women in particular were mistreated. This books main purpose is to educate its readers about the onerous burdens that females suffered directly resulting from slavery. Ar’n’t I a woman was the first book of its kind to accurately assess the females’ perspective of slavery. In many ways, female slaves’ experiences in the plantation south were drastically different than that of their male counterparts. In my opinion, the worst aspects of slavery for women included: multiple forms of abuse, abroad and arranged marriages and the pressures of childbearing and the complications that often accompanied motherhood. The first worst aspect for women slaves was the multiple forms of abuse they suffered. This abuse included but was not limited to sexual, emotional, psychological and physical abuse. The main forms of abuse perpetrated against women were sexual and physical in nature. Some evidence to support this claim in Deborah Gray Whites Ar’n’t I a Woman? Is “The whipping of a thirteen-year old Georgia slave girl also had sexual overtones. The girl
The black women’s interaction with her oppressive environment during Revolutionary period or the antebellum America was the only way of her survival. Playing her role, and being part of her community that is not always pleasant takes a lot of courage, and optimism for better tomorrow. The autonomy of a slave women still existed even if most of her natural rights were taken. As opposed to her counterparts
Physical abuse by plantation owners towards both their servants and slaves was common. One account by Thomas Gates in a General Court of Colonial Virginia document about Elizabeth Abbot, an indentured servant, stated that “she had been sore beaten and her body full of sores and holes very dangerously raunckled and putrified both above her wast and uppon her hips and thighs” (General Court of Colonial Virginia). In fact, such abuse towards servants and slaves was so common that the state of Virginia had to make laws for such cases. Unfortunately, colonial governments did not consider corporal punishment illegal. Thus adding to the brutality endured by persons in captivity and servitude during the colonial era. “Moderate corporal punishment inflicted
2. Female workers in Lowell, MA can be compared to slaves in the south in many ways but they are also very different. The conditions that the women in Lowell and slaves had to live in were very unsanitary and unbearable. The woman even felt like slaves. They were constantly watched as were slaves and they were also forced to go to church. Unlike slaves they were paid, even though they were paid very little because they could do the work of a man but get paid less, they still got paid. They had choices of what jobs to do where slaves were assigned to certain jobs. The women got some free time and even a 30 minute lunch break while slaves had very little or no brakes at all.
A recurring theme in, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, is Harriet Jacobs's reflections on what slavery meant to her as well as all women in bondage. Continuously, Jacobs expresses her deep hatred of slavery, and all of its implications. She dreads such an institution so much that she sometimes regards death as a better alternative than a life in bondage. For Harriet, slavery was different than many African Americans. She did not spend her life harvesting cotton on a large plantation. She was not flogged and beaten regularly like many slaves. She was not actively kept from illiteracy. Actually, Harriet always was treated relatively well. She performed most of her work inside and was rarely ever punished, at the request of her licentious master. Furthermore, she was taught to read and sew, and to perform other tasks associated with a ?ladies? work. Outwardly, it appeared that Harriet had it pretty good, in light of what many slaves had succumbed to. However, Ironically Harriet believes these fortunes were actually her curse. The fact that she was well kept and light skinned as well as being attractive lead to her victimization as a sexual object. Consequently, Harriet became a prospective concubine for Dr. Norcom. She points out that life under slavery was as bad as any slave could hope for. Harriet talks about her life as slave by saying, ?You never knew what it is to be a slave; to be entirely unprotected by law or custom; to have the laws reduce you to the condition of chattel, entirely subject to the will of another.? (Jacobs p. 55).
On a family level, slave life would be emotionally difficult. Firstly, marriages would never be legally recognized. This did not stop slaves from having holy matrimony. They simply were not recognized by the state. Plus, a wedding vow would sometimes say “Until death or distances do you part,” because families would often be split up. This was done to keep slaves from bonding together and causing up risings. It was just another way the slave owners held power over their slaves. Even though this was true, most children were still rais...
These acts of abuse were a large part of slavery during its existence. The types of abuse were present in order to keep the slave population as slaves, and not a group of people who think for themselves.
Both slaves and women within the United States felt the vast inconsistencies that plagued t...
All slaves faced struggle in their lives. In particular, female slaves were targeted as objects of abuse and the source for the sexual needs of their masters. Female slaves were seen as employees to any need of their masters. Author, Melton A. Mclaurin displays this when he writes, “A healthy sixty years of age, Newsom needed more than a hostess and manager of house hold affairs; he required a sexual partner” (Mclaurin 21). Anyone who is purchased is pre-purposed for hard labor or personal needs of the purchaser. Mclaurin exemplifies the way that slave masters viewed female slaves at the point of their possession. Though female slaves were acquired to be a mother figure of the household, there were reasons beyond the obvious. It was
Sojourner Truth’s speech entitled “Ain’t I A Woman?” became popular for its honest and raw confrontation on the injustices she experienced both as a woman and an African-American. The speech was given during a women’s rights convention held in Akron, Ohio in May 1851 and addressed many women’s rights activists present (Marable and Mullings, 66). Sojourner began her speech by pointing out the irrational expectations men have of women and contrasting them to her own experiences. She exclaims that a man in the corner claims women “needs to be helped into carriages and lifted ober ditches or to hab de best place everywhar,” yet no one extends that help to her (67). This is followed by her rhetorically asking “and ain’t I a woman?” (67) Here, Sojourner is calling out the social construction of gender difference that men use in order to subordinate women.
During the eighteenth and nineteenth-century, notions of freedom for Black slaves and White women were distinctively different than they are now. Slavery was a form of exploitation of black slaves, whom through enslavement, lost their humanity and freedom, and were subjected to dehumanizing conditions. African women and men were often mistreated through similar ways, especially when induced to labor, they would eventually become a genderless individual in the sight of the master. Despite being considered “genderless” for labor, female slaves suddenly became women who endured sexual violence. Although a white woman was superior to the slaves, she had little power over the household, and was restricted to perform additional actions without the consent of their husbands. The enslaved women’s notion to conceive freedom was different, yet similar to the way enslaved men and white women conceived freedom. Black women during slavery fought to resist oppression in order to gain their freedom by running away, rebel against the slaveholders, or by slowing down work. Although that didn’t guarantee them absolute freedom from slavery, it helped them preserve the autonomy and a bare minimum of their human rights that otherwise, would’ve been taken away from them. Black
Slavery is a term that can create a whirlwind of emotions for everyone. During the hardships faced by the African Americans, hundreds of accounts were documented. Harriet Jacobs, Charles Ball and Kate Drumgoold each shared their perspectives of being caught up in the world of slavery. There were reoccurring themes throughout the books as well as varying angles that each author either left out or never experienced. Taking two women’s views as well as a man’s, we can begin to delve deeper into what their everyday lives would have been like.
Deborah Gray White’s Ar’n’t I a Woman? details the grueling experiences of the African American female slaves on Southern plantations. White resented the fact that African American women were nearly invisible throughout historical text, because many historians failed to see them as important contributors to America’s social, economic, or political development (3). Despite limited historical sources, she was determined to establish the African American woman as an intricate part of American history, and thus, White first published her novel in 1985. However, the novel has since been revised to include newly revealed sources that have been worked into the novel. Ar’n’t I a Woman? presents African American females’ struggle with race and gender through the years of slavery and Reconstruction. The novel also depicts the courage behind the female slave resistance to the sexual, racial, and psychological subjugation they faced at the hands of slave masters and their wives. The study argues that “slave women were not submissive, subordinate, or prudish and that they were not expected to be (22).” Essentially, White declares the unique and complex nature of the prejudices endured by African American females, and contends that the oppression of their community were unlike those of the black male or white female communities.
In conclusion, women were considered property and slave holders treated them as they pleased. We come to understand that there was no law that gave protection to female slaves. Harriet Jacob’s narrative shows the true face of how slaveholders treated young female slave. The female slaves were sexually exploited which damaged them physically and psychologically. Furthermore it details how the slave holder violated the most sacred commandment of nature by corrupting the self respect and virtue of the female slave. Harriet Jacob writes this narrative not to ask for pity or to be sympathized but rather to show the white people to be aware of how female slaves constantly faced sexual exploitation which damaged their body and soul.
In Harriet Jacobs Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, the author subjects the reader to a dystopian slave narrative based on a true story of a woman’s struggle for self-identity, self-preservation and freedom. This non-fictional personal account chronicles the journey of Harriet Jacobs (1813-1897) life of servitude and degradation in the state of North Carolina to the shackle-free promise land of liberty in the North. The reoccurring theme throughout that I strive to exploit is how the women’s sphere, known as the Cult of True Womanhood (Domesticity), is a corrupt concept that is full of white bias and privilege that has been compromised by the harsh oppression of slavery’s racial barrier. Women and the female race are falling for man’s
Slave women were also subjected to sexual abuse by their masters. The masters demanded sexual relations from the slave women they found desirable. They did this without any consideration of their own personal marital status and that of the slave. There was tension between slave husbands of abused women and their masters often resulting in fights between the two. Slave women were also subjected to jealousy and rage from mistresses whose husbands’ engaged in these illicit affairs. In conclusion, the slave could not expect to enjoy a fulfilling relationship with the master. The very essence of slavery was cruel and demeaning, making it difficult for any meaningful and mutually satisfying relationship to exist.