Book Review : A Book Summary

This is proof that this terrible act was very typical within slaveholding societies. Now, just because this relationship seems usual in the south, it does not mean everyone condoned it. The wives of many slave owners proved they were not okay with a white male and a black female relationship by the way they acted with “anger and resentment” towards other slaves (McLaurin, 26). Wives chose to ignore this behavior simply because if they didn’t, not only would their lives be in danger, but so would their children’s.

Victims of rape and other forms of sexual harassment became more vulnerable and susceptible toward psychological and emotional control by whites due to severe mental and physical ramifications. Sexual harassment was a means of forcing blacks into submission; this tactic created a somewhat obedient labor force. Besides these motives, black women were denigrated through use of their reproductive capacity as a form of slave breeding.

After the emancipation of slaves, the black man tried to take the role of head of the household. The black man expected their wives to take care of him, the children, and his household. Not only that but the woman was expected to do all of that and at the same time help the husband financially. Yes, the wife was expected to find a job and do all of the other necessary things for the house.

The key factor to the shift to African chattel slavery was the revolt known as Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676. Bacon was an English aristocrat who just came to Virginia Due to a disagreement with royal governor William Berkeley, he gathered support from both white and black indentured servants and began a series of revolts against the governor and the landowners. These revolts just added to the preference for black labor and slavery. Even though Bacon died before anything could happen, the threat of such a biracial alliance challenging the power of the master class prompted the colony’s elite to switch to an enslaved black labor force. The demand for black slaves rose and this caused an increase of Africans into the colonies. By the 1700’s, slavery was deep-rooted in the colonies’ government.#

The slave owner’s exploitation of the black woman’s sexuality was one of the most significant factors differentiating the experience of slavery for males and females. The white man’s claim to the slave body, male as well as female, was inherent in the concept of the Slave Trade and was tangibly realized perhaps no where more than the auction block. Captive Africans were stripped of their clothing, oiled down, and poked and prodded by potential buyers. The erotic undertones of such scenes were particularly pronounced in the case of black women. Throughout the period of slavery in America, white society believed black women to be innately lustful beings. The perception of the African woman as hyper-sexual made her both the object of white man’s abhorrence and his fantasy. Within the bonds of slavery, masters often felt it was their right to engage in sexual activity with black women. Sometimes, female slaves made advances hoping that such relationships would increase the chances that they or their children would be liberated by the master. Most of the time, slave owners took slaves by force.

In the early 18th century, there was a supposed shift in the manner of how planters/masters asserted their authority. On one hand, Patriarchalism was know as ultimate authority and was very much so associated with a monarchy. This ideology was a much more strict and harsh method of dominance. The other technique, Paternalism, had the reputation of being much more affectionate and soft, if you will. Historians Kathleen Brown and Philip Morgan took two opposing stances on this topic. Brown, the author of “The Anxious World of the Slave-owning Patriarch”, believed that Paternalism, while most likely was a little more compassionate, was still just a branch under Patriarchalism. Morgan, the author of “The Effects of Paternalism Among Whites and Blacks”, contradicted her by saying that slaves actually benefited from the new paternalistic ideology. While Morgan makes a powerful and credible argument due to the perspective he takes while analyzing Paternalism, Brown’s reasoning is ultimately more persuasive because she looks at many different time periods and utilizes many primary sources.

Women were not only used for their labor, but were also exploited sexually. Slave owners felt they had the right to use black women for their own sexual desires, and felt they had the right to use their bodies for slave breeding. This obscenity between the master and slave were not only psychologically damaging for black women, but would also lead to physical abuse. In her narrative, Ms. Jacobs gives us a firsthand description of the abuse that would occur if she were to upset her master, “Some months before, he had pitched me down stairs in a fit of passion; and the injury I received was so serious that I was unable to turn myself in bed for many days”

In Celia, a Slave, written by Melton A. McLaurin, the relationships of race, gender, sexuality, power, law, and slavery in the antebellum South is revealed by Celia’s case. In antebellum South, many things dictated a person’s worth, but the race of a person was the number one factor. If a person was of a race other than Caucasian, such as being Black, then he or she would live in the United States as one of two classifications: slave or freed slave. Of these two classifications, both were thought as being subpar humans when compared to white citizens. Due to these beliefs regarding Blacks, slave and free, Blacks themselves were unable to protect themselves from slave masters and in most legal standings (McLaurin 137). This means that Blacks did not have the same citizenship as white people because a slave was not a citizen in the eyes of the law but the human property of his or her master. Gender is the second idea that dictated a person’s worth and character. Males, white particularly, always held more power and sexual control over the women of the antebellum South. White women, when married, became the legal property of her husband (139). Even if a woman was not married, then she was still considered the property of her father and under his protection until she was given away. For example, Virginia Waynescot and Mary Newsome both lived with their father, Robert Newsome (10-11). By living with their father, the two daughters basically handed over their power because Robert

Breen and Innes do a great job suggesting that a person’s conduct, not necessarily their race, played the major role in early Virginia. They make an inadvertent argument that dominance and submission were the real issue when it came to owning property at the time, not race. The large plantation owners intimidated the smaller farmers and landowners. Blacks were on the same playing field when compared along with the small farmers and landowners. Sadly, this did not last with the entrance of racial mindsets as aforementioned. There is also an argument that even though the hardest working blacks could work their way out of slavery and into freedom, they could maintain the wealth it took to perpetuate that freedom. The growing plantation system and the growing black population is what brought an end to the equal status of the free, black

First of all, women don’t have important rights in slavery society. Patriarchal system is operated under the absolute dominance of men, and women have responsibility to fully obey husbands. Women have to serve men and accept their inferiority to men. Husbands possess absolute control over wives and children just as they do over their slaves. White women share common characteristics of patriarchal system. They are not allowed to freely move and always have to ask their husbands’ permissions. White female gentries have so many responsibilities for the family. They were expected to take care of her children, support husbands unconditionally, do the household

The plantation system demanded total submission to a white patriarchal figure. Both white and African American women were subject to repression based on sex. White women were subject to the idea of sexual virtuousness and domestic roles

White explores the master’s sexual exploitation of their female slaves, and proves this method of oppression to be the defining factor of what sets the female slaves apart from their male counterparts. Citing former slaves White writes, “Christopher Nichols, an escaped slave living in Canada, remembered how his master laid a woman on a bench, threw her clothes over her head, and whipped her. The whipping of a thirteen-year-old Georgia slave girl also had sexual overtones. The girl was put on all fours ‘sometimes her head down, and sometimes up’ and beaten until froth ran from her mouth (33).” The girl’s forced bodily position as well as her total helplessness to stop her master’s torture blatantly reveals the forced sexual trauma many African females endured.

	The book discussed how one of the principle reasons as to how the white woman or mistress and the black women got along, depends on whether or not the slave women appeared to threaten the social status of the women. When the white men tried to rape the black women it made the white women socially look like nothing more than a slave. This made the white women feel forced to prove to the black women that power still remained in the white woman’s corner regardless of the master’s sexual desires. The mistresses made sure that the slave women understood that they valued less than any white women, for the main reason that the white woman had true power as long as the main wanted her. An example of this that I read would be when a white woman outwardly expressed that she worried mainly about her loss of power, not actually about marriage. Saphire, a fictional character that Gwin analyzes, says "...mainly concerned with her power... she views her husbands affections for a slave as an undercutting of her power over him in their relationship which. As the husband himself describes as, what makes her the master and him the miller." (pg 133) The slave that caused this upset usually received many beatings and unnecessary overworking of the slave. At the time, this treatment was not unheard of and needed, the white slave owners used it as an example to show all slaves that they were not worth the air they breath except in the fields.

“He told me that I was made for his use, made to obey his command in every thing; that I was nothing but a slave, whose will must and should surrender to his…” The treatment of slaves varied in their personal experiences as well as in the experiences of others they knew, but Harriet Jacobs phenomenally described the dynamics of the relationship between many female slaves and their superiors with these words from her personal narrative, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861). Before slavery was outlawed it was not uncommon for young female slaves to be sexually abused and exploited by their masters. Although many people know about the cruelty of the sexual assaults that made too many young girls victims of rape in the Antebellum South, most people are unaware of the complexity of the issue and how many different ways these women were abused.

Imagine yourself a female slave, living a life of service on a large plantation during the early-19th century. Imagine waking every morning at dawn to begin a never-ending day of cooking, cleaning, washing, and sewing. Imagine being at the beck and call of a master who not only uses you for daily chores, but also for his personal sexual pleasure. Imagine the inexhaustible fear of his next humiliating request and the deep feelings of shame and remorse for your inability to stand up against him. Imagine lying in bed at the end of the day wishing God would carry you to heaven so you would not have to wake and experience this hell on earth all over again.