Women and Slavery

Gender differences, Gender conflictsAnd Southern Patriarchy

Remember from past classes

• Early racial, gender division:– Tax on black women who work in fields (no similar

tax on white women field hands)—1643– “The condition of the mother” (hereditary slavery,

VA. 1662)

“Women were neither better nor worse off than men under slavery, but enslaved men’s and women’s experiences were different” (think about this)

Changes in Slavery post-U.S. War for Independence

• Slave population beginning to increase naturally as sex ratios even out

• Increasing limitations and prohibitions on slavery (North)

• slave-owners heading toward the idea of encouraging natural increase, encouraging marriage, forced marriages, breeding

Appears that slavery is coming to a close, but technology and open land breathe new life into the institution: Cotton Gin, Indian Removal and the Deep South (Miss., Al., La.,).

Early 19th Century

• Natural increase becomes a necessity in 1808 when the international slave trade is banned

• Importance of fertility, better care for pregnant mothers

King Cotton—requires more land, more labor, more slaves

Jezebel and Mammy: Two Slave Woman (stereotypes)

• The Jezebel: naturally promiscuous (dates back to early Euro travelers to Africa)

• Europeans mistook semi-nudity for lewdness (stereotype formed and nurtured from Euro contact on)

• Big Diff. between white women (men’s ideals): • Slave women were not submissive, subordinate

or prudish and not expected to be so.

The Uniqueness of African American Women

• Stands at the crossroads of two of the most well-developed ideologies in America, that regarding women and that regarding the “Negro”

• Fundamental image of black women: strength, ability to tolerate high level of misery and heavy, distasteful work

• Less of a women in terms of “femininity” but more of a woman in that she is allegedly the embodiment of Mother Earth—a superwoman

Common elements in oppression?

• Common elements in myths of blacks and women: both characterized as infantile, irresponsible, submissive, promiscuous

• Both historically dependent politically and economically on white men

• Both consigned to subservient roles• Both have shared a relationship of powerlessness

v. white men• Both treated as outsiders, inferiors

Antebellum America

• In antebellum America, the female slave’s chattel status, sex, and race combine to create complicated set of myths of black womanhood

• The Jezebel: – Person governed almost entirely by her libido– Counter image of mid-Nineteenth Century ideal of

the Victorian Lady (similar to the True Woman of the Cult of True Womanhood)

The Jezebel Stereotype/Can’t Win for Losing

• Reproduction• Through the use of numerous incentives, slave

holders made sure that slave women were prolific

• The natural increase in the slave population demonstrated to slaveholders that female slaves were indeed lustful.

• Causal correlations always drawn between sensuality and fertility

Slave women’s sexual activities

• Became a topic of public conversation• Work conditions were also conducive to

promulgate Jezebel myth• White women: layers of clothing. Not so with

black slave women• Auction block: Slave buyers touch, poke, feel

women’s (nude) bodies. Attempt to gauge fertility. Also equated to promiscuity

Rape and Miscegenation

• For women, often a choice between miscegenation and the worst experiences slavery had to offer

• Many expected and often got something in return for sex

• This also tended to boost the Jezebel image

Southern white women acutely aware of what is going on (often take it out on slave women)

White male-black female relationships

• Most based on exploitative power relations, but . . .

• Conventional wisdom that “naturally promiscuous slaves desired the relationships

• In defense of South, argued that white men never had to resort to violence with slave women

Three-Sided Relationships

• Slave owner, white mistress, black slave• Half white children told the story• Both women helpless: Slave’s child owned by

slave owner. White mistress unable to defy social/legal constraints that kept her bound to her husband.

Jezebel v. Mammy

• Obsessed with the flesh/asexual; carnal/maternal; slut/deeply religious

• Mammy was the superwoman: she could do anything, and do it better than anyone else; expertise in everything domestic

• She was the premier house servant and all others were her subordinates

• Completely dedicated to the white family; especially the children

House Servants

• On the whole, can be seen as better treated than field workers; food, dress, medical care

• Other hand, on call 24 hours, less private time than field workers, subject to mood swings of white family

• White mistresses held the keys to the household—wives “as much slaves as their Negroes”

Field Workers and Child Bearing

• Besides doing field work, expected to have children and increase the slave population

• 19th Century: motherhood increasingly most important role (to mother, of course, but also to slaveholder—depending on his needs)

• Children (profits) are brought to the fields• Childbearing circumscribed women’s lives in

terms of their ability to resist the system

Slave Mothers

• Less likely to be sold (than men, in their prime years)

• Failure to have children could mean trouble. Could be repeatedly sold (but women did. Supposedly “barren” slaves gave birth after Civil War)

• Could be “rewarded” with less work for having an extraordinary amount of children.

• Compelled to be resilient, resourceful, and rebellious enough to protect family

Slave Families

• Husbands never provided sole or most significant means of support for their wives and children

• Had no legal claim to their families; could not legitimately offer them protection from abuses

• Slave wife/mother: never able to give the needs of her husband and children greatest priority

• Most slave children grew up with their mothers but not their fathers present on a daily basis.

• Prevalence of female communities.

Resistance

• Running away less likely (children) most runaways between 16-35. Women this age either pregnant, nursing an infant, or with at least one small child

• During these years slave women received their (relative) best care: pregnant women may not work full days, weeks off after birth

• However, high rates of truancy (running and coming back)

Resistance Related to Work

• Motherhood structure women’s experience, but so did division of labor

• Men more likely to be given jobs that take them off plantations

• Women less likely to be hired out

How did women resist (both sexual exploitation and slavery system)?

• Disobey orders, steal, protest (to get a different job, for ex.)

• Feigning ignorance, dissembling• Murder, arson, fighting back, refusing to be

whipped• Poison• Feign illness (leverage as mothers)• Abortions, infanticide(?? Suspicions)

Gender Convention, Ideals, and Identity (Stevenson)

• Slave female principle: protection and procreation of black life in the face of white opposition

• Slave women did not lose their female principle or moral purpose under slavery

• Black women were indeed raped, “despite the belief commonly held by southern whites that black women could not be raped, since they were naturally promiscuous