A slave woman's body was not of her own, but for property, for control, and for pleasure of the one who owned her. In Gayl Jones's Corregidora, Four generations endure the brutal and harshness of sexual and emotional abuse from slavery to marriage. This trickling factor of abuse must be continuously retold and soon manages to uncover a secret that has been kept silence from the very beginning. Gayl Jones illustrates that future generations of men and women are affected by the sexual exploitations that women in slavery experienced.
Ursa Corregidora, the great-granddaughter of a Portuguese slave owner, is a beautiful mulatto women from Kentucky who sings the blues at Happy's Cafe. Due to a violent fall caused from the act of jealous rage by her husband Mutt Thomas, she loses her unborn child and also her womb, the very evidence for her to make generations requested by her foremothers. The ancestors did not have documentation to show their existence saying "that's why they burned all the papers, so there would be no evidence to hold up against them"(14) and therefore giving birth was their only means. Retelling the events keeps the truth within the minds and cannot be taken away as the papers were. After Ursa's accident she realizes how empty she feels without her womb, that the obligation of continuing the tradition is now broken and gone. Ursa's womb is similar to those of the burned papers, but she has her blues, the oral traditional way to tell the stories as well as her own story.
The possession of a woman is a great feat for a man. Jones portrays that the women of slavery were seen as a factor of a sexual object. Great Gram recalls of being "sacrificed. They knew you only by the signs of your sex. They touch you as...
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...ne to her and her fore mothers in the past and she realizes that although she can't forget the stories or the memories that were imprinted in her mind, she can still move on and not let it continue to hurt her.
Jones succeeds in illustrating the sexual exploitation that the women of slavery experienced can indeed affect the future generations that follow in her novel Corregidora. By the use of harsh language and imagery of sexual and violent abuse that each generation endured, she pinpoints on how a black woman takes in everything from the past and projects into her life as well. Even in today's society, black women are still treated as just something sexual even if not intentionally, what women experience today will continue to be past on and told until the life of hers ends, but still will be carried forward from those that have kept her stories in their minds.
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
In all, Tademy does a great job in transporting her readers back to the 1800s in rural Louisiana. This book is a profound alternative to just another slave narrative. Instead of history it offers ‘herstory’. This story offers insight to the issues of slavery through a women’s perspective, something that not so many books offer. Not only does it give readers just one account or perspective of slavery but it gives readers a take on slavery through generation after generation. From the early days of slavery through the Civil War, a narrative of familial strength, pride, and culture are captured in these lines.
she gets flashbacks of the past incidents that occurred all because of her uncle. This story overall,
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).
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...
Women slaves were subject to unusually cruel treatment such as rape and mental abuse from their master’s, their unique experience must have been different from the experience men slaves had. While it is no secret that the horrors of the institution of slavery were terrible and unimaginable; those same horrors were no big deal for southern plantation owners. Many engaged in cruelty towards their slaves. Some slave owners took particular interest in their young female slaves. Once caught in the grips of a master’s desire it would have been next to impossible to escape. In terms of actual escape from a plantation most women slaves had no reason to travel and consequentially had no knowledge of the land. Women slaves had the most unfortunate of situations; there were no laws that would protect them against rape or any injustices. Often the slave that became the object of the master’s desires would also become a victim of the mistress of the household. Jealousy played a detrimental role in the dynamic the enslaved women were placed within. Regardless of how the slave felt she could have done little to nothing to ease her suffering.
In Laboring Women by Jennifer Morgan, the author talks about the transformations African Women suffer as they become slaves in America. The author explains how their race, gender and even their reproduction of African women became very important in the sex/gender system. She explains the differences of European, African and Creole and how their role was fit and fix in the sex/gender system in regards of production, body and kinship. Morgan explains the correlation of race and reproduction as well as how this affected the Atlantic World. She also explains the differences between whites and blacks and how they experience reproduction differently. Morgan also elaborates on how sex is a sexual disclosure. This gave us the conclusion on how the ideologies of race and reproduction are central to the organization of slavery.
...men who kept them in bondage and to sleep with them?” (6). Almost every night she would have to lie on her back and make love to her husband where she “unleashed [her] fury and [their] moments of love-making resembled a battle” (23) willingly or not. She was stripped of her body and womanly factors, and in her husband's eyes was made to be his sexual slave.
“Line of Color, Sex, and Service: Sexual Coercion in the Early Republic” is a publication that discusses two women, Rachel Davis and Harriet Jacobs. This story explains the lives of both Rachel and Harriet and their relationship between their masters. Rachel, a young white girl around the age of fourteen was an indentured servant who belonged to William and Becky Cress. Harriet, on the other hand, was born an enslaved African American and became the slave of James and Mary Norcom. This publication gives various accounts of their masters mistreating them and how it was dealt with.
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. Charles Ball’s Fifty Years in Chains and Harriet Jacobs Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl were both published in the early 1860’s while Kate Drumgoold’s A Slave Girl’s Story came almost forty years later
It is not uncommon for a female slave to have several encounters with sexual exploitation, or rape. Jacobs wrote, “. I now enter my fifteenth year–a sad epoch in the life of a slave girl. My master began to whisper foul words in my ear.” A girl at the age of 15 is innocent, being exposed to these inappropriate actions from her master is killing her innocence.
In the novel, the author proposes that the African American female slave’s need to overcome three obstacles was what unavoidably separated her from the rest of society; she was black, female, and a slave, in a white male dominating society. The novel “locates black women at the intersection of racial and sexual ideologies and politics (12).” White begins by illustrating the Europeans’ two major stereotypes o...
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