Slave Girl Research Paper

One complication that came from a sexual relationship between a master and a slave would be if the slave

This turns out to be an ironic contrast to life at the Weylin plantation, where a slave who visits his wife without his master's permission is brutally whipped. Perhaps a more painful realization for Dana is how this cruel treatment oppresses the mind. "Slavery of any kind fostered strange relationships," she notes, for all the slaves feel the same strange combination of fear,

Although slaves were able to obtain religious agency, they were still oppressed due to the different kinds of abuse they experienced such as emotional abuse. In Charity Bowery by Lydia Maria Child, Child is retelling a story of an aged colored woman, Charity Bowery, from New York. In Bowery’s story she says, “Sixteen children I’ve had, first and last; and twelve I’ve nursed for my mistress. From the time my first baby was born, I always set my heart upon buying freedom for some of my children. I thought it was of more consequence to them than to me; for I was old, and used to being a slave. But mistress McKinley wouldn’t let me have my children. One after another - one after another - she sold ‘em away from me. Oh, how many times that woman ‘s broke my heart!”(Child, p 12). Bowery is explaining to Child the various times her owner would not allow her to purchase her own children. Bowery had to endure that pain of seeing her children be sold away, one after another. This can be seen as mental abuse because Bowery had some hope that she would be able to purchase at least one of her children 's’ freedom, but was not able to do so. Instead, she had to watch her children be taken away from her. Because of this mental abuse, Bowery was oppressed due to the fact that she was not allowed to buy any of her children, and was given false hope. Mental abuse is also seen in Josiah Henson’s autobiography when he says, “ The day for the execution of the penalty was appointed. The Negroes

In "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl", Harriet Jacobs writes, "Slavery is terrible for men; but it is far more terrible for women" (64). Jacobs' work shows the evils of slavery as being worse in a woman's case by the gender. Jacobs elucidates the disparity between societal dictates of what the proper roles were for Nineteenth century women and the manner that slavery prevented a woman from fulfilling these roles. The book illustrates the double standard of for white women versus black women. Harriet Jacobs serves as an example of the female slave's desire to maintain the prescribed virtues but how her circumstances often prevented her from practicing.

In a time period when women were considered inferior, as were blacks, it was unimaginable the horrors a black woman in the south had to endure during this period. African women were slaves and subject to the many horrors that come along with being in bondage, but because they were also women, they were subject to the cruelties of men who look down on women as inferior simply because of their sex. The sexual exploitation of these females often lead to the women fathering children of their white masters. Black women were also prohibited from defending themselves against any type of abuse, including sexual, at the hands of white men. If a slave attempted to defend herself she was often subjected to further beatings from the master. The black female was forced into sexual relationships for the slave master’s pleasure and profit. By doing this it was the slave owner ways of helping his slave population grow.

This paper discusses the experiences of African American Women under slavery during the Slave Trade, their exploitation, the secrecy, the variety of tasks and positions of slave women, slave and ex-slave narratives, and significant contributions to history. Also, this paper presents the hardships African American women faced and the challenges they overcame to become equal with men in today’s society. Slavery was a destructive experience for African Americans especially women. Black women suffered doubly during the slave era.

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.

This is because her first masters were considered to be kind and treated her as kindly as one could treat a slave at that time. Her mother dies at the age of 6 and her mistress is a kind woman who even teaches her how to read which was frowned upon at this point in time. After her mistress dies she is given to the Flints. It is at this moment that she realizes that cruel cards she has been dealt. In the beginning her new mistress treats her kindly, but this quickly comes to an end when Mrs. Flint suspects that Mr. Flint and Linda are having sexual relations. Although her claims are untrue this is only because Linda refuses to give into Mr. Flints undesired advances. In order to escape Mr. Flints advances and to minimize her chances of being rapped she begins an affair with her white neighbor. It is with this man Mr. Sands that she gives birth to two children. Wanting to escape and afraid that her children will be punished due to her actions Linda pretends to run away. She spends 7 year hiding in an attic afraid to flee and refusing to abandon her family. She is motivated to flee after Mr. Sands takes her daughter with him when he moves to Washing D.C after he marries a white woman and becomes a congress man. Although years have passes her former owner Mr. Flint still searches for Linda tormenting her for a number of years. The story ends after Mrs. Bruce her employer offers to purchase her. Instead of being initially grateful that Mrs. Bruce has

Harriet Jacobs, in her narrative, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, was born into slavery in the south. While her youth contained “six years of happy childhood,” a few tragedies and mistresses later, Jacobs spent many years in pain under the possession of her cruel five-year-old mistress, Emily Flint, and Emily’s father, Dr. Flint. Once able to obtain freedom, Jacobs spent most of her life working for the Anti-Slavery office in New York, in hope that one day she could make a difference in the world. “She sought to win the respect and admiration of her readers for the courage with which she forestalled abuse and for the independence with which she chose a lover rather than having one forced on her” (Jacobs 921). Linda Brett, the pseudonym that Jacobs uses to narrate her life story, endures the harsh behavior women slaves were treated with in the south during the nineteenth century. The dominant theme of the corruptive power and psychological abuse of slavery, along with symbolism of good and evil, is demonstrated throughout her narrative to create a story that exposes the terrible captivity woman slaves suffered. The reality of slavery in the past, versus slavery today is used to reveal how the world has changed and grown in the idea of racism and neglect.

Shackled down with chains, the male slaves at Sweet Home had no choice but to say yes when asked if they wanted breakfast. The “here you go” the masters declared before demanding fellatio be performed captures the cruel, sadistic nature of the dialogue, and the nature in which sexual aggression was used as means of domination in the slaveholder to slave relationship in the slave narrative (Morrison 127). In the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Douglass was the offspring of a similar instance of forced sexual encounters between slaveholder and slave when he acknowledges “my father was a white man,” (Douglass 12). Through acts of sexual aggression in slave narratives, the ability for slaves to form individual sexual identities is diminished. Sexuality in Beloved establishes a view of sex for former slaves that hinders the creation of a personal identity beyond slavery, and through this use of sexuality, even following physical freedom, a former slave’s identity is still very much tied to their past enslavement.

Harriet Jacob was the first African American women to have authored a slave narrative in the United States and was instinctive into slavery in Edenton, North Carolina. Living a good life with her skilled carpentered father and her mother, Jacob didn’t much of being a slave. However, when her mother had passed away, Jacob and her father were reassigned to a different slave owner were her life as a women slave began. Because of this change, she fled to New York where she started working in the Anti-Slavery movement. During this period, she focused more on her family then she did the issue of slavery. Family is an emotional anchor in the Incident in the Life of a Slave Girl because Linda was devoted to her children. She uses symbolism, imagery, and allegory because she wants to demonstrate what families should be like.

told. As a slave, she should also do everything else she is told by her master.

In the book, Incidents in the Life of Slave Girl, Linda Brent tells a spectacular story of her twenty years spent in slavery with her master Dr. Flint, and her jealous Mistress. She speaks of her trials and triumphs as well as the harms done to other slaves. She takes you on the inside of slavery and shows you the Hell on Earth slavery really was. She tells you the love and

Most commonly slave narratives were written by men compared to women, primarily focused on the physical pain and endurance they experienced. Narratives that were written by men included descriptions of whippings along with other punishments that were known to deprive male slaves of their masculinity. Even though both men and women were beaten, starved and forced to work in the fields, women slaves suffered horrible mental abuse such as sexual harassment and the loss of their children. Usually, one of the central themes of a slave narrative is violence which is present in both of these books however in slightly different ways. Even though the main motif in the Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is not violence, violence is still portrayed periodically throughout. For example, Linda heard other slaves not only being whipped but also being burned or frozen to death. The physiological, mental and emotional abuse that slaves experienced was not always fully illustrated in narratives like physical abuse was, however in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl it is a consistent theme.

Shielded from the atrocities of slavery during her childhood, Jacobs depicts family life among slaves as one that remains intact in a “comfortable home” (29) through the example of her own family. Each member held limited rights along with the ability to work and the privilege to use their earnings as they pleased. It is not until the death of her mistress where she finally begins to feel the effects of slavery in the sudden separation of her family who are “all distributed among her [mistress’s] relatives” (Jacobs 33). The separation of family is one of the most integral subjects of her narrative since “motherhood [plays a great role] in her life” (Wolfe 518). Jacobs appeals to the emotions of her female audiences by contrasting a slave mother’s agonies in her separation from her children with the “happy free women” (40) whose children remain with her since “no hand” (40) has the right to take them away. The separation of families in Douglass’s narrative does call for some pity but the event is not as tragic in comparison to