HUMBOLDT-UNIVERSITÄT ZU
BERLIN
PHILOSOPHISCHE FAKULTÄT II
INSTITUT FÜR ANGLISTIK UND AMERIKANISTIK
Black Female Slave Identities in the
Antebellum South:
Intersections of Race and Gender
Masterarbeit
zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades
Master of Arts (M.A.)
im Fach Amerikanistik
Eingereicht von: Kateřina Láníčková
geb. am 24.08.1987 in Brünn,
Tschechische Republik
Wissenschaftlicher Betreuer: Prof. Dr. Martin Klepper
Zweitgutachter: PD Dr. Reinhard Isensee
Berlin, den 29.04.2013
Deutsche Zusammenfassung der Masterarbeit
Identitäten schwarzer Sklavinnen in den “Antebellum-Südstaaten”:
Die Beziehung zwischen ethnischer Zugehörigkeit und Geschlecht
Ziel dieser Arbeit ist es, die komplexe Intersektionalität zwischen Geschlecht und
ethnischer Zugehörigkeit zu erarbeiten und zu analysieren. Dabei werden die
Lebensverhältnisse der „schwarzen” und „weißen Frau” sowie deren
gesellschaftliches Ansehen gegenübergestellt.
Die Analyse bezieht sich auf den Zeitraum 1840-1860.
Es wird erötert, welche Bedeutung die „Weiblichkeitstheorie” für die „weiße
Gesellschaftsschicht” in der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts hat und wie sich im
Gegensatz dazu das Leben der Sklavinnen darstellt.
Die Arbeit orientiert sich methodisch an den folgenden zwei Theorien:
1. Die „Critical Race Theory”: Sie stellt die als Standardnorm geltenden
Erfahrungen der „Weißen” in Frage und basiert auf den spezifischen
Erfahrungen der schwarzen Bevölkerung.
2. Die „Standpoint Theory”: Sie behauptet, dass Menschen entsprechend ihrer
Zugehörigkeit zu einer bestimmten Gruppenhierarchie ähnliche Sichtweisen
entwickeln, die für ihr Leben bestimmend sind und von der Sichtweise anderer
Gruppenhierarchien stark abweichen.
Als Erstquelle werden Erzählungen weiblicher Sklaven analysiert, da sie deren
Standpunkte am besten darstellen. Dabei geht es konkret um Harriet Ann Jacobs
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl und Sojourner Truths Narrative of Sojourner
Truth, a Northern Slave.
Es wird dargelegt, welche Bedeutung der Körper der Sklavinnen als einziger
Bewertungsmaßstab der „Weißen” auf ihren Handelswert hat und wie sich das auf
das Leben der Sklavinnen auswirkt.
Die Arbeit kommt zu folgenden Ergebnissen:
Sklavinnen sind sowohl den „weisen Frauen” als auch den „schwarzen Männern”
gegenüber minderwertig. Folglich tragen sie durch ihre Zugehörigkeit zur
afroamerikanischen Ethnie und zum weiblichen Geschlecht eine doppelte Bürde.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION .........................................................................1
1. Race as a Concept ......................................................................5
1.1 Critical Race Theory .........................................................................6
1.1.1 Color-Blindness and Color-Consciousness ..............................................8
2. Intersectionality and Standpoint Theories ..............................11
2.1 Intersections of Gender and Race .....................................................11
2.2 Theory of Situated Standpoints .........................................................12
3. The Peculiar Institution ...........................................................15
3.1 Economic Aspects of Slavery ..........................................................17
4. Antebellum Theories of Womanhood, Motherhood and
Domesticity .....................................................................................19
4.1 The True American Woman ..............................................................20
4.2 Ain’ t I a Woman? - The Double Discrimination of Black Enslaved
Women ....................................................................................................23
4.3 Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and the Contradictory Ideologies of
Nineteenth-Century Womanhood ............................................................26
4.3.1 Motherhood, Womanhood and Domesticity in the Life of Linda Brent ..27
4.4 The Co-Existence of Female Slaves and White Mistresses: Two
Separate yet Interconnected Worlds ........................................................32
4.4.1 Jealousy and the Impact of Slavery on White Marriages.........................34
5. Sexuality and Sexual Abuse of Female Slaves ........................36
5.1 Sexual Abuse and Slave Pregnancies ................................................37
5.1.1 Different Perceptions of Black versus White Pregnancies ......................40
5.2 The (Lack of) Portrayal of Sexuality in Jacobs’s and Truth’s Narratives
.................................................................................................................41
6. The Body of the Female Slave ..................................................46
6.1 Patriarchy and Institutionalized Sexism in the Antebellum Era........47
6.2 Reducing Female Slave Personality to Functionality .......................49
CONCLUSION ..............................................................................52
BIBLIOGRAPHY..........................................................................56
SELBSTSTÄNDIGKEITSERKLÄRUNG..................................60
INTRODUCTION
When they told me my new-born babe was a girl, my heart was heavier than it
had ever been before. Slavery is terrible for men; but it is far more terrible for
women. Superadded to the burden common to all, they have wrongs, and
sufferings, and mortifications peculiarly their own (Jacobs 262).
Harriet Jacobs addresses the different impact slavery had on female
slaves as opposed to male slaves. This fact leads to the double burden of the
female slave as gender and race work together in creating the special hardships
women in bondage were facing.
This thesis looks at how the two complex categories of gender and race
intersect, how they mutually construct one another and shape an identity. The
historical period that is examined in this thesis is the antebellum period of the
American South, more specifically the 1840’s and 1850’s, a period closely
preceding the American Civil War, and its main focus are the enslaved women.
My main research interest lies within the contradictions and contrasts in the
application of antebellum womanhood theories creating the reality of two
completely separate, yet interconnected worlds of black women and white women
and I hope to find answers to the following question: Is the race distinction
stronger than the gender solidarity?
This thesis starts out with looking at the category of race. The main
argument here is that race is a culturally invented concept. Furthermore, this
chapter introduces Critical Race Theory and the relevance to this thesis is
established. Critical Race Theory “challenges the experience of whites as the
normative standard and grounds its conceptual framework in the distinctive
experiences of people of color” (Taylor 122). After looking critically at race and
introducing the terms color-blindness and color-consciousness, I will explore the
intersections of gender and race. Intersectionality Theory is relevant to this paper
as it adds to the understanding of constructed categories and their mutual
influence and formation. As Elzbieta H. Oleksy puts it (2011:263), “at its most
basic level, the concept of intersectionality is used to cover the interconnections
between various social differentials, such as gender, race, ethnic origin, age,
disability, sexual orientation, and religion or belief.” The constructs of race and
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gender will therefore not be treated as separate entities, but as mutually
interconnected categories influencing each other.
The institution of slavery encompasses a wide number of issues and
their corresponding effects on the enslaved people, and there has been a vast
amount of research carried out on this topic. However, it is not the goal of this
thesis to provide a comprehensive analysis of both male and female slaves’
identities. Rather, the focus is entirely placed on the female gender. I am interested
in finding out in how far the prevailing theories of womanhood, separate spheres
and theories of domesticity influenced black enslaved women as contrasted to
their white female slave owners and how these led to identity formation, and roles
and expectations.
I have selected the topic for this thesis on the grounds of my keen longterm academic interest in African American Studies as well as gender theories.
The institution of American slavery has been dealt with in great depth in academic
as well as non-academic contexts. However, what I am specifically planning to do
is to closely look at the female experience, drawing heavily on slave narratives. I
am convinced that it is useful to apply the questions of intersectionality to the
antebellum slavery period because it challenges looking at slaves as one big entity
and instead forces one to distinguish between genders and examine their
specifically different experiences.
A critical dialogue on race is ever important, be it on the past experience
of slavery or the role race plays in American society nowadays. Without
understanding, confronting and revisiting the past, there can be no understanding
of the present. I am convinced that even though the institution of slavery in the
USA was abolished in 1865, its discussion must not cease. As Kelley writes in the
introduction to Remembering Slavery (1998:vii), “Racial slavery has shaped
virtually every aspect of [the US] history” and he further goes on to state than the
racial constructions that are present in today´s society (like whiteness, blackness
and others) “are obviously rooted in the history of slavery and Jim Crow” (vii).
Just how alive the issue of race and slavery is could be demonstrated by
the following quote from Remembering Slavery (1998:xlvi-xlvii)
The debate over the proposed official apology for slavery, the creation of a
presidential commission to advance a “national conversation” on race, the
furor over affirmative action programs, . . . all suggest how fully the creation
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of an egalitarian society rests on the nation coming to terms with its slave
past. . . . The enslavement . . . so shaped the American past and [its] legacy
continues to cast a shadow over the American future.
No discussion on intersectionality or race theory is complete without a
critical look at the so-called “standpoints” and Standpoint Theory which states
that “group location in hierarchical power relations produces shared challenges for
individuals in those groups” (Collins 201). Marked and unmarked standpoints also
play a central role in our understanding of group belonging - African American
women have had a different standpoint from white American women and Critical
Race Theory recognizes that they are two different groups. Rather than making an
attempt at assimilation it tries to let African American women speak for
themselves. This is why this paper places a lot of emphasis on slave narratives
written solely by female slaves. Theories of antebellum womanhood, sexuality,
domesticity and separate spheres will be dealt with in great detail as well.
I will present the prevailing notions of a “true, perfect woman and
mother” of the first half of the nineteenth century, followed by comparing these
white ideals with the reality of black enslaved women. However, as black and
white women’s lives were interconnected, they cannot be treated purely
separately. That is why I find it important to compare and contrast the world of
white womanhood with that of black womanhood. In that same section of this
thesis the impact of the institution of slavery on white marriages will be analysed.
As main primary sources this thesis explores Harriet Ann Jacobs’s
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and Sojourner Truth’s Narrative of Sojourner
Truth, a Northern Slave. I find these two narratives especially useful for their
different treatment and portrayal of female sexuality and sexual abuse and for
their exploration of the difficulty of being a slave and a woman at the same time.
Female black slave experience cannot be looked at separately without taking into
consideration the surroundings of the entire system, mainly the day-to-day
interactions of slaves and their owners as well as the wives of the owners, and the
resulting situations and positions that this put the females slaves in. Sexual abuse
is addressed in great detail in this thesis as it is crucially linked to the female
enslaved experience and the resulting female slave identity. Rape is dealt with and
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presented as a systematic means of keeping white males on top of the entire
system.
By writing this thesis I hope to make a contribution to the ongoing
academic discussion on slavery as well as the female experience. I am singling out
females as opposed to males because I am convinced that although many
conditions were similar for both female and male enslaved individuals, they were
also substantially different and that is I decided to analyse and focus on the female
experience separately.
Throughout this entire thesis my approach does of course not reflect
any presumptions of understanding of the authentic experience of women in
slavery, my standpoint being that of a white European middle-class female.
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1. Race as a Concept
“Race is a cultural invention” (Smedley 1998).
These words lie at the core of the paper written by the anthropologist
and sociologist Audrey Smedley. He claims that it is a widely accepted scholarly
finding that what became known as the concept of race “bears no intrinsic
relationship to actual human physical variations, but reflects social meanings
imposed upon these variations” (1998:690). He further claims that the concept of
race as an identity marker has not always existed in the way it is perceived today.
Smedley argues that (690):
Race as a mechanism of social stratification and as a form of human identity is
a recent concept in human history. Historical records show that neither the
idea nor ideologies associated with race existed before the seventeenth
century. In the United States, race became the main form of human identity,
and it has had a tragic effect on low-status “racial” minorities.
Since the eighteenth century and up until today it has been hard to
understand that racial differences have not always existed. It is interesting to go
back in history and pose the question of how people were differentiated if not by
race. Smedley (1998) provides clear answers by first arguing that no matter what
century or millenium, there have always existed different ethnic groups of people,
co-inhabiting areas (691). He provides an interesting outlook by claiming that
although naturally hostilities arose between different groups of people, these
“hostilities were usually neither constant nor the basis on which long-term
relationships were established” as “ethnic identity was not perceived as
ineluctably set in stone. Individuals and groups of individuals often moved to new
areas or changed their identities by acquiring membership in a different
group” (Smedley 691). The practice of flexibly changing identities as a result of
moving to a new location or joining a different tribe and thus assimilating its new
culture and most importantly having the option of leaving their old identity behind
stands in direct contrast to the practices used from the 18th-century onwards. In
this historical period, race group membership became fixed and valid for life.
Smedley demonstrates this argument by claiming that “People of the ancient
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world seemed to have understood that cultural characteristics were external and
acquired forms of behaviors” (1998:691).
It is the aim of this paragraph to look at the different perceptions of
one’s identity in the pre-race times. As kinship connections were the basic
markers of belonging, people were primarily identified “by who his or her father
was” (Smedley 691), followed by other identity markers such as
“occupations” (691) as well as the following features: “place of birth, membership
in kin groups, or descent in the male or female line from known ancestors,
language spoken, and lifestyle [and] social position” (Smedley 692). The last but
not least crucially important marker of identity that by far superseded the role of
race was religion. According to Smedley (693):
What was absent from these different forms of human indentity is what we
today would perceive as classifications into “racial” groups, that is, the
organization of all peoples into a limited number of unequal or ranked
categories theoretically based on differences in their biophysical traits. There
are no “racial” designations in the literature of the ancients and few references
even to such human features as skin color.
Undoubtedly, to societies today, it seems very strange that “the
biological variations among human groups were not given significant social
meaning” (Smedley 693). Smedley further goes on to argue that when the concept
of race “appeared in human history, it brought about a subtle but powerful
transformation in the world´s perceptions of human differenes” by imposing
“social meanings on physical variations among human groups that served as the
basis for the structuring of the total society” (693).
We have now laid out the basic premises of the concept of race and in
the next chapter will try to gain an even deeper, more thorough understanding of
this issue by introducing Critical Race Theory.
1.1 Critical Race Theory
Being a crucial category in contemporary American society and politics
race is engrained in all walks of life. As Patricia Hill Collins puts it in Fighting
Words, (1998:204): “for the vast majority of the population in the United States,
race creates immutable group identities. Individuals cannot simply opt in or out of
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racial groups, because race is constructed by assigning bodies meaningful racial
classifications.”
As a social construct, race has been the tool of discrimination, both
institutionalized as well as covert. Both throughout the history of the United
States and in more recent times the question has always been prevalent as to how
the issue of racial oppression and discrimination should best be tackled: which
approach is best suited to remove racial inequalities? The Civil Rights Movement
undoubtedly brought important changes, though in many eyes the movement
brought only “stalled progress” (Taylor:122), in response to which Critical Race
Theory evolved in the 1970s.
Critical Race Theory, in this thesis further only referred to as CRT, is
defined as “an eclectic and dynamic form of legal scholarship” with the aim to
“produce meaningful racial reform” (Taylor 122). Taylor further (1998:122) states
the following:
[CRT] challenges the experience of whites as the normative standard and
grounds its conceptual framework in the distinctive experiences of people of
color. This call to context insists that the social and experiential context of
racial oppression is crucial for understanding racial dynamics, particularly the
way that current inequalities are connected to earlier, more overt, practices of
racial exclusion. CRT is grounded in the realities of the lived experience of
racism which has singled out . . . African Americans . . . as worthy of
suppression.
CRT perceives racism as “a normal, not aberrant or rare, fact of daily
life in American society” (Taylor:122). With this viewpoint, one of CRT’s main
themes is the conviction that “the assumptions of white superiority are so
ingrained in the political and legal structures [that they are] almost
unrecognizable” (1998:122).
As Cornel West puts it in his introduction to the Critical Race Theory
(1995:xi), CRT not only “challenges the ways in which race and racial power are
constructed and represented in American legal culture and . . . in American society
as a whole”, but it also attempts to find out how a regime of white hegemony “and
its subordination of people of color have been created and maintained in
America” (1995).
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1.1.1 Color-Blindness and Color-Consciousness
Looking at the category of race is a subjective process, one into which
the observer brings his/her knowledge, as well as their education and experience.
A person is born into a racial category and without having asked for it obtains
social privileges or disadvantages, which are directly or indirectly connected to
this racial group membership. CRT acknowledges this fact and uses it as its prime
starting point. What is important, however, is the difference in the two ways of
looking at race - the white and the black perspectives. In the Primer on Critical
Race Theory (1998:122) it is emphasized that “whites don’t see their viewpoint as
a matter of perspective. They see it as the truth”. And it is exactly this genuinely
wrong presumption that is to blame when it comes to many racial discriminatory
actions, like founding and maintaining the institution of slavery in the antebellum
South, the period of history which this thesis focuses on.
Racial politics has always been imposed by those in power on those of
lower social and economic positions. In the antebellum South it was the whites,
whose viewpoints mattered, and thus whiteness was the starting point of looking
at race. The main role in defining and carrying out racist politics was played and
decided by those who were defining power relations - the white majority.
Institutions made it possible for slavery to keep existing and unlikely for it to
cease. This is where I find the basics of CRT interesting - “it compels us to
confront critically the most explosive issue in American civilization: the historical
centrality and complicity of law in upholding white supremacy” (Taylor:122).
Delgado and Stefancic explain the origins of CRT as having sprung out of the
need “to understand and come to grips with the complex interplay among race,
racism, and American law” (1993:461).
In American society, many approaches have been tried out to fight
racial inequalities. One of those is the so-called approach of color-blindness. At
the core of this color-blind attitude stands the assumption that it is possible and,
indeed, desired to try and look beyond racial differences and not mention skin
color at all, instead, adopt a neutral attitude. What makes CRT stand out here is its
direct opposition to this color-blind concept. According to Taylor (123),
pretending to not see differences among people of different races is nonsensical,
8
given the fact that the environment is made up of a society in which “people, on
the basis of group membership alone, have historically been, and continue to be,
treated differently” (123), the result of which is the category of whiteness,
remaining “the normative standard and blackness [remaining] different, other, and
marginal” (1998:123). Crenshaw (1995:xiii) writes that CRT “rejects the
prevailing orthodoxy that scholarship should be or could be neutral and objective”
and goes on to demonstrate this statement by saying that the “CRT scholars
believe that legal scholarship about race in America can never be written from a
distance of detachment or with an attitude of objectivity” (xiii).
From the above stated argument it can be seen that the approach of CRT
is neither inclusion nor integration, but more the acceptance of the fact that racism
is ever-present in contemporary American society and one that is unlikely to
disappear, and that the ways to overcome it cannot originate from ignoring racial
differences, but the opposite - that the point of departure must be the acceptance
that African Americans and white Americans are two very distinguished and
unique groups that should not be seen as similar and should not be pushed into
becoming one group. As Delgado and Stefancic put it (1993:463):
An emerging strain within CRT holds that people of color can best promote
their interest through separation from the American mainstream. Some believe
that preserving diversity and separateness will benefit all, not just groups of
color.
Thus, rather than going in the direction of neutrality and colorblindness, critical race theorists take as their starting principle the so-called colorconsciousness. Peller (1995:127) refers to this as “dramatic” because “explicit
race-consciousness has been considered taboo for at least fifteen years in
mainstream American politics . . . Instead, race has been understood through a set
of beliefs” - through what he calls an “integrationist ideology”. Peller (129) offers
an insightful view of this, and of racism in general, in the following excerpt:
In the integrationist perspective, racism is rooted in consciousness, in the
cognitive process that attributes social significance to the arbitrary fact of skin
color. The mental side of racism is accordingly represented either as
“prejudice”, the prejudging of a person according to mythological stereotypes,
or as “bias”, the process of being influenced by subjective factors. The key
image here is of irrationalism: the problem with prejudice is that it obscures
the work of reason by clouding perception with beliefs rooted in superstition.
The paradigmatic manifestation is the white supremacist myth structure that
asserts natural, biological differences between blacks and whites.
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CRT begins with the conviction that race “is not a fixed term; instead, it
is a fluctuating, decentered complex of social meanings that are formed and
transformed under the constant pressures of political struggle” (Bell:318). It is not
in CRT’s interests to portray African Americans as victims and bearers of hard
human plight or as a group subordinated to the white supremacy. Instead, it
recognizes African Americans as a group co-existing next to the whites.
Furthermore, according to CRT it is not the goal for African Americans to become
members of the white hegemony, but to form a separate, equally important and
recognized group.
This thesis analyzes the category of race not only as a separate factor in
forming a person´s identity, but also the ways in which race interacts with the
category of gender in the context of slavery. I am interested in situations in which
gender is a dominant category and vice versa. Peller offers a useful comment on
the founding of the institution of slavery (1995:144), defining it not using the term
segregation but understanding it as a form of “domestic colonialism”, where
“instead of establishing a colonial empire in Africa”, the USA “brought the
colonial system home and installed it in the southern states”.
The main focus of this thesis are the female slaves in the 1840’s and the
1850’s of the antebellum era in the American South and the way their place in
gender and race categories shaped their entire lives, roles and identities. One of
CRT’s main themes is the coexistence of separate races and the issue of
normativity and marked and unmarked categories. What I am most going to focus
on in this thesis is the specific black womanhood - individuals not only defined by
race (and all its accompanying social and political implications) but also by the
female gender. I want to analyze the situations in which one can see that gender is
read in a racial way, and at the same time the situations in which race is read in a
gendered way.
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2. Intersectionality and Standpoint Theories
“Intersectionality has become the primary analytic tool that feminist
and anti-racist scholars deploy for theorizing identity and oppression” (Nash 1). It
is the aim of this chapter to explore what Jennifer C. Nash (2008) means in her
above quotation and to link the concept of intersectionality to the concept of
different standpoints. Furthermore, my goal is to show its relevance to African
American Studies, specifically to the study of female slave identities.
2.1 Intersections of Gender and Race
In her book Black Feminist Thought (2000), Patricia Hill Collins
analyses various intersections. She argues that “oppresion cannot be reduced to
one fundamental type, and that oppressions work together in producing
injustice” (2000:18). Race and racism go hand in hand and so does gender and
sexism. When these two are put together, a mixture of two combined oppressions
is produced, in which one oppression influences the other in a way that could not
be explained by dealing with these two forms of oppression separately. Collins
concerns herself with the idea of two categories intersecting with each other as
follows (2000:269):
Because U.S. Black women have access to the experiences that accrue to
being both Black and female, an alternative epistemology used to rearticulate
a Black women’s standpoint should reflect the convergence of both sets of
experiences. Race and gender may be analytically distinct, but in Black
women’s everyday lives, they work together.
Nash (2008) defines intersectionality as “the notion that subjectivity is
constituted by mutually reinforcing vectors of race, gender, class, and
sexuality” (2) and that it “has emerged as the primary theoretical tool designed to
combat feminist hierarchy, hegemony, and exclusivity”, having from its
“inception . . . a long-standing interest in one particular intersection: the
intersection of race and gender” and so it “rejects the ‘single-axis framework’
often embraced by both feminist and anti-racist scholars” (2008:2).
These two “markers of power” (Collins 1998) come together and create
“social institutions that, in turn, construct groups that become defined by these
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characteristics” (204). It has always been the case that certain groups “define and
rule others” (204), which has brought about social order and with it the
accompanying hierarchy and power relations.
Intersectionality theory works with the “existence of multiple axes” in
society (Collins:208), such as gender and race, but also class. One example of
intersectionality theory put in practice is the comparison of “an individual
African-American woman to an individual White American woman”, where one
might ask themselves the question of “how each [of these women] constructs an
identity informed by intersections of race, class, and gender across varying social
contexts” (Collins:207). In chapter four of this thesis this comparison is analyzed
in greater detail, focusing on female slave identities in the antebellum era in
comparison with their white mistresses. The interactions and day-to-day
relationships of female slaves and the wives of slaveowners show interesting
parallels as well as stark contrasts in their lives and can be used as one example to
show how intersectionality theory can be applied to inform real life situations. The
focus in chapter four is on how members of both of these groups were influenced
by the prevalent theories of womanhood and domesticity of the American
antebellum period and what differences and similarities there are to be found. In
tackling the issue of black female enslaved identities there is a great need for
intersectionality theory, because the attempt to put individuals into binary
categories of gender-only, or race-only is never complete and satisfactory. The
intersections of various axes go hand in hand with the so-called standpoints,
which are dealt with in more depth in the following subchapter.
2.2 Theory of Situated Standpoints
A “standpoint” is by Merriam-Webster Learner´s Dictionary defined as
“a way in which something is thought about or considered” in other words a
“point of view”. McClish and Bacon (2002:27) state that standpoint theory
“emphasizes the epistemological importance of the perspectives of oppressed
groups”.
Standpoint theory is a help to the understanding of the ways race and
gender work together and against each other. As Collins states in Fighting words,
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(1998:201) it provides a great “source of analytical guidance and intellectual
legitimation for African-American women”. The basics of the standpoint theory is
best summed up in Collins´ definition (1998:201)
Standpoint theory argues that group location in hierarchical power relations
produces shared challenges for individuals in those groups. These common
challenges can foster similar angles of vision leading to a group knowledge or
standpoint that in turn can influence the group´s political action. Stated
differently, group standpoints are situated in unjust power relations, reflect
those power relations, and help shape them.
In the standpoint theory discourse, we find two correlating categories:
the unmarked African American standpoint versus the marked African American
feminine standpoint. Here we can see that standpoint theory also appears to be
problematic and it produces the following questions: in how far is defining groups
with shared features helpful? As Collins states (1998:201), “racial solidarity . . .
requires that African-Americans stick together at all costs. The civil rights and
Black Power movements certainly demonstrated the effectiveness of Black
politics grounded in racial solidarity”. She goes on to state that:
Collectively, these movements delivered tangible political and economic gains
for African-Americans as a group (but not for all members within the group).
Differences could be expressed within the boundaries of Blackness but not
across those same boundaries (1998:202).
Hekman (1997) writes about a specifically feminist standpoint which
can also be applied to the black feminist standpoint. In Hekman’s writing
(1997:341), standpoint theory is defined as follows:
Feminist standpoint theory raises a central and unavoidable question for
feminist theory: How do we justify the truth of the feminist claim that women
have been and are oppressed? . . . Throughout the theory’s development,
feminist standpoint theorists’ quest for truth and politics has been shaped by
two central understandings: that knowledge is situated and perspectival and
that there are multiple standpoints from which knowledge is produced.
Standpoint theory is especially important when one works with slave
narratives and draws upon them for knowledge and “facts” as the experience of
opporessed groups (in this case: slaves) are of essential importance. Standpoint
theory gives these groups space to share their points of view and sees them as not
less important than historical facts. In this thesis, two slave narratives will be
looked at and analyzed in regards to their relevance towards women’s issues.
These narratives are Harriet Ann Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and
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Sojourner Truth’s Narrative of Sojourner Truth, a Northern Slave. According to
McClish and Bacon (2002:28), “Feminist standpoint theorists assert that research
should be grounded in women’s experiences”. They further go on to argue that
(28) according to standpoint theorists:
An epistemology generated from the standpoint of an oppressed group such as
women is more valid than the knowledge of those in dominant positions in
society. . . Those who are disenfranchsised must understand the perspective of
those in power in order to survive, but the converse does not hold true.
While it is dangerous in academia to presume or to claim that a voice or
a point of view of one group is less or more valid or true than that of another
group, one should remember that it has been difficult for any kind of marginalized
group to have their voices heard. Relevant to this thesis, however, are female
slaves and their standpoints. The institution of slavery was perceived as a national
issue to the “American people” but mostly only seen through the economic lense
and by those in power. Glen McClish and Jacqueline Bacon (2002:31) claim that
the theory of standpoints “can function as a framework for analyzing the voices of
women [and] people of color” and that “marginalized voices have revelatory
qualities that can effect significant social change” and that “feminist standpoint
theory helps us to appreciate the corrective force of the discourse of the oppressed
and overlooked” (31). It is therefore not only the “culturally dominant
voices” (McClish and Bacon 31) that should be heard, but also those others - to
the dominant discourse of any given time.
This is what makes slave narratives so crucial in dealing with slavery
and with the female slave experience in particular. The slavery experience of
Linda in Jacobs’s narrative “emphasizes the unique constraints on female slaves
[and] creates a new framework for defying slavery” (McClish and Bacon 42).
McClish and Bacon provide further arguments for the relevance of the use of
standpoint theory and female slave narratives when dealing with the issue of
slavery by claiming (42) that
Scholars have explored the unique power of the rhetoric of African-American
women abolitionists, who offer a perspective missing in the often analogous
arguments of white female abolitionists. Traditional standpoint theory can
provide a useful framework for analysis of this aspect of African-American
women’s rhetoric. In particular, it can reveal how Jacobs’s Incidents acts as a
potentially corrective force in antebellum rhetoric, recasting arguments about
slavery made by others who have not experienced this form of oppression.
14
As Harnois argues in her article “Race, Gender, and the Black Women’s
Standpoint” (2010), “the black women’s standpoint is characterized by an
intersectional approach to understanding oppression based on race, class, gender
and a legacy of struggle against such oppression” (72).
In the next section I will provide a brief overview of the slavery era and
will then go on to look at how shared group belonging affected the identities and
the lives of black female slaves.
3. The Peculiar Institution
I find it useful to provide a very brief account of the institution of
American slavery as well as suggest its economic and cultural causes and look at
this institution as a business as well as its broader impact on the Southern
economy, before this thesis goes more into depth on specifically female slave
lives.
Also called “peculiar institution” (ushistory.org 2013), American
slavery started as early as the first Europeans settled on the American continent
and ended with the Civil War. The term “peculiar institution” was used
synonymously with the word slavery but was a preferable way of describing
human bondage as it euphemized what it actually stood for. It was very popular
with proslavery defenders, including John C. Calhoun (Morgan 13). In Slavery in
America, Morgan states that “proslavery defenders in the South based their
arguments on various grounds, including John C. Calhoun’s notion of slavery as a
public good and as an institution that was a national cause demanding national
protection” (2005:13). For figures like Calhoun who wanted to keep the system of
human chattel alive, the term “peculiar institution” better fitted their speeches as
opposed to calling the bondage system slavery which seemed to be too much of a
realistic denotation.
Although slavery was not a uniquely American institution, for the
purposes of this thesis, other nations’ slavery systems will not be looked at.
Slavery “has had as lasting an effect on modern American society as any other
single theme one might choose to analyse” (Morgan 1). To determine one single
15
cause of the establishment of the entire system would be impossible, although
there are a few valid explaining suggestions. In the reader Slavery in America,
Morgan argues that among the first impulses to found a system of slavery in
America was the shortage of imported indentured servants from Britain as well as
the “disadvantages” that short work contracts of these workers had as opposed to
the “unlimited” work force of slaves (2005:2-3). According to Morgan, this
shortage of imported indentured servants occured due to the fact that working and
living conditions of lower-class British workers had improved overall and with
that the numbers of those who crossed the Atlantic diminished (2). He states that
“the transition from servitude to slavery . . . occured in the four decades between
1680 and 1720” (2005:3).
The historian Mark Smith (1998:1) states that “even at its height in the
first half of the nineteenth century, Americans debated slavery”, and he is further
concerned with the following questions (1): “Was it a profitable. . . institution? If
so, for whom? For slaveholders in particular? For non-slaveowners? For slaves?
For the southern economy generally?” Clearly, for a substantial number of people
keeping and maintaining the institution of slavery was crucially important because
for these individuals it represented profit. Smith (1998:10) provides an insightful
commentary on this issue as follows:
Anxious to defend their beloved institution, some southern intellectuals
fashioned elaborate defenses of slavery. These proslavery ideologues
contended . . . that slavery was the basis of the nation’s wealth; that northern
industrialism depended as much on the labor of slaves and the cotton it
produced as did the social identity and economic security of slaveholders
themselves; that slavery was sanctioned by God himself; that northern and
European “wage slaves” fared far worse than did their southern slave
counterparts; that slaves were genetically, morally, and socially inferior to
white men and so unsuited to economic and political freedom.
When looking at the origins of the idea to enslave a group of people,
not only economic reasons should be taken into account. It is also very important
to consider cultural and social reasons for the establishment and endurance of
slavery. Thus, the economic need to find a new group of people to replace the
shortage of indentured workers is by far not the only satisfactory explanation as to
why Africans were chosen to replace indentured servants. The roots of this
decision undeniably lie in racism and racial prejudice towards Africans, although,
as Morgan admits, it is unclear “whether racial prejudice preceded slavery in
16
North America or whether it escalated when large numbers of Africans were
imported” (3).
Blackness, for Stuart Englishmen, suggested connections with the Devil.
Africans were regarded as heathens, which made them seem barbaric to many
western Europeans. They were feared for their lust and savagery. Africans
were also singled out for their sheer difference from Europeans - in their
physiognomy, gestures, languages, dress and behaviour. Together, an amalgam
of negative attitudes emerged that amounted to racial prejudice towards
Africans (Morgan 2).
Racially biased and prejudiced thinking might be to blame for the
initiation of slave trade but after this system had increased in size and numbers it
was especially the dependence of the Southern economy on it that made it seem
virtually impossible to do without. Crops like rice, tobacco and cotton contributed
to the economic growth. On American plantations, “annual cotton production rose
from c. 3,000 bales in 1790 to more than 4 million bales by 1860” (Morgan 12).
As plantation work made slave owners directly dependent on slave labor, it
became an “embedded part of life” and it became “indelibly linked to the
prosperity of the region” (13). So it is no wonder why some people defended the
existence of this inherently unfree institution - it was “partly a response to the
problems that might arise if the federal government were to intervene in the
political decisions over slavery extension” (Morgan 13).
3.1 Economic Aspects of Slavery
The subject of this subchapter is the economic aspect of the institution
of slavery. Before a more detailed treatment of the economic aspects of southern
slavery is presented, I find it useful to clarify a few facts about the slaveownig
business. According to the publication Debating Slavery: Economy and Society in
the Antebellum South, “not everyone who owned a slave was considered a
member of the planter class” (Smith 15). Smith further states that (1998:15):
Ownership of up to about five slaves meant belonging to the yeomen class;
from roughly five to twenty slaves constituted the ubiquitous “middling”
slaveholder; and ownership of twenty or more slaves bestowed the status of
planter.
Smith further adds (15) that one half of southern slaveholders had one
to five enslaved individuals and only 12 percent of southern slaveholders owned
17
twenty or more slaves. Although plantations varied considerably in sizes, the
common goal was making profit: satisfying the economic needs of the slaveholder
and his family while trying to minimize the costs of doing so.
Smith (1998:60) divides profitability of the slaveholding system into
two economic levels: the “micro-economic level” - the plantation itself, and the
“macro-economic impact of slavery on the region’s economy”. Smith (1998:63)
refers to the work of Lewis Cecil Gray in which plantations were described as
“profitable businesses”. According to Gray (1933, pt. in Smith 63), plantation
slavery was a
Capitalist type of agricultural organization in which a considerable number of
unfree laborers were employed under unified direction and control in the
production of a staple crop.
Gray (1933, pt. in Smith 63) further defines the slavery business as
capitalist on the grounds that “the value of slaves, land, and equipment
necessitated the investment of money capital” that led to “a strong tendency for
the planter to consume the attitude of the business man in testing success by ratio
of net money income to capital invested”. A further analysis of slavery as a
business and its comparison to modern-day businesses is provided by Jacob
Metzer (1975). He argues that the antebellum slave plantations in the American
South can be compared to modern businesses. Metzer´s work is cited by Smith
(1998:64) as follows:
Like the businessman or factory manager, planters aimed to make profits. To
that end they arranged the running of their plantations along rational lines,
adopted modern business management techniques, and exploited economies of
scale.
Both Gray’s and Metzer’s works support the argument that slavery can
be compared to a modern-day business environment with its efforts to maximize
profits and minimize the costs and efficiency. However, it is not sufficient to only
consider individual plantations as separate units. It is equally important to
consider the system of slavery as a whole, and its effect on the economy of the
American South. From the macro-economic poit of view, the slavery system is
believed to have prevented a scale of urbanization comparable to that developing
in the North. It is a well-known fact that the South failed to industrialize “along
conventional lines” (Smith 72). Smith further argues that while slave plantations
18
brought profit to the individual slaveowners, it was “deleterious for the southern
economy as a whole” (1998:81).
This complex issue is also the concern of the work of Douglass North
(1961). He provides useful insights into the Southern economy (North 1961, pt. in
Smith 81-82) by stating that “the South stimulated economic development in the
agricultural northwest through its demand for foodstuffs” and that the South “did
not produce sufficient food to meet local demands and so the region was forced to
import food mainly from the northwest”. The reason for this is by Douglass North
seen in the failure “in the agricultural practices of planters who . . . specialized in
the cultivation of export crops”. The above presented arguments support the claim
that once the institution of slavery had been established, it gradually became less
imaginable for the American economy to function independently of it.
Slave trade and the entire resulting system created a genuinely new
culture - that of African Americans. Its impact on slave families and especially on
female figures lies at the core of this thesis. The following chapter looks at the
prevailing theories of womanhood, motherhood and domesticity and how these
impacted enslaved women and their identities.
4. Antebellum Theories of Womanhood,
Motherhood and Domesticity
An American woman’s position in society in the first half of the 19th
century was set in stone, as was man´s. As it is written in the essay The Cult of
True Womanhood by Barbara Welter, “men were the movers, the doers, the actors.
Women were the passive, submissive responders” (1996:159). An early 19thcentury American woman “understood her position if she was the right kind of
woman, a true woman” (Welter 159). I have chosen to cover all three terms motherhood, womanhood and domesticity - together in one chapter as in the first
half of the 19th century it was hardly imaginable for any of them to exist without
the others. According to Ernest (1996:182) “Motherhood . . . was the essential
condition of what I have called reified womanhood, by which I mean the
culturally determined attributes by which women could know themselves as
19
Woman”. To explain just what exactly the words true and woman meant and who
they did and did not include is the aim of the following subchapter.
4.1 The True American Woman
According to the prevailing standards of the antebellum era, a woman ’s
place was exclusively in the home, with the allowed exception of church and
charity work, which made it necessary for her to leave the domestic sphere. This
was, however, the only instance in which a woman would venture “into the
world”. According to Barbara Welter, a woman “was the hostage in the
home” (1966:151). This characterization presents a clear contradiction to the
generally accepted idea of the antebellum society of a woman being happily
excluded from the outside world devoting her entire free time to the household
and her children´s and husband´s happiness and comfort.
The title of Welter’s article The Cult of True Womanhood brings
countless links to the historical period in which the two words “true” and
“woman” formed such a frequent collocation in the use of the English language
that the two words were often hard to imagine without each other. Welter explains
(1966:151) that:
Authors who addressed themselves to the subject of women in the midnineteenth century used this phrase as frequently as writers on religion
mentioned God. Neither group felt it necessary to define their favorite terms;
they simply assumed - with some justification - that readers would intuitively
understand exactly what they meant.
Just how widely this term was used can further be seen in Welter’s
essay (1996:151): “In a society where values changed frequently, where fortunes
rose and fell with frightening rapidity, where social and economic mobility
provided instability as well as hope, one thing at least remained the same - a true
woman was a true woman, wherever she was found”. Welter further insightfully
comments on those who were brave enough to question or challenge this notion
(152):
20
If anyone, male or female, dared to tamper with the complex of virtues which
made up True Womanhood, he was damned immediately as an enemy of God,
of civilization and of the Republic.
Being a “true woman” meant fulfilling the prescribed womanly roles to
their perfection. These prescribed roles are precisely listed in Welter’s essay as
follows (152):
The attributes of True Womanhood, by which a woman judged herself and was
judged by her husband, her neighbors and society could be divided into four
cardinal virtues - piety, purity, submissiveness and domesticity. Put them all
together and they spelled mother, daughter, sister, wife - woman. Without
them, no matter whether there was fame, achievement or wealth, all was
ashes. With them she was promised happiness and power.
The first of the four cardinal virtues - piety, in other words devoting her
life to following a religion - was supposed to lead women in their life journey,
setting examples and showing the way. As Welter quotes in her article (1966:153),
religion was “a kind of tranquilizer for the many undefined longings which swept
even the most pious young girl, and about which it was better to pray than to
think”. However, the true value of religion was in the fact that it “did not take a
woman away from her proper sphere, her home. Unlike participation in other
societies or movements, church work would not make her less domestic or
submissive, less a True Woman” (Welter 153). This clearly shows the big interest
and wish of men to keep women in their place and not interfering with or
changing the order of things.
The second, equally important, virtue of a True Woman was her purity.
This should be read as “sexual purity” as that seems to be the real meaning of this
value. Summed up a woman should remain loyal and faithful to her husband and
even in her role as a wife should she think of her sexual and bodily needs as little
as possible, ideally not at all. Barbara Welter supports this notion on purity in her
essay as follows (154): “Purity was as essential as piety to a young woman, its
absence as unnatural and unfeminine. Without it she was, in fact, no woman at all,
but a member of some lower order. A fallen woman was a fallen angel, unworthy
of the celestial company of her sex”. Furthermore, Welter comments that “to
contemplate the loss of purity brought tears; to be guilty of such a crime . . .
brought madness or death” (154). A woman who failed to comply with the purity
ideal was doomed and virtually unable to survive in a society that placed such
21
importance on it. The fulfillment as well as absence of purity and their
consequences are demonstrated in Welter’s essay (154):
The marriage night was the single great event of a woman’s life, when she
bestowed her greatest treasure upon her husband, and from that time on was
completely dependent upon him, an empty vessel, without legal or emotional
existence of her own. Therefore all True Women were urged . . . to maintain
their virtue, although men, being by nature more sensual than they, would
try to assault it.
The third previously mentioned value of a perfect (“true”) woman was
submissiveness. More transparently it meant doing exactly as she was told by her
husband and if she disagreed with an opinion or a given order, it was the strongest
demonstration of being a true woman that she should do her best in denying her
opinions on the matter and give in to her husband, ideally without voicing or
showing any contradictory thoughts, unless she was directly asked to do so. Using
such measures, men made sure that it was them who continued to be the decisive
and dominant agents in the society.
The last out of four 19th-century womanhood values was domesticity.
Because a woman was not allowed to do much in any area of life outside the
home, it was domestic chores and other related domestic activities that took up
most of the time available to her. As Welter argues (163), “home was supposed to
be a cheerful place, so that brothers, husbands and sons would not go elsewhere in
search of a good time”. Welter further goes on to state that “woman was expected
to dispense comfort and cheer” and identifies one of the most important functions
of women in the home as having been a nurse (163).
In his essay, Ernest provides an interesting insight into the cult of
nineteenth-century womanhood by arguing that (1996:182):
It is important to remember that these virtues [of True Womanhood] did not
exist in an ideological vacuum, a separate sphere reserved for social
constructions of gender. Rather, they existed in relation to the state - that is,
they served both practical and ideological functions in the maintenance of
social order and of national identity. . . . Essentially, motherhood was both a
condition and a duty.
The dominant nineteenth-century ideology of womanhood sets an
example and gives guidelines to women teaching them to be the best possible
versions of themselves. Weiner argues (1998:54) that the ideology of domesticity
“justified the exclusion of women from the public world”, thus promoted the ideal
22
woman as one devoting her life to the private spheres. Weiner (70) offers more
thoughts on the domesticity ideals as follows:
White southern women were inundated from all directions with messages
about what was considered appropriate behavior. The ideology of domesticity
shaped the content of their educations, defined their roles as wives and
mothers, and dictated a set of beliefs and practices regarding the society in
which they lived.
Everything that has been stated above about the four cardinal virtues of
the True Woman inevitably leads to the question of who this True Woman really
was. Undoubtedly, the collocation “true woman” is a very vague term. In the
magazines and literature of the time addressing women’s roles, there seems to
have been unanimous agreement of what a woman should be and behave like. A
closer consideration of this issue, though, brings with it a clear revelation that the
women reading such journals would belong to only a very narrow category - that
of a white middle- or upper-middle class whose husbands were wealthy enough to
allow their wives to stay at home and supervise the household chores (rather than
do them themselves) and instruct their children in terms of religious and other
education. This class of women was not in the need of finding employment
outside the home and to contribute financially to the household.
The characterization of women eligible for the label of being “true
women” directly excludes lower classes of white women who were actively
earning money, for instance white maids and other female servants. It is even
more important to this thesis that this world view completely excluded the black
female enslaved population living on the same premises during the same historical
period, and who yet seemed to inhabit a totally different world.
4.2 Ain’ t I a Woman? - The Double Discrimination of Black
Enslaved Women
The discrepancies between the ideology summarising white
womanhood values and the lives of black women are the main theme in Sojourner
Truth’s speech which she held before a woman’s rights convention in Akron,
Ohio, on May 28, 1851. Moreover, she points out the discriminatory position of
women overall as compared to men.
23
Truth herself did not write her words down as she herself was illiterate,
so what became known as “Ain’t I a Woman” or “Ar’n’t I a Woman” speech are
accounts written down by her listeners, most notably the transcript that appeared
in the issue of the Anti-Slavery Bugle from June 21, 1851 (rpt. in Norton
Anthology, pp 761-762, 2008) and much later published reminiscences by Frances
D. Gage, 1863 (rpt. in Riverside Anthology, pp 261-262, 1998). The Riverside
Anthology attributes Truth with the status of being “the most famous black
woman antislavery feminist orator of the nineteenth century” (1998:258). In her
speech,
Truth rebuked the prevailing conception of women as weak, dismissing the
necessity for women to be coddled and helped into carriages by calling
attention to her own demonstrated ability to work as hard as any man (thanks
to her life as a slave).(Greenwood enc. 2178)
As it is recorded in Gage’s version of Truth’s speech (1998:261-262),
Truth compares herself (and other black women) with men as well as white
women:
Dat man ober dar say dat womin needs to be helped into carriages, and lifted
ober ditches, and to hab de best place everyhar. Nobody eber helps me into
carriage, or ober mud-puddles, or gibs me any best place! . . . And a’n’t I a
woman? Look at my arm! . . . I have ploughed, and planted, and gathered into
barns, and no man could head me! And a’n’t I a woman? I could work as
much and eat as much as a man - when I could get it - and bear de lash as
well! And a’n’t I a woman?”
By challenging the notion of 19th-century womanhood theories
defining women as being weak, helpless, obedient and submissive, fully
dependent on the men to go through life, Truth presents a black female
perspective and demonstrates her physical power and thus points out that as a
worker, she is not much different from a man. At the same time, Truth addresses
the fact that although she is a woman, she is not seen as one: “Dat man ober dar
say dat womin needs to be helped into carriages, and lifted ober ditches, and to
hab de best place everywhar. Nobody eber helps me into carriage, or ober mudpuddles, or gibs me any best place!” (Gage 261). As Maria B. Perry argues in her
essay (3) “by juxtaposing this ideal way of how a man says women should be
treated with chivalry with the reality that she has never experienced any of this
civility, Sojourner is pointing out the presence of a fierce hypocrisy”.
24
In the speech Truth further concerns herself with female intellect. As
Greenwood encyclopedia puts it, she “called the perceived lesser intellect of
women irrelevant, claiming instead that the real issue is one of allowing women to
use even the half-measure of intellect they’ve been given” (2178).
“Den dey talks ‘bout dis ting in de head; what dis dey call it?” (“Intellect”,
whispered some one near.) “Dat’s it, honey. What’s dat got to do wid womin’s
rights or nigger’s rights? If my cup won’t hold but a pint, and yourn holds a
quart, wouldn’t ye be mean not to let me have my little half-measure full?”
Moreover, towards the end of her speech, Truth rejects the theory that it
is prescribed by the Bible that women should be denied equality with men. To
prove her point, Truth emphasizes “the fact that Christ wasn’t a woman” and she
points out “the powerful contributions of two biblical women: Mary . . . and
Eve” (Greenwood encyclopedia 2178). In Truth’s words, recorded by Gage (262):
“Den dat little man in black dar, he say women can’t have as much rights as
men, ‘cause Christ wan’t a woman! Whar did your Christ come from?” . . .
“Whar did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothin´
to do wid Him.” . . . “If de fust woman God ever made was strong enough to
turn de world upside down all alone, dese women togedder . . . ought to be
able to turn it back, and get it right side up again! And now dey is asking to do
it, de man better let ‘em.”
In her speech, Truth manages to address both the “injustices that women
face” as well as injustices that “black[s] face.” (Perry 5). In her essay, Perry
further writes (5): “Effortlessly tying these two issues of inequality together,
Sojourner allows her audience, who as women feel discriminated against, to
connect with and understand the discrimination that blacks face as well”. The
message of Truth’s speech is that American women are treated considerably worse
than men in society, and women who also happen to be black, are treated even
worse than white women. Truth sees herself not only as a woman, but as a black
woman and calls for change.
It is the aim of the next subchapter to further look at the contradiction
between a “true woman” and a black enslaved woman of the antebellum era. It
takes Harriet Ann Jacobs’s narrative - Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl as the
main supporting material demonstrating this conflict.
25
4.3 Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and the Contradictory
Ideologies of Nineteenth-Century Womanhood
This subchapter looks at the complex ideologies of womanhood,
motherhood and domesticity, using Harriet Ann Jacobs’s slave narrative Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) as a primary source. Harriet Ann
Jacobs (1813-1897), born a slave, describes her experience of slavery and its
direct impact on domestic life in her narrative (further on in this thesis only
referred to as Incidents), calling herself Linda Brent. As it is stated in The Norton
Anthology of American Literature (2008:805), Jacobs is the very first African
American woman who authored a slave narrative in the United States. Although
literate herself, it was not possible for her to publish her narrative without the help
of an established white person. This help was in the end provided by the white
feminist Lydia Maria Child, who edited the whole narrative.
I have selected Jacobs’s narrative as the primary source for this thesis
because it focuses on “the unique constraints” of female slaves (McClish and
Bacon 42). It emphasizes the female slave experience as substantially different
from male slave experience as well as white female experience of slavery.
Whenever a slave narrative is discussed in academia, the question of
reliability, truth, facts and fiction arises. According to The Norton Anthology of
American Literature (2008:805), it had been established by the biographical
scholar Jean Fagin Yellin that Jacobs’s Incidents is indeed “an autobiographical
narrative, not a novel”. However, the term “autobiographical narrative” has still
left many scholars wondering about the amount of truth versus fiction in it, and
the concept of unreliable narration has been analyzed. In this particular case, the
scope of Lydia Maria Child’s editorial work and its consequential impact on the
narrative remains largely unclear. In The Norton Anthology of American Literature
(2008:805), this issue is dealt with as follows:
Critics and students of Incidents have disagreed on whether it is truth or
fiction and whether it is primarily Jacob’s work or Child’s. Yellin has shown
that all the characters and events in Incidents are based in reality, and Child’s
correspondence claims that as editor she added nothing and altered fewer than
fifty words in the manuscript. But Child did take what she described as “much
pains” with it, “transposing sentences and pages, so as to bring the story into
continuous order, and the remarks into appropriate places,” thereby making
the story “much more clear and entertaining.” To the extent that Child´s
editorial assistance gave the book a more literary shape, Incidents is indeed a
collaborative production.
26
As Goldsby argues in her essay, “Incidents proposes that conventional
methods of historical investigation are themselves inadequate measures by which
to determine what is “authentic” and what is not.” She goes on to state that the
truth can be found “only if it is left concealed”. Goldsby therefore claims that
“rules of documentary evidence may not resolve the dilemma that Incidents . . .
confronts: how to preserve testimony of an experience that is itself beyond
representation” (1996:12).
However, it is not the aim of this thesis to present a conclusive answer
as to whether Incidents contains the whole truth, or what the truth actually is.
Suffice it to say that there is justification in using slave narratives as important
sources of the slave experience as they are direct accounts of people whose
standpoints are subjective, which does not necessarily make them unreliable, but
rather they appear to provide more insight than literature produced on the
institution of slavery written by people from the outside (Goldsby 13).
Although all characters in the narrative have been confirmed as having
existed, Jacobs gives them different names. Her grandmother is therefore known
in the narrative as Aunt Martha, the other crucial character - Norcom, her defacto
owner - is renamed Dr. Flint and the man who she chooses as her lover - Sawyer is called Mr. Sands.
I have decided to include Jacobs’s narrative in my thesis owing to its
prime focus on the female enslaved experience and the corresponding portrayal of
domesticity and female roles.
4.3.1 Motherhood, Womanhood and Domesticity in the Life of Linda Brent
In the historical period this thesis focuses on (1840’s and 1850’s),
female slaves were not allowed to identify and see themselves as women in the
sense of being equal to white women. By law they were defined as personal
property, chattel, and therefore the womanhood theory did not apply to them.
According to Weiner (1998:71), “the ideology of domesticity in the South was a
mechanism for defining and controlling race as well as gender differences.” And
as Ernest puts it in his essay (1996:180), “Fundamentally, [Linda] Brent’s
27
experiences remind us that the nineteenth-century American institution of
motherhood was a racialized, class-based concept”. This explains why there was
such a huge contradiction in the ideology of white woman- and motherhood and
the realities of slave families. This subchapter looks at how this ideal could only
be attained by the wives of the slaveowners, rather than the enormous female
slave population as well as the lower social classes of white women.
One of the many major differences was the fact that slave women (as
well as lower-class white women) were expected to work outside the home, as
compared to the ideal (“true”) woman who focused all her talents on improving
the home and making it a nice environment for children to grow up in and the
husband to come back to. Despite this fact, slaves formed their own families and
households, in as far as it was possible. Within these unions (though not seen as
legally valid), gender played a huge role, though these families were
fundamentally different from the white ones. As Weiner explains (1998:22)
Even beyond the hours of direct supervision by whites, black women and men
labored differently. Although work for their own families had a very different
social meaning from that done for slaveholders, it still resonated with the
implications of gender.
In the slave quarters, women were often responsible for washing and
preparing food, and of course taking care of their children. Weiner (113) provides
useful insights on how very differently slave women viewed the role of
womanhood and work in their lives as compared to their white mistresses:
The complex African-American culture developed in the quarters shaped their
experiences, as did the assumptions of slaves and slaveholders about gender
and race differences. Like whites, blacks developed a set of expectations
defining appropriate behavior for men and women.
When discussing gender roles and family lives, a striking difference
between the white domestic worlds and the slave “family” occurs - in the black
family life, the private sphere was almost non-existent as most aspects of it were
very public. Thus, for enslaved women, juggling forced labour in the fields or in
the owner’s houses together with their own families did not match the nineteenthcentury upper- and upper-middle class womanhood ideals at all. As womanhood
theory was class-based, it was completely unattainable for huge numbers of white
women as well.
28
In Linda Brent’s case, the role of being a mother is even further
complicated. Not only is there no way for the family to be together as the father is
a free man who does not live in the slaves’ premises, but also because Linda fakes
her own escape to the North and consequently has to hide in her grandmother’s
house. That is why there is not much Linda can contribute to in her children’s
upbringing. By hiding in a tiny room at the top of the house, the only motherly
role she can fulfill is “watching” over her children as that is in fact as close as she
can get to them.
It was impossible for me to move in an erect position, but I crawled about my
den for exercise. One day I hit my head against something, and found it was a
gimlet. My uncle had left it sticking there when he made the trap-door. I was
as rejoiced as Robinson Crusoe could have been in finding such a treasure. It
put a lucky thought into my head. I said to myself, “Now I will have some
light. Now I will see my children.” . . . Through my peeping-hole I could
watch the children, and when they were near enough, I could hear their talk
(Jacobs 293).
Apart from watching her children, there is not much that Linda is able
to do, except for helping with some basic clothes-making and other little jobs that
she is able to do in her limited space. This inability to physically be there for her
children and provide for them directly, and therefore the lack of power to enact
her motherhood role leaves Linda feeling down but remaining hopeful for the
future. She identifies herself as a mother of her children nevertheless, but the
everyday reality never fails to remind her of her other identity, that she has not
willingly subscribed to, but which has been forced upon her - that of a slave. And
by having been born into the category of African American race, which stands
above gender in defining her roles and identity, she is prevented from being able
to enact her motherly responsibilities.
In her narrative, Jacobs frequently addresses the issue of incomplete
families that often resulted from the slave children being sold off to faraway
slaveholding families. It is especially in these sections that Jacobs tries to find a
common bond with her female readers, addressing them directly, as in the
following quote (213) where she depicts the evening preceding the slave auctions,
annually taking place on New Year’s Day
O, you happy free women, contrast your New Year’s day with that of the poor
bondwoman! With you it is a pleasant season, and the light of the day is
blessed. Friendly wishes meet you every where, and gifts are showered upon
you. . . . Children bring their little offerings, and raise their rosy lips for a
29
caress. They are your own, and no hand but that of death can take them away
from you. But to the slave mother New Year’s day comes laden with peculiar
sorrows. She sits on her cold cabin floor, watching the children who may all
be torn from her the next morning; and often does she wish that she and they
might die before the day dawns. She may be an ignorant creature,
degraded by the system that has brutalized her from childhood; but she has a
mother’s instincts, and is capable of feeling a mother’s agonies.
The constant threat of children being sold off to a different slaveholding
family led to incomplete families, which was further complicated by the difficult
realities of slaveholders fathering the children of female slaves, often through
rape, as white men possessed a total authority in the South, not only over their
wives, but also over their slaves. Children with a black mother and a white father
were an everyday fact of life, having a tremendous impact on the children’s
mothers, but also on the wives of the slaveholders. Jacobs (229) depicts the
situation as follows:
The young (white) wife soon learns that the husband in whose hands she has
placed her happiness pays no regard to his marriage vows. Children of every
shade of complexion play with her own fair babies, and too well she knows
that they are born unto him of his own household. Jealousy and hatred enter
the flowery home, and it is ravaged of its loveliness.
With that extract, Jacobs clearly argues that the institution of slavery
has a destructive effect on family lives, both the black and white ones. The impact
of slavery on white marriages, including the jealousy and life of the white
mistresses, is dealt with in more depth in the next subchapter. Some parts of the
experience of black women and white women intersect, and it is interesting and
important to consider the question in how far the lives and roles of these two
groups of women do indeed intersect and what makes them different at the same
time.
As standpoint theory states, individuals belonging to the same
categories experience shared challenges. “Jacobs proposes that womanhood is a
complex category and that women’s beliefs and assumptions are conditioned by
their position in society - in other words, they are situated, shaped by
standpoint” (McClish and Bacon 44). In the scope of this thesis, this applies not
only to the black female slaves, but also the group of white mistresses. Both
groups of women tried to define and act out their roles as mothers and wives,
though in very different ways owing to how many resources and options they had
30
at their disposal to make this possible. The prevailing theories of domesticity and
womanhood presented very different meanings for white women and for the black
ones. One could almost say that they stood in sharp contrast to each other.
Nevertheless, this is not to say that womanhood theories had no impact
on black women whatsoever. As Weiner explains (1998:114): “ In its adaptation to
its constantly changing surroundings, African-American culture sometimes
mimicked white culture. Some black women reproduced aspects of clothing,
appearance, courting behavior, and wedding rituals that they witnessed among
whites”. However, these attempts did not change the society’s view of black
female slaves. A black slave mother possessed no rights over her own children and
was by far neither able nor allowed to live up to the nineteenth-century’s standards
of woman- and motherhood. Jacobs’s narrative openly criticizes the true
womanhood ideal, and it is a crucial text in the anti-slavery field of studies.
McClish and Bacon (42) argue that:
Scholars have explored the unique power of the rhetoric of African-American
women abolitionists, who offer a perspective missing in the often analogous
arguments of white female abolitionists. Traditional standpoint theory can
provide a useful framework for analysis of this aspect of African-American
women’s abolitionist rhetoric. In particular, it can reveal how Jacobs´s
Incidents acts as a potentially corrective force in antebellum rhetoric, recasting
arguments about slavery made by others who have not experienced this form
of oppression.
McClish and Bacon further support this argument by claiming that
while white women abolitionists point out the hypocrisy of the pre-Civil War
times, where the true womanhood ideal only applied to white females, Jacobs’s
narrative is taken a step further and places the perspective on the experiences of a
black enslaved woman (2002:42-43). In addition, according to McClish and
Bacon (43), “antebellum formulations of femininity do more than exclude female
slaves - they are unjust and perpetuate the power of white men”. It is further
argued in their essay that
In the terms of feminist standpoint theory, Jacobs’s rhetoric has a double focus
that is not present in the rhetoric of her white counterparts such as Child. From
her position in society, she can both explain the hypocrisy of her society’s
application of traditional sexual norms and critique the very basis on which
antebellum femininity is constructed (McClish and Bacon 44).
31
4.4 The Co-Existence of Female Slaves and White Mistresses: Two
Separate yet Interconnected Worlds
This subchapter deals with the impact of slavery on white marriages
and the corresponding relationships between female slaves and their mistresses.
The lives of black enslaved females seem to have existed in an entirely separate
world from their white mistresses, where the former had clearly defined roles that of being slaves and other people’s property, obeying their owners at all times.
However, a closer look reveals that the mutual relationships between black
women and white women were not exclusively defined by the division of race.
Both black female slaves and their white mistresses shared the same gender and
with that a number of specifically female experiences and roles - that of child
bearing, and being a wife and a mother to name the most central ones. The
relationship between a female slave and her male master was defined by race only
- a white slaveowner had exclusive rights to treat female slaves as property,
whereas the slave owner’s wife often shared a certain bond with female slaves. It
is the aim of this subchapter to look at this black and white female relationship. As
Weiner (1998:1) explains in her introduction,
In the antebellum South, gender and race were the two most significant
shapers of individual experiences. Other factors such as class, region, religion,
family, skill, personality, even appearance, were also important . . . but being
born free or enslaved, male or female determined the possibilities and
limitations for each individual . . . [and] race determined whether an individual
was free or enslaved. As an institution, slavery was more than simply the
absence of freedom; it carried with it a set of behaviors required of slaves and
slaveholders. . . Similarly, gender expectations were based on a complex set of
assumptions and rules about appropriate behavior.
Weiner goes on to state that “the expectations associated with gender
and race created powerful ideologies that intersected in the lives of individuals
and shaped their relationships in the complex society of antebellum plantations,
farms and cities” (1). The institution of slavery made white slave-owning
households directly dependent on their slaves. That is why female slaves’ presence
became a necessary part of the white home. Female slaves often had to work
closely with their white mistress, more frequently so in the domestic setting than
on the plantation.
32
Slave women were expected to fulfill a double role - that of a slave,
doing everything that was required of them and at the same time carrying out the
role of a woman - caring for her own family and children as well as the owners’
ones. This resulted in a very complex and contrasting female slave identity, one
defined by both race and gender intersecting to a great extent. Being a slave
woman differed tremendously from being a white woman. While white women
were limited in their life choices by their gender only (the duty to conform to the
domesticity ideal was undoubtedly a very difficult task and discriminatory in
itself), black women were further limited by their race, making it often nearly
impossible to perform their female roles and they found themselves interpreting
womanhood and domesticity theories in their own way to suit their limited
opportunities. However, both enslaved and white females were women and the
question arises whether gender transcended race or not.
In the antebellum South setting, race was a category not to be ignored in
any situation. However, mutual black and white female encounters and shared
moments largely shaped female relationships. As Weiner puts it (13), “as domestic
producers and field hands, female slaves spent much of their working time with
other women separate from men”, and these shared tasks inevitably brought
mutual bonds, and many women found indeed that they “had more in common
with one another than they had with men” (Weiner 54). Caring for babies, older
children and for the sick brought women of both races closer together and both
were asked to draw on their experiences as women to solve different kinds of
situations most effectively. The situations in which white mistresses and their
female slaves made most use of their common femininity were the “transitional
points in slaves’ lives - puberty, pregnancy, childbirth and lactation, miscarriage
[and] menopause” (116). It was in the above mentioned situations that mistresses
often felt like teaching their female slaves female wisdom, and frequently felt the
urge to “pass along the tenets of domesticity and share biological
experiences” (116).
In Harriet Jacobs’s narrative, sharing common female experiences is
dealt with mostly in Linda’s relationship with her grandmother, as Linda’s mother
dies when Linda is six years old. It is through her grandmother that she learns
what a woman should be and behave like as well as what is considered
33
inappropriate and taboo. Not being able to conform to the womanhood ideal leads
to Linda constantly having feelings of shame. She is unable to confide in her
grandmother with the fact that she is being abused by her master and Linda
blames herself for the failure to fulfill the ideals that her grandmother has taught
her. One can find the contrasting worlds of white and black women co-existing in
the narrative where each is influenced by the other on a daily basis. As can be seen
in Incidents, these two worlds clashed and interacted constantly.
McClish and Bacon (2002) offer insightful comments on the position of
white women in the antebellum slavery era and in the womanhood theory as
follows (44):
Jacobs . . . highlights how the white mistress becomes part of the system of
abuse that maintains the master’s domination over his female slaves. For
Jacobs, womanhood is not a stable category against which the experiences of
white and slave women can both be tested; it is constructed in terms that
bolster hegemony and maintain inequality.
The following subchapter looks at the situations in which sharing the
same gender brought about these clashes and conflicts.
4.4.1 Jealousy and the Impact of Slavery on White Marriages
As much as being members of the same gender did bring many black
and white women closer together, in many cases it also tore them apart, often
simultaneously. The frequent source of many conflicts and great hatred was the
fact that female slaves were often subjected to sexual abuse by their masters, thus
creating tensions between both the female slaves and their mistresses and also
between the white husband and wife. The aim of this subchapter is to look at what
these interracial sexual acts led to and how slavery impacted white marriages.
The antebellum South was a patriarchal world in which white men
dominated women of both races. This feeling of superiority often resulted in
sexual abuse of female slaves, which to the white man seems to have been
justified by the white superior racial theory. The sexual abuse of female slaves by
their masters inevitably led to jealousy of their wives. White mistresses were
reminded of their husbands’ infidelities by the every-day presence of mulatto
34
children, who were to be found in the proximity of their slave mothers. The
institution of slavery thus created considerable tensions in the white marriages.
On the one hand, slaves as such were considered property and thus their
owners possessed total power over them. In the male owners’ view this justified
the acts of sexual abuse. On the other hand, for the white mistress a female slave
did not solely represent property. To them, female slaves were women as well and
so a competition in the strive for her husband’s interests. In Incidents, this conflict
plays a crucial role in the life of Linda as well as her mistress. Linda has to bear
the abuse of her master as well as the jealous hatred and verbal and behavioral
abuse of his wife at the same time. Linda experiences firsthand the results of the
intersection of race and gender by being a slave-chattel and a woman, not having
chosen either herself but having to endure the membership in both categories at
the same time. Because gender and race cannot be separated, as Intersectionality
theory proves, Linda’s identity is being shaped by experiencing the combination
of being both a slave and a woman.
Weiner (1998:134-135) offers valuable insights into interracial sexual
activity by claiming that it “increased women’s double burden of race- and
gender-based oppression”. Weiner further goes on to state that “the threat of rape
constantly reminded slave women of their vulnerability as women and as
slaves” (135). In Jacobs’s Incidents Linda also lives in constant fear of her
master’s abuse as well as his wife’s and at the same time she cannot stop being
afraid of her grandmother finding out. She perceives herself as woman but at the
same time as property.
Linda’s case is a clear demonstration of how the acts of abuse of the
master on the female slave worsened the tensions between the white and black
women. A white (upper-class) mistress in the antebellum South was already
under a lot of pressure to live up to the womanhood and domesticity ideals of the
time, but this was widely made even more difficult by their husbands’ infidelities.
As Weiner comments (143),
White women were conscious that interracial sex made their desire to live up
to the ideology of domesticity nearly impossible: the presence of mulatto
children provided irrefutable and constant proof that their efforts to raise men
to their own moral level were unsuccessful.
35
That said, one also has to consider the impact of these acts on the black
women’s attempts at living up to the womanhood ideals, which were even more
unattainable to them than for white women. According to Collin’s view of
standpoint theory (1998:201), “group location in hierarchical power relations
produces shared challenges for individuals in those groups”. By no means can one
put black and white women in one position in the hierarchical power relations, but
nevertheless by sharing the same gender, they did share some challenges - among
these the above mentioned inability to live up to the domesticity ideals, although
one could argue that it was made more possible for white women than for the
black ones.
In considering the question of whether race stands above gender or vice
versa, Weiner (143) comes to the conclusion that “although interracial sex had the
potential to unite women of both races in a common perception of the immorality
of white men and the evils of slavery, it failed to do so” and left “slaveholders and
slaves, men and women ultimately divided” (1998:143). It would seem that race
did, indeed, stand above gender, although in many instances and different
situations it appeared otherwise. It is also safe to say that the institution of slavery
was destructive to both white and black marriages and families.
A more thorough examination of the sexual abuse towards slaves
follows in the next chapter. Further thoughts on the mutual relationships of gender
and race are provided, together with the issue of whether gender stands above race
or vice versa in the hierarchy of abusive factors when it comes to the lives of
female slaves. A strong focus is laid on Linda’s victimization and her coping with
abuse.
5. Sexuality and Sexual Abuse of Female Slaves
This chapter focuses on female slave sexuality as well as sexual abuse
which took place in the two decades preceding the American Civil War. It starts
out with a closer look at sexual abuse and closes with a subchapter dealing with
the different treatment of the subject of sexuality in Sojourner Truth’s narrative -
36
Narrative of Sojourner Truth, a Northern Slave versus Harriet Jacobs’s narrative Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.
5.1 Sexual Abuse and Slave Pregnancies
The study of women and slavery can never be complete without
addressing the issue of sexual abuse. As Lewis puts it in the introduction to
Women and Slavery in America: A Documentary History, “all slaves were subject
to abuse and violence, but women suffered additionally from rape and sexual
coercion, often at an early age . . . Although there is some evidence that a small
number of men suffered similar abuses, this was a particular burden of
women” (2011:xviii). When looking at sexual abuse of enslaved women, it is
gender that stands above race, being responsible for this almost exclusively
female-oriented form of abuse. Whipping and other forms of brutal treatment
were terrible for both enslaved men and women, but it was the latter group that
was prone to a greater variety of forms of abuse. Resulting from the “double
negative” (Zafar 4) of being a member of black race as well as female gender,
enslaved women were targets for various types of sexual maltreatment.
Because the majority of female slaves was illiterate and the history of
slavery had mostly been written by men, there is little factual proof of the everyday sexual abuse that was targeted at enslaved women. That is why female slave
narratives play a crucial role in depicting this plight. Jacobs is concerned with the
following issues: “the sexual degradation of slave women, the hypocritical society
that tolerates such abuse while presumably respecting womanhood [and] the effect
of master-slave relationships on white women” (McClish and Bacon 43). As
Standpoint theory argues, the voices of the target group which is discriminated
against are of crucial importance. Through Jacobs’s eyes one can witness the
sexually abusive behavior of her owner Dr. James Norcom (in the narrative Dr.
Flint). As Zafar (3) puts it,
The physician, who holds a number of men, women, and children in his
power, desires more from Jacobs than mere physical possession; he wants her
complicity in her own sexual degradation. Fortunately, her inner strength formed in part by her sheer luck of having lived her early childhood in a
relatively intact African American family - gives the young woman the
courage and strength to resist Norcom’s “soul-destroying” concubinage.
37
However, just as how much she really manages to resist the physician’s
abusive advances remains unclear. Although there are frequent and vivid
depictions of psychological abuse directed at her, often with sexual undertones,
she never openly admits physical sexual acts taking place between her and Dr.
Flint. All the same, there is nothing possibly stopping the physician taking full
advantage of Linda. A further evidence are Linda’s children, whose timing of
births may or may not suggest that sexual acts with the physician have taken
place.
The crucial part of the narrative indirectly depicting sexual abuse starts
out in chapter X (Andrews 243) where Dr. Flint decides to build a house remote
from the main quarters so he can have even more power over Linda. Indirect as it
may be, it clearly states the abusive conduct of Dr. Flint, in Linda’s words (243)
And now, reader, I come to a period in my unhappy life, which I would gladly
forget if I could. The remembrance fills me with sorrow and shame. . . For
years, my master had done his utmost to pollute my mind with foul images,
and to destroy the pure principles inculcated by my grandmother, and the good
mistress of my childhood. The influences of slavery had had the same effect
on me that they had on other young girls; they had made me prematurely
knowing, concerning the evil ways of the world. I know what I did, and I did
it with deliberate calculation.
This constant and evolving sexual degradation of Linda leads to her
confusing perception of her sexuality. As can be seen from the above quoted
excerpt she seems to accept at least partial responsibility in her master’s abusive
acts. It is evident in Jacobs’s narrative that Linda has strong feelings of shame
resulting from Flint’s abuse and is unable to share her troubles with her
grandmother because she blames herself for having failed as a woman according
to the prevailing womanhood standards. She recalls having been taught the
principles of pure womanhood and later regrets she cannot comply with them.
This shows that sexual abuse led to a vast scope of psychological consequences.
In the years leading up to American Civil War, slave owners enlarged
their “property” by sexually abusing their female slaves. The child of a slave
mother was always born into bondage and it automatically became property of the
slave owner, so the master got himself more slaves having to pay no money for his
new “workers” at all. Dorothy Roberts writes (1995:389), “the essence of black
women´s experience during slavery was the brutal denial of autonomy over
38
reproduction. Female slaves were commercially valuable to their masters not only
for their labor but also for their capacity to produce more slaves”.
This “free” production of more slaves was undoubtedly of great interest
to the masters. That is why pregnant enslaved women mostly received special
treatment, being entitled to better conditions. By treating pregnant slaves
comparatively less badly the master thus saw more chances of getting healthy and
productive new slaves. Just what these “improved” conditions looked like can be
read in a “Plantation manual”, published in the Women and Slavery in America: A
Documentary History (Lewis 2011), especially as regards the required amounts of
work (89):
PREGNANT. - Pregnant women, at 5 mos. are put in the suckler´s gang. No
plowing or lifting must be required of them. Sucklers, old, infirm, & pregnant,
receive the same allowances as full-work hands.
CONFINEMENT. - The regular plantation midwife shall attend all women in
confinement. Some other woman learning the art is usually with her during
delivery. The confined woman lies up one month, & the midwife remains in
constant attendance for 7 days. Each woman on confinement has a bundle
given to her containing articles of clothing for the infant, pieces of cloth &
rag, & some extra nourishment, as sugar, coffee, rice & flour for the Mother.
That said, “special treatment and allowances”, seemingly kind acts,
were still nowhere near an adequate treatment of pregnant women, as compared
with the treatment of pregnant and post-birth white women. The intersections of
gender and race resulted in slave women performing the role of property and a
woman simultaneously, and at the same time being neither able nor allowed to
play this womanly role in the same way some white women could. Roberts (389)
quotes Gates who concerns himself with this issue in Jacobs’s narrative as
follows: it “charts in vivid detail precisely how the shape of her life and the
choices she makes are defined by her reduction to a sexual object, an object to be
raped, bred or abused”. There is no autonomy over her own body at all.
Neither enslaved men nor enslaved women possessed much agency
over decision making as to how intact their families were, as most family matters
and decisions were taken out of their hands due separations at slave auctions, at
which one or more family members would be sold to different owners. However,
when slave men are compared to slave women, a considerable difference arises as
to the decision who to have children with. Whereas men were more or less free to
choose who the mother of their children was going to be, (whether the right of
39
marriage was granted to them or not), women were often forcibly made mothers
through rape, becoming pregnant with their owner’s children. This fact is crucial
in understanding the limits of a slave’s freedom, at which point I argue that by
examining the category of gender in relation to slave bondage, the intersection of
gender and race weighted heavier on the enslaved female predicament.
It was greatly in the masters’ interests to enable their female slaves to
bear healthy children. A slightly better treatment during the late months of
pregnancy and short thereafter was not the only way slave owners tried to make
sure that they could profit from their female slaves’ giving births. There were
other ways in which they made sure that as little harm as possible was done to the
unborn slave children. It is by far not true that pregnant slaves only received
preferential treatment. They were often abused to the same degree and frequency
as slave women who were not pregnant. Dorothy Roberts offers valuable insight
into using the violent punishment method of whipping (389):
The method of whipping pregnant slaves that was used throughout the South
vividly illustrates the slaveowners’ dual interest in black women as workers
and childbearers. Slaveowners forced women to lie face down in a depression
in the ground while they were whipped, thus allowing the masters to protect
the fetus while abusing the mother. It serves as a powerful metaphor for the
evils of a fetal protection policy that denies the humanity of the mother. It is
also a forceful symbol of the convergent oppressions inflicted on slave
women: they were subjugated at once both as blacks and as females.
Being pregnant, as a result of rape, was a dehumanizing experience, as
it demonstrated the degradation of slave women’s personalities and identities to
mere physical bodies used as tools of reproduction.
5.1.1 Different Perceptions of Black versus White Pregnancies
The ownership of a great number of slave women provided the
slaveholder with the future outlook of increasing his personal property by gaining
new slave children, fathered either by fellow slave men or the owner himself.
Either way, it was profitable economic behavior of the owner to have these female
slaves in addition to male slave work force.
As the previous subchapter shows, a few steps were indeed taken to
give a pregnant slave at least a slightly preferential treatment as oppposed to nonpregnant slaves. However, these slightly improved conditions were nowhere near
40
the standards according to which white women during pregnancy and during and
post labor were treated. It was widely believed that poor as well as black women
did not need as much medical attention and rest while being pregnant as compared
with white women. Wilma A. Dunaway focuses on the slave family in her
scholarly writing and she argues that
Because of widespread acceptance of medical stereotypes associated with the
race and class of the pregnant woman, Southern slaveholders structured work
regimens that kept pregnant women at work right up until delivery. On
average, a pregnant slave was removed from field work only about twenty
days throughout her entire pregnancy. In contrast, Southern doctors
recommended that affluent pregnant women limit their physical exertion to
activities no more strenuous than those conducted in carriage and elite women
took regular afternoon naps (2003:129).
While around fifty percent of white pregnant women received medical
care, only slightly less than three percent of pregnant female slaves were attended
by physicians (Dunaway 131). Despite receiving the help of fellow black
midwives, this state of things inevitably led to an increased number of deaths at
childbirth in pregnant slaves.
Judging from this fundamentally unequal perception and treatment of
black and white pregnant women it is evident that a black female did not come
anywhere close to the position of a white woman. Even though there was clear
economic profit stemming from the ability of fertile slave women to bear children
and thus increasing the slaveholder’s property, it was still evident that a black
woman was not perceived as a real woman and more emphasis was put on
maintaining racially unequal treatment.
The following subchapter looks closely at female sexuality as depicted
in Harriet Jacobs’s narrative and its seemingly non-existent portrayal in Truth’s
narrative. It is the goal of that subchapter to suggest explanations as to why these
two women took such different approaches and what their motives of doing so
may have been.
5.2 The (Lack of) Portrayal of Sexuality in Jacobs’s and Truth’s
Narratives
Harriet Ann Jacobs and Sojourner Truth (formerly named Isabella) were
both born into bondage. While there are a number of similarities in the course of
41
their lives, there are also many differences. Whereas Jacobs was born in the South
and so her narrative mostly gives account of southern slavery, Truth was born in
rural North, giving account of life in northern slavery. Both women sought help of
a white established female writer to enable them to publish their story and as a
result, both narratives were inevitably edited. However, owing to Truth’s illiteracy,
one could argue that her narrative was changed more considerably as she was only
able to orally dictate her story.
The most striking difference, however, is the different approach to the
portrayal of sexuality. Both women were subjected to abuse but they chose very
different ways to address this issue in their narratives. Whereas in Jacobs’s
narrative abuse is openly disclosed and takes up a considerable portion of the
story (though the extent to which sexual abuse is directly described has been dealt
with in subchapter 5.1 of this thesis), in Truth’s narrative it is seemingly absent
and very much is left unsaid. This, however, does not necessarily have to mean
that no sexual abuse is taking place. It is the goal of this chapter to look more
closely at the possible reasons underlying this difference of how much or little is
said about sex and sexuality in the two narratives.
Margaret Washington, quoting Jean Fagan Yellin (2007:58), offers
insightful comments on this issue as follows:
[Yellin] wrote that the outspoken 19th-century activist, Sojourner Truth,
“articulated her autonomy in all major ways but one. Conspicuously absent
from her speeches, her Narrative, and her Book of Life is any discussion of
sexuality.” This, observed Yellin, is in contradistinction to Harriet Jacobs, who
publicly admitted her sexual indiscretions.
Washington also argues that it is because of this lack of portrayal of
sexuality in Truth’s account that this narrative is often “ignored, accused of being
too sanitized, and even declared a secondary rather than a primary source of
information” (58). However, the fact that Truth is not openly discussing and
describing her sexuality in her narrative does not need to lead to distrust, but
rather as Washington argues it “warrants deeper exploration” (58). She argues that
the crucial factors influencing different tackling of the issue could be “moral
imperatives” and “coded historical meaning of sexual representations” and she
proposes that indeed sexuality should be read into Sojourner Truth’s Narrative
despite “the ostensible silence” (58). In the following paragraphs I am going to
42
look into what could have possibly held Truth back from exposing her sexual
experiences openly as contrasted with Jacobs’s frank account.
Sojourner Truth was a reformer who was concerned with a number of
important issues of the day - she spoke on “abolition, temperance, spiritualism,
and women´s rights, and against capital punishment, and she even challenged
biblical interpretations of learned ministers of the gospel” (Washington 59). It
seems rather surprising that a woman of such zest for change would want to stay
that silent in her narrative on the issues of sexuality and sexual abuse, and at first
sight this seems quite contradictory to her mission. The role of Truth’s white
editor, who put the entire story on paper - Olive Gilbert - might have played a
huge part in silencing the sexual themes, although if and how much might have
been suppressed by her is not clear. That said, Washington proposes a much
deeper look at the issue (2007:64): “Truth and Gilbert’s choosing silence on
sexual themes and Jacobs not doing so goes beyond protection of the living and
Sojourner’s non-literacy. Provocative historical issues help explain why these two
works took such different approaches”. She suggests an explanation that draws
heavily on 19th-century perception of women:
In 19th-century America many Protestants elevated middle-class white women
to a status of morality crucial to their activism, as well as to their public
advocacy of evangelical religion. “The tacit condition for that
elevation” [Washington quotes Nancy Cott], “was the suppression of female
sexuality.” Christian women were “exalted above human nature, raised to that
of angels.” If controlling the libido was the highest human virtue for middleclass moralists, then female chastity . . . was “the archetype for human
morality”. By the middle of the 19th century, pious women were the backbone
of Protestantism, and a “passionless” identity replaced their previous image as
potentially . . . primitive, sexual, and unchaste beings if left to their own
inclinations.
It is only understandable that Truth might have been afraid that should
she fail to confirm to this ideal in her writing, her message would not be taken
seriously. If “passionlessness was a means of agency” (Washington 66) for women
reformers of the time, then surely Truth saw power in following that path. The
reason why Truth avoided sharing too much of her sexuality might have been the
fear of being perceived in the stereotypical promiscuous light that many black
women had been seen in. The common perception of black women, particularly
the enslaved ones, of the time had been that they were the exact opposite of white
women - not pure, not passionless and not angel-like: they were seen as
43
promiscuous, impure and “lascivious” (Washington 66). Washington quotes
Frances Smith Foster (2007:66) when she puts black women into contradistinction
to white women:
The black woman became closely identified with illicit sex. If [she] were not a
hotblooded, exotic whore, she was a cringing terrified victim. Either way she
was not pure and thus not a model of womanhood. Moreover, her ability to
survive degradation was her downfall. As victim she became the assailant,
since her submission . . . was not in line with the values of sentimental
heroines who died rather than be abused.
In Incidents, sex and sexuality take up a large amount of space in the
text. Linda tells the reader how she finds satisfaction in finding a white free man
and in becoming his mistress and also describes how her owner targets her as a
sexual object, by saying all kinds of sexually-denoted things to her throughout her
time in her bondage. She openly states her hatred towards him and his acts, both
his conversations with her and his abusive behavior. On the contrary, in Truth’s
narrative, Isabella confesses that she adores Mr. Dumont and in one passage even
admits her joy in giving birth to a child she has with a fellow slave man, and thus
enlarging Mr. Dumont’s number of slaves (Truth/Andrews 60):
In process of time, Isabella found herself the mother of five children, and she
rejoiced in being permitted to be the instrument of increasing the property of
her oppressors! Think, dear reader, without a blush, if you can, for one
moment, of a mother thus willingly, and with pride, laying her own children,
the ´flesh of her flesh´, on the altar of slavery.
She immediately tries to rationalize this sentence, though, by saying
(61): “But we must remember, that beings capable of such sacrifices are not
mothers; they are only ‘things’, ‘chattels’, ‘property’.” Truth seems aware of how
contradictory this statement is but does not discard it later, nevertheless. Her deep
adoration of her master, despite being his property, seems to suggest that more is
going on than just his described kind behavior towards her. She is attached to him
for reasons she does not disclose and she describes her wish to please him at all
times. A clear bond can be read between the lines, which is further supported by
the following passage from Truth’s narrative (about which, however, it is hard to
say whether Truth or Gilbert had more agency in this (60):
A long series of trials in the life of our heroine [arose], which we must pass
over in silence; some from motives of delicacy, and others, because the
relation of them might inflict undeserved pain on some now living, whom
Isabel remembers only with esteem and love; therefore, the reader will not be
44
surprised if our narrative appear somewhat tame at this point, and may rest
assured that it is not for want of facts, as the most thrilling incidents of this
portion of her life are from various motives suppressed.
It is exactly these “most thrilling incidents” and “various motives” that
one has to wonder about. Are sexual acts implied here? And is it a wanted sexual
activity that is referred to or is it a forced one? A further suggestion of Mr.
Dumont’s and Isabell’s bond which is more than of purely friendly nature is to be
found in the narrative a few pages later and the situation is explained by “her
master’s kindness of heart” (61), which in a different way might be rather read as
his clear sexual connection to Isabel:
Another proof of her master’s kindness of heart is found in the following fact.
If her master came into the house and found her [Isabel’s] infant crying, (as
she could not always attend to its wants and the commands of her mistress at
the same time), he would turn to his wife with a look of reproof, and ask her
why she did not see the child taken care of; saying, most earnestly, ‘I will not
hear this crying; I can’t bear it, and I will not hear any child cry so.
This reaction of Mr. Dumont seems rather strange - why would he
reprimand his own wife that some child belonging to one of his slaves is crying?
It would appear that this very child could actually be one of his own. Later on, he
also refers to Isabel as “Bell”, which also suggests his being fond of her in some
way or another. Margaret Washington comments on this and other scenes from the
narrative and suggests (2007:63) that “a sexual triangle would . . . explain John
Dumont’s protective attitude towards the infant and towards Bell”.
Washington further argues that Dumont is very likely to have fathered
one or more of Isabella’s children by claiming (63) that “the Narrative is silent
about who fathered Isabella’s children or their ages, but notes that their presence
caused dissention in the household” and further supports her argument by saying
that “John Dumont fathering [one or more of Isabell’s] children seems . . . a
logical explanation for Elizabeth Dumont’s hatred of Isabella and abuse of her
children” (63) - “when Dumont purchased Isabella, war began between her and
Dumont’s wife Elizabeth” (63). She concludes that, “young Isabella and John
Dumont were probably sexual partners” indeed (61) and that by close reading of
the text and other hints this can be proved, even if none of it is openly actually
written in the narrative.
45
Sexuality is much more of an open topic in the narrative of Harriet
Jacobs. Even if she does not completely frankly admit sexual intercourse taking
place between her and her much-hated master either, she spends considerable time
describing her affair with a white man she choses as her lover, mainly to annoy
Dr. Flint. The question remains as to why sex is portrayed so much more freely in
her narrative than in Truth’s. Margaret Washington offers an interesting insight
into this, by mentioning the fact that Jacobs was not the only woman talking about
sexual abuse at the time, thus possibly making it easier for Jacobs to come
forward (2007:64):
In 1861 Harriet Jacobs was not the only former slave woman revealing her
sexual history with a white man. That year, Louisa Picquet dictated to a
Methodist minister her story of a forced long-term sexual relationship with her
jealous master, which produced four children. The two narratives represent the
first time enslaved women discussed publicly this aspect of slave life. . .
[Jacobs] in telling her story . . . hoped to enlist the sentiments and
understanding of northern women and awaken them to the conditions of
the “two millions of women at the South, still suffering in bondage”.
It is crucial to notice the eleven-year difference of publications of the
two narratives. Washington is convinced (2007:70) that “the eleven years’ space
between publication of Truth and Jacobs’s narratives reflect a changing social
climate and shifts in female political consciousness that certainly impacted the
two works”. She goes on to emphasize that “it is important to remember that a
separate woman’s movement was just timidly emerging in 1848”, so only three
years before Truth published her narrative, but a longer time had passed since then
for Harriet to publish hers.
To conclude, the different time period of publications of the two
narratives and the different goals of the two women were the two main reasons for
the different extent to which sexuality was openly dealt with in their texts.
6. The Body of the Female Slave
In the antebellum slavery era, both male and female enslaved persons
were subjected to many different sorts of abuse, from physical (sexual, but not
exclusively) to psychological. This topic cannot be easily summarised, neither can
46
it be argued that some kinds of abuse stood higher in the hierarchy of brutality and
the impact on the individual than others as seen from today´s perspective. All of
the above mentioned kinds were detrimental to the victim, often literally
destroying them - by putting them to death or resulting in the victim taking his or
her life themselves.
Female slaves were especially often recipients of all of the above
mentioned abusive treatments. Like their male counterparts they would be
physically abused: whipped and beaten, and psychologically mistreated and their
identities and self-perception dehumanized and degraded. All the same, the nature
of living in a female body often caused female slaves to be abused sexually as
well. It is the aim of the following two subchapters to look closer at the female
slave body and its implications.
6.1 Patriarchy and Institutionalized Sexism in the Antebellum Era
In the cases of sexual abuse of female slaves, it was not just race and
racism that were the cause of this treatment, but also sexism. As bell hooks claims
(1981:43),
While racism was clearly the evil that had decreed black people would be
enslaved, it was sexism that determined that the lot of the black female would
be harsher, more brutal than that of the black male slave.
hooks offers an interesting insight into the connection between the
patriarchal system of the time and sexism, putting it even on the same level with
racism. In her words (15), “in a retrospective examination of the black female
slave experience, sexism looms as large as racism as an oppressive force in the
lives of black women”. hooks further argues that “institutionalized sexism - that is
patriarchy - formed the base of the American social structure along with racial
imperialism” (1981:15). This was most strongly reflected in the expectations of a
female slave, where her gender placed an additional burden to her slave life.
hooks argues that (1981:22):
Although it in no way diminishes the suffering and oppressions of enslaved
black men, it is obvious that the two forces, sexism and racism, intensified and
magnified the sufferings and oppressions of black women. The area that most
clearly reveals the differentiation between the status of male slaves and female
slaves is the work area. The black male slave was primarily exploited as a
laborer in the fields; the black female was exploited as a laborer in the fields,
47
a worker in the domestic household, a breeder, and as an object of white male
sexual assault.
Rape was a systematic way of sexual abuse of female slaves. It was an
every-day threat that was felt by black female slaves and it was impossible to
escape - not only because of spatial limits of slave premises, but also because of
the limited physical strength of women who were fighting against white males
who naturally possessed greater physical strength.
The causes and possible impulses of rape were of various kinds and this
thesis cannot provide one conclusive and main reason, but there are possible
explanations that provide some insight. The most obvious one (at first sight) is
white males’ sexual lust (hooks 32). It is, however, a much more complex issue.
Black women were perceived as lower beings, as compared to white females.
Based on what white womanhood theories of the nineteenth century present us
with, a white woman was the most virtuous human being imaginable, almost
angel-like, and one of her main characteristics was the (seeming) lack of sexuality
and acting upon it. In stark contrast to that stood a black female slave whose body
was her primary marker. A black enslaved woman sold well when she seemed
promising of bearing healthy children and punished when she was not capable of
doing so. hooks (1981:39-40) comments on this problematic issue as follows:
“Advertisements announcing the sale of black female slaves used the terms
“breeding slaves,” “child-bearing woman,” “breeding period,” “too old to breed,”
to describe individual women”, and she argues that women who were infertile
“suffered most under the breeding system”. Reducing a black female slave to her
physical body only and its capabilities and incapabilities is very different from the
way white women were perceived. Whereas a slave owner would see his wife as a
virtuous being to look up to, he perceived his female slaves as mere bodies,
targets of his sexual lust.
However, a closer consideration of the whole issue offers further
explanations. The entire slavery system was a system of power, held in the hands
of white males. The way to control and maintain this mechanism was by repeated
demonstration of this power. And rape was a very clear way in which a
slaveowner was able to show his female slaves what their place in the system was.
48
Rape was a systematic tool of keeping enslaved women at the very bottom and
taking away their female identities changing them into objects, property, bodies.
6.2 Reducing Female Slave Personality to Functionality
In this subchapter I am further going to look at how a female slave
personality was taken apart and reduced only to a couple of functions and tasks
and their performativity. I argue here that a slave woman’s worth was measured by
her contributions in the field of work and how well or badly she managed to
increase the owner’s economic property by bearing children.
The documents containing factual information on running a plantation
and keeping records of slaves provide useful insights into to the value of a human
person. One of such documents is “Inventory of Slaves on a Louisiana Sugar
Plantation”, reprinted in Slavery in America (Morgan 2005). This inventory is
from the year 1849 and contains quite detailed information on the slaves owned
by James Coles Bruce, who was a slave owner in Lousiana running a sugar
plantation. In the reader Slavery in America it is established that James Coles
Bruce “was one of the largest slaveowners in the Old South” and it is further
stated that this inventory and its “valuations remind us that all slaves, even
infants, had a market price. ‘Full Hands’ were adult slaves capable of undertaking
heavy field work. ‘Half Hands’ were young children, sick or elderly slaves
incapable of strenuous work” (2005:234).
The above quoted document contains lists of both male and female
slaves, with their names, ages, monetary value as well as work capabilities and the
entry on each slave contains a few words with additional notes, which range from
the descriptions of their characters to their intellect, health and other. For the
purposes of this thesis I will put emphasis on the examination of the list of female
slaves and look at the use of words which show what composed a slave woman in
the eyes of the slave owners.
A female slave equaled only a set of features and functions. James
Coles Bruce lists the kind of information that for him is crucial in describing the
economic value and work qualities of his slaves. When the list of female slaves is
compared to the list of male slaves (Morgan 234-238), an enormous difference in
49
monetary value of gender is clearly displayed. Male slaves had a much higher
monetary value, on average being worth almost double of what females were.
Most male slaves who had been given the remarks “good hand” were worth
$700.00 - $800.00, where the majority of male slaves were worth $800.00 but it
was not uncommon for male slaves to be worth $900.00 (carrying the same
remark of being a “good hand”, one of those assigned this worth being the driver)
or $1,000.00, with an exception valued as high as $1.200 (“good hand,
blacksmith”). The average age of those males worth these $700 - $1,000 was
around 30 years of age.
However, when it comes to the female list, stark differences in price can
be seen from the male list. The maximum monetary value of a female slave in this
inventory lies at $500.00. Females at this price range are, like the most valued
male slaves, also described by words “good hand” in the majority of cases. Other
women slaves described as “good” or “fair hands” are worth $400.00.
These considerably different monetary values of slaves are and are not
surprising. It is obvious that male slaves, on the whole, possessed greater physical
strength and so were able to carry out a greater variety of strenuous tasks that
required physical strength. It makes sense for a slave owner to value his strongest
males a lot when one considers the fact that work on a plantation required
strength, and physically weak individuals were not able to contribute to this work
to the same degree or efficiency.
Having said that, it should not be forgotten how much slaveowners
valued their female slaves for their ability to give birth to children, who became
the slave owners’ property and as such brought him wealth for almost no cost. It is
quite surprising, then, that a female slave would carry such a small monetary
value as compared to male slaves. Especially when the fact is considered that a
female slave would bear many more than just one child on average.
Judging from the different monetary values assigned to the different
genders by their slaveowner it is clear that a woman was seen as less worthy. In
the slaveowner’s eyes, a female slave was not a complex personality but merely a
set of measurable qualities: age, strength, health, fertility (or the lack of) and
skills. She was seen in terms of what she was and was not able to perform. Thus at
slave auctions, these individuals were not seen in the usual meaning of the word
50
(personalities with opinions or experiences) but merely as things - in what state
are their teeth and breast? Does she look too old to conceive? Is it going to be a
docile worker, easily tamed? Apart from the obvious physical and state-of-health
comments (“sickly”, “good hand”, “well disposed”, “too young to judge”), as can
be seen in Bruce’s journal (236-237), character, or rather behavior, seemed quite
important as it would warn the slave owner of possible behavioral conflicts. The
words Bruce used were the following: “excells in telling lies”, “all mouth”, “verry
Bad woman (great temper)”, “good Girl”, “a great Liar (but will do)”, “mischief
maker (all talk)”, or “will Lie & Steal” (236-237).
Judging from these character and behavioral notes it can be seen what it
was that the slaveowners feared - temper, misbehavior, deceptions of all kinds and
theft. Features that were favored were being a docile and obedient slave (“good
girl”) who would comply with the master´s wishes. It can also be clearly seen
what it was health-wise that was and was not valued in female slaves - being
sickly influenced the market price of an enslaved woman (determining her price at
$200.00 - $400.00).
This importance of physical body in analysing the lives of women in
slavery stands in stark contrast to the womanhood theory, because in the
womanhood theory the focus is shifted from body to mind. It claims that a (white
upper-middle class) woman should be virtuous and as far from being connected to
her body on the physical level as possible. Black enslaved women could see this
contrasting perception of them as compared to the society’s perception of white
women. Furtermore, female slaves knew that together with male slaves they
formed a class of people who were cut off from the rest of society due to their
different race. This inevitably influenced their confused self-perception. In
cultural studies, the term identity never refers to just one category. Nobody is just
a woman or just a mother or a white person. However, the female slave identity is
all the more complex as the categories are not clearly cut. Thus, even though they
were aware of the fact they were members of the female gender they found it hard
to define for themselves what this meant as they saw white women around them.
The intersections of gender and race of female slaves as opposed to their
mistresses formed unique individuals with very specific characteristics.
51
CONCLUSION
It was the aim of this thesis to look critically at two fundamentally
important categories that define individuals’ identities - the categories of gender
and race. These two identity markers were not considered as separate entities, but
rather as two mutually influencing forces. As a specific focus I selected the
intersections of African-American race and female gender placed in the era of
antebellum American slavery. In the forefront I placed the nineteenth-century
womanhood, motherhood and domesticity theories and looked at how they were
in sharp conflict with slave women’s reality. In this thesis, a great emphasis is
placed on the slave female body. Their body was the decisive factor influencing a
female slave’s life and even though they had no power over it, it was the only
factor that prescribed their market value.
Black enslaved women were not seen as women in the same way white
women were, and moreover they were not put on the same level with black
enslaved men either. On the contrary, they inhabited a world of their own, that was
defined and limited by the intersections of African-American race (and thus a
slave status) and female gender (and thus subordinated position in the patriarchal
hierarchy). After looking at how the intersection of gender and race worked
together and against each other, it is my argument that this intersection weighted
heavier on enslaved women than it did on enslaved men. All the same, the impact
of the institution of slavery on white (upper-middle class) women was also of
interest to me, as the wives of slaveowners were heavily affected by it as well.
Their lives and marriages were directly influenced by the presence of female
slaves in and out of the house to a large degree. The issue of sexual slave abuse is
presented and also how it influenced the black and white female relationships.
I decided to include the following theories in my thesis: firstly, after
introducing the category of race and its socially constructed concept, I introduced
Critical Race Theory introducing the idea that race is not a meaning set in stone,
but rather social and cultural meanings have been added to it, making it serve
various purposes, most centrally the purpose of discrimination and classifying
people according to made-up racial hierarchies.
52
This discussion on race, Critical Race Theory and the concept of color,
led me to do research on how different categories come together and create
identities. This interplay of categories is insightfully analysed by the theory of
situated standpoints, which is the next theory that is taken as one of the founding
stones in this thesis. I found it crucial to work with slave narratives when studying
female slaves’ identities and lives because by giving space to their own voices a
more thorough understanding can be obtained than purely by working with facts
and histories written by those in power.
And lastly, the third group of theories this thesis works with are the
prevailing womanhood, domesticity and motherhood theories from the pre-Civil
War era, which dictate that a true and ideal woman should be (sexually) pure,
pious, submissive and domestic. After a closer examination of these it is made
clear that these virtues can only apply to white middle and upper-middle class
married women and undoubtedly excludes white women of lower social classes
and the entire female slave population. It was particularly interesting for me to
look at what exactly was expected of female slaves in terms of life and work and
how the womanhood ideals did not apply to them while at the same time a
significant pressure was still put on them to perform their female roles, even if in
a completely different context.
A study on female slave experience is not complete unless the issues of
sexual and behvioral abuse are brought up. A female slave was property to her
white male master who was legally allowed to do as he pleased with her. That
applied to assigning field or domestic work to them and in addition to their male
slave counterparts, female slaves were also objects of sexual lust and thus
susceptible to abuse. Rape was used as a systematic way of maintaining
hegemony of white male power in the entire system. Furthermore, it was used as a
means of enlarging a slaveholder´s economic wealth - by creating slave children
who after birth automatically became property of the slaveowner.
Sexual abuse and sexuality are main themes in the two slave narratives
that this thesis deals with - Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
and Sojourner Truth’s Narrative of Sojourner Truth, a Northern Slave. While in
Jacobs’s narrative, sexuality, sexual acts and abuse plays a dominant role, it is
rather hiddenin Truth’s narrative - which in no way means non-existent, though.
53
Harriet Jacobs’s explores in her narrative the difficulty of being a woman and a
slave. She describes the ways slavery impacted her domestic life and life options.
In Sojourner Truth’s narrative, sexuality and sexual abuse are ever-present but
masterfully hidden at first glance. The reasons for this might lie in the substantial
work done by a white editor and Truth’s illiteracy while at the same time it could
be influenced by Truth’s goals as an abolitionist speaker, seeking to be taken
seriously and put on the same level with white female abolitionists. And as
antebellum womanhood and domesticity theories advocated detachment from
anything that is connected to one’s physical body and sexuality, this might in fact
have been the decisive factor in Truth’s concealment of bodily and sexual aspects
of her bondage.
Both Jacobs and Truth serve as primary female slavery voices in this
thesis due to their first-hand experience of chattel slavery, victims of sexual abuse
and their ways of coping with what they were given and trying to make sense of
life.
In the final sections of this thesis I focused on the societal frame that
laid foundations of slavery and maintained this system of exploitation. Namely, it
deals with the sexist politics of patriarchal antebellum America and looks at how
female slave personality was reduced to its bodily performance. It looks at the
monetary worth of a human being and points out the different economic value of
male versus female slaves.
In the scope of this thesis I did not have time to devote myself to other
topics which are equally interesting, such as the male slave point of view, male
slave abuse, and masculinity and masculine roles in a slave family.
The inheritace and effects of slavery seems to be an interesting topic for
American pop-culture today. There is a greater willingness to revisit slavery
issues, as can be demonstrated by new publications, for instance Kathryn
Stockett’s novel The Help, which although not set in the slavery era, directly deals
with African American females working as domestic maids in white American
families in the twentieth century and a lot of links can be found between female
slaves in the nineteenth century and female domestic workers in the twentieth
54
century. By writing this thesis I wanted to show, among other things, the direct
relevance of slavery’s legacy to today’s American society by pointing out the fact
that gender and race are ever-present issues.
55
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