Slave Women In Solomon Northup's 12 Years A Slave

In Solomon Northup’s narrative, 12 years a slave, he shares a story of the horrors of his past that was a lifelong reality to many African Americans throughout American history. Northup, being a free man of Saratoga, New York, was stripped of his freedom and sold ‘down the river’ to the Bayou Boeuf of Louisiana and was bound to slavery for twelve years. Along with recounting the gruesome hardships and labor that he had to endure, Northup also gives detailed accounts of the lives of fellow slaves that he comes across, primarily, women. Northup’s narrative allows readers to see that the hardships that slave women experienced by far surpassed anything that a slave man could endure. Stripped of their families, beaten relentlessly and forever victims

Female slaves were faced with the horror of being permanently separated from their families and more specifically, their children. The slave woman’s agony stemming from the disintegration of her family can be seen very early on in Northup’s narrative when he recalls the account of Eliza Berry: a black captive among the others in Burch’s D.C. slave pen. In an instant, Eliza was forcibly removed from her two children, Randall and Emily. At the time when Randall’s trade was taking place, Eliza was crying for mercy and pleading with the buyer that if he would purchase her son, to also purchase her as well as her daughter. “Eliza burst into a paroxysm of grief, weepingly and plaintively. Freeman turned round to her, savagely …ordering her to stop her noise or her would flog her. (Freeman) damned her, calling her a blubbering, bawling wench and ordered her to behave herself,” (Northup, 51). The reader gets a first hand view into Eliza’s desperation to go with her son, as she begged an pleaded to be the most loyal slave if she were to be sold with her child but her efforts were to no avail. Randall was sold separately from his mother, bid his farewells and never saw her face

Later on in Northup’s tale, readers are introduced to Patsey, the queen of the field. Patsey’s misfortunes not only stemmed from the fact that she was slave, but that she was also her slave master, Epps’ prized possession. Patsey had a pleasant temper and she was a joyous, light-hearted girl, yet she wept oftener and suffered more than any of her companions. Although Patsey was deemed to be the most faithful and efficient slave—notorious for bringing in almost double the amount of cotton from her counterparts—it is safe to say, that she experienced the most brutality out of all of the slave women on Epps’ plantation. The reason for this was not because she fell short in her work or had a rebellious spirit, but because she fell victim to a licentious slave master and his jealous mistress. For most of her days on the plantation, Patsey found herself trapped in-between her slave master’s lewd acts and her mistress’s fury. Northup describes to his readers that Patsey walked beaneath a dark cloud.