“Displacement”: Examining the effects of rape on woman
The concept of displacement from rape in “Woman Thou Art Loosed” and “Mississippi Damned” is represented by mental distortion, trauma, and self-degradation. In the film “Mississippi Damned” it shows mental distortion. It shows mental distortion in this film with actor Tessa Thompson who plays Kari the youngest child because she is raped by her cousin Sammy when she’s just a younger girl. The reason he starts to rape her is because he was being sexually abused by an older man and being paid for his sexual acts. He then finds comfort in raping his younger cousin Kari to insure himself that he isn’t gay and that he can have sex with an actual woman. Kari would repeatedly let him rape her. Meaning she doesn’t even know she’s being raped or taken advantage of. She
…show more content…
Before Kari and her husband knew who took their child the police showed up at their place as said before. He was just angry at what he was just told about his wife. So he raped her. While raping her, he said “this is what you like right. You like when men just take it from you. Go inside of you raw and dry. This s*** feels good to you Kari? That’s not even your name you lied to me. You disgust me. When I get my daughter back you’ll never see her again, you’re pathetic.” Then after that he left her where she was and ignored her for the remainder of time their daughter was gone. This goes back to her trying to get over ever bad thing that happens to her. And out of nowhere her husband, the person that’s supposed to keep her safe and protect her from all evil did the worst thing ever. Something she’s been through multiple of times and never wanted to go through it again. She degraded herself by running from her and past and never looking back. She changed her name out of shame. She didn’t want to be the person she was in the
The practice of slavery for men and women both presented equally sufferings. However, the white planation owners or overseers routinely raped women during this time. Women regularly had their children stripped away from them and sold into slavery. However, ironica...
In the article, “The Cause of Her Grief”, Anne Warren tells us a story of a slave woman ordered to be raped and forced to reproduce. Warren first begins telling the slave woman story by taking us back and recollecting the slave woman’s voyage from her home land to the ownership of Mr. Maverick. She used vivid language during this passage to help the reader imagine what type of dissolute conditions she traveled in to end up being a rape victim. For example in the section where Warren attempts to describe the condition of her travel. She wrote “When speaking of the origins of captured slaves, we are often reduced to generalities”. (Warren 1039) In that moment she addresses the fact that as readers we often over simplify the idea of slavery and what it was like, we could only imagine. The author uses the words “captured slave” to set the wretched and forced precedent for the remainder of the reading. At this moment she is requiring that you imagine being captured, held upon your rightful will of freedom. This is important to the slave experience; they did not have a choice just as this woman had no choice. She goes on to address the conditions of the vessel on which the salve woman traveled. She wrote “crammed into the holds of wooden ships, trapped in excrement, vomit and sweat” (Warren 1040). This was yet another demand from the author for the reader to place themselves in the feet of the slaves. It is also another key element in understanding not only slavery but also John Maverick’s slave woman. She travelled weeks, sometimes months to make arrive at the given destination. Once the slave woman arrived to land it was time for her to be sold. Yet again we are now asked by the author to paint a more vivid picture of the slavery exp...
Simon’s stance is that “not noticing race is an act of social injustice, as is not addressing the absence of race.” The author outlines the framework that she used to uncover the “silenced” stories of Native Americans, African Americans, and Mexican Americans living in the Oklahoma Panhandle during the time period of the novel. The framework that Simon used is a five step process that she calls the Critical Literacy Process and she encourages the use of this process to challenge “the inequalities of historical depictions”. The five steps are: 1. Ask whose experiences have been depicted and whose are absent; 2. Search the internet, print, images, and music for the absent stories; 3. Organize the found information; 4. Analyze the gaps in the information found using primary sources; and 5. Create a new text to share the counternarratives uncovered. While looking into the absent stories from races during this time period, the author found that there were “gradations of marginalization” in these untold stories. She found that it was much easier to obtain information on what life was like for African American and Native Americans in Oklahoma during this time. Mexican American and female perspectives in those cultures were much more difficult
Throughout American history there have been many horrific tragedies and events that have impacted the country and its citizens but none can be compared to the evils of slavery. This “peculiar institution” was the fate of millions of African Americans who were subject to cruelty and contempt by their owners and society. They were treated as if they were animals whose only purpose in life was to please their white owners. It is shameful to know that it was condoned as a “necessary evil” and lasted for over two hundred years in North America. In the beginning, the public did not know the truth behind a slave’s life and the obstacles they endured and overcome to survive it. However, the reality is revealed in slave narratives of who lived during that time and wrote of their experiences. They tell the unheard truths of their masters’ cruelty and the extent it was given to all victims of slavery. In the slave narrative, Incident in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs, she focuses on the torment of being a female in slavery and why it was a much worse fate than being a male slave.
Octavia Butler depicts how trauma not only affects the slave 's, but the slaveholders. Butler also brings attention to adaptation in her work by using a key literary devices such as foreshadowing to expose the trauma and the cause of that trauma.
Harriet Jacobs’ feminist approach to her autobiographical narrative Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl brought to life the bondage placed on women, in particular enslaved black women, during the nineteenth-century America. In an effort to raise awareness about the conditions of enslaved women and to promote the cause of abolition, Jacobs decided to have her personal story of sexual exploitation and escape published. The author’s slave narrative focuses on the experiences of women, the treatment of sexual exploitation, its importance on family life and maternal principles, and its appeal to white, female readers. Likewise, through the use of the Feminist/Gender Theory, issues relating to gender and sexuality can be applied to the author’s slave narrative. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and its lack of reception during its own time disclose the strict boundaries and unique challenges Harriet Jacobs encountered and overcame as a woman in antebellum America.
Toni Morrisons novel 'Beloved' demonstrates how the African American people, oppressed by marginalization and racism, endure the strain of slavery even after they are liberated from it. The establishment of slavery’s horrific dehumanizing, through the estrangement of families and destitution of fundamental human rights is distinctly existent in the novel. Opposite from this setting, Morrison moves us from one location to another; with movements in time through the memories of the central characters. These characters yearn to repress the painful memories of their pasts and are often driven out from a character’s mind or contained securely within; Paul D functions by locking his memories and emotions away in his imagined “tobacco tin”. The case
Trauma: an emotional shock causing lasting and substantial damage to a person’s psychological development. Linda Krumholz in the African American Review claims the book Beloved by Toni Morrison aids the nation in the recovery from our traumatic history that is blemished with unfortunate occurrences like slavery and intolerance. While this grand effect may be true, one thing that is absolute is the lesson this book preaches. Morrison’s basic message she wanted the reader to recognize is that life happens, people get hurt, but to let the negative experiences overshadow the possibility of future good ones is not a good way to live. Morrison warns the reader that sooner or later you will have to choose between letting go of the past or it will forcibly overwhelm you. In order to cement to the reader the importance of accepting one’s personal history, Morrison uses the tale of former slave Sethe to show the danger of not only holding on to the past, but to also deny the existence and weight of the psychological trauma it poses to a person’s psyche. She does this by using characters and their actions to symbolize the past and acceptance of its existence and content.
Ruth Vander Lee’s Mississippi Morning tells the story of a young boy named James William, who faces trouble with the people he loves. In this fictional story of the Civil War time period, the boy learns that love conquers all things. In the book, James is confronted by his friend LeRoy about the “Klan” who is ‘dressing in white robes with hoods and terrorizing many lives of African Americans. After many hints about discussions that his father had, it is revealed in the end that James’s father is one of the members of the Ku Klux Klan. This is the biggest conflict that creates a trial for James. One of the lines states: “I still loved my Pa”. Even though this concept of family destruction is found throughout the book, love still conquers this
Although none of the novels were wrote in conjunction, each has a link towards the other regarding abuse, both sexual and spousal, as well as class oppression and the manual labor that was a necessity for survival among black women. By examining present society, one can observe the systems of oppressions that have changed for the better as well as those that continue to devastate the lives of many women today.
5) Williams , Timothy. "For Native American Women, Scourge of Rape, Rare Justice." New York Times 22 May 2012, n. pag. Print. .
In “The Trial of Girlhood” and “A Perilous Passage In the Slave Girl’s Life” Jacobs’s narrative emphasizes the problems that are faced by female slaves. She shares the sexual abuses that are commonly practiced by slave master against young female slaves. She does this through revealing the unique humiliation and the brutalities that were inflicted upon young slave girls. In this narrative we come to understand the psychological damage caused by sexual harassment. We also realize how this sexual harassment done by the slaveholders went against morality and “violated the most sacred commandment of nature,”(Harriet 289)as well as fundamental religious beliefs.
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
On pages 100-102 of The Pocket Reader, there is short essay titled, “Two Views of the Mississippi” penned by one of the best and most effective authors, to date. Samuel Clemens was better known as, Mark Twain, the author of the short essay, is not only the best to date but the best from within The Pocket Reader. Twain’s portrayal of the Mighty Mississippi River as seen through the same eyes, but with a vastly different maturity level. In the “Two Views of the Mississippi” Twain’s description of the river is drawn from his experience on a riverboat. His pen name,”’Mark Twain’ (meaning "’Mark number two’") was a Mississippi River term: the second mark on the line that measured depth signified two fathoms, or twelve feet—safe depth for the
Treichler, Paula A. "Escaping the Sentence." The Captive Imagination.Ed. Cathrine Golden. New York: The Feminist Press, 1992. 191-210