Question: Describe the daily lives of enslaved women as workers and as members of their families and of the slave community. How did women resist their condition of servitude? What circumstances made it difficult for them to do so?
In Deborah Gray White’s insightful book, Ar’n’t I a Woman? she assesses the profound issues and burdens female slaves had to undergo in the Antebellum South. The hardships that they faced were binary in the aspect that they included ideas of racism and sexism. Throughout their daily lives, slave women took on duties in their families and communities that were in sharp contrast to female roles within American society. White’s studies explore the experiences of slave women who struggled to keep their families together, combat sexual abuse, and survive, all while trying to sustain their femininity. For enslaved women, it was a daily struggle trying to hold their families together, but the greatest role they had was motherhood. In Africa, motherhood was sacred and was considered to be the most important role a woman had. African women were valued for their work, which contributed to the economic success of the family, but their greatest asset was their fecundity (White, 107). And though the relationship between mother and child were unchanged under slavery, the idea of reproduction was tainted and warped. Early on, slaveholders had women performing exhaustive fieldwork before they realized the value of a slave woman’s womb. The emotion of having children was completely extracted in the context of slavery due to the fact that slaveholders made reproduction a profit institution. It was therefore an enslaved woman’s role to birth the next generation of slaves. Daily life did change for pregnant slave women in the aspect that their workload was not as a heavy. Slaveholders did not want to cause any injury to the future slaves with exhaustive work. And interestingly, enslaved women saw this method as an enticement to have children. On the plantations where the workload was exhausting and backbreaking, a lighter work assignment could easily have proved incentive to get pregnant as often as possible (White, 100). But having children, or multiple children made daily life for slave women even more fatiguing. Whether they were in the fields, or in the domestic sphere, it was extremely difficult to finish their daily tasks with newborns. On plantations where women had to do field work and household cooking, childcare was an additional burden (White, 113). Family and marriage were of high value for women on the plantation. Family was seen as a sanctuary or as White describes it, “a haven in a heartless Southland.” Family replenished the ideals that slavery attempted to strip away from slaves. A male received respect, bondwomen were treated with compassion and overall marriage was a comfort to slaves at times. But there was still the overlying threat …show more content…
Some women who worked as cooks would poison the food they prepared for their masters, others would simply runaway. Some women were even more deliberate and would kill their masters, set parts of the plantation on fire or resist whippings (White, 77-78). Sexual exploitation of women slaves by their masters was unfortunately common, and some women resisted with brute force. Rape of a slave woman was not considered a crime, so women had two choices, to fight or to yield and there are many circumstances where fighting back was successful. But the most interesting form of resistance is the idea of faking illnesses to avoid work or curb their working conditions. Since a prominent role for slave women was breeding the next generation of slaves, women used their pregnancy as an vehicle to “feign illnesses” and get out of work. White points out that female medicine was still a mystery, and female slaves took advantage of that. Slaveholders did not have any way of knowing whether an illness was legitimate or not, but they were not about to compromise the future of their institution by forcing a pregnant female to work. However, this is not to say female slaves did not suffer from illnesses not caused from childbirth or pregnancy, as plantations were infested with diseases. Finally, females also participated in self-imposed sterilization and abortions. This was another act of resistance for those who refused to reproduce for the perpetuation of
In Deborah Gray White’s insightful book, Ar’n’t I a Woman? she assesses the profound issues and burdens female slaves had to undergo in the Antebellum South. The hardships that they faced were binary in the aspect that they included ideas of racism and sexism. Throughout their daily lives, slave women took on duties in their families and communities that were in sharp contrast to female roles within American society. White’s studies explore the experiences of slave women who struggled to keep their families together, combat sexual abuse, and survive, all while trying to sustain their femininity. For enslaved women, it was a daily struggle trying to hold their families together, but the greatest role they had was motherhood. In Africa, motherhood was sacred and was considered to be the most important role a woman had. African women were valued for their work, which contributed to the economic success of the family, but their greatest asset was their fecundity (White, 107). And though the relationship between mother and child were unchanged under slavery, the idea of reproduction was tainted and warped. Early on, slaveholders had women performing exhaustive fieldwork before they realized the value of a slave woman’s womb. The emotion of having children was completely extracted in the context of slavery due to the fact that slaveholders made reproduction a profit institution. It was therefore an enslaved woman’s role to birth the next generation of slaves. Daily life did change for pregnant slave women in the aspect that their workload was not as a heavy. Slaveholders did not want to cause any injury to the future slaves with exhaustive work. And interestingly, enslaved women saw this method as an enticement to have children. On the plantations where the workload was exhausting and backbreaking, a lighter work assignment could easily have proved incentive to get pregnant as often as possible (White, 100). But having children, or multiple children made daily life for slave women even more fatiguing. Whether they were in the fields, or in the domestic sphere, it was extremely difficult to finish their daily tasks with newborns. On plantations where women had to do field work and household cooking, childcare was an additional burden (White, 113). Family and marriage were of high value for women on the plantation. Family was seen as a sanctuary or as White describes it, “a haven in a heartless Southland.” Family replenished the ideals that slavery attempted to strip away from slaves. A male received respect, bondwomen were treated with compassion and overall marriage was a comfort to slaves at times. But there was still the overlying threat …show more content…
Some women who worked as cooks would poison the food they prepared for their masters, others would simply runaway. Some women were even more deliberate and would kill their masters, set parts of the plantation on fire or resist whippings (White, 77-78). Sexual exploitation of women slaves by their masters was unfortunately common, and some women resisted with brute force. Rape of a slave woman was not considered a crime, so women had two choices, to fight or to yield and there are many circumstances where fighting back was successful. But the most interesting form of resistance is the idea of faking illnesses to avoid work or curb their working conditions. Since a prominent role for slave women was breeding the next generation of slaves, women used their pregnancy as an vehicle to “feign illnesses” and get out of work. White points out that female medicine was still a mystery, and female slaves took advantage of that. Slaveholders did not have any way of knowing whether an illness was legitimate or not, but they were not about to compromise the future of their institution by forcing a pregnant female to work. However, this is not to say female slaves did not suffer from illnesses not caused from childbirth or pregnancy, as plantations were infested with diseases. Finally, females also participated in self-imposed sterilization and abortions. This was another act of resistance for those who refused to reproduce for the perpetuation of