Slave Market Symbolism

audience of the horrific conditions under which slave women endure, and which they have never

She explains how this can be done by seeing black females as real valid people and treating them as such. In life we must stop objectifying the black female body before we can see any change within art. By understanding the black female as a legitimate individual with purpose, one can then accurately portray her within art, and create a more subjective authentic representation of the black female body. These beleifs presented by Lorraine O’Grady could be applied to the famous art piece The Moorish Bath, by Jean-Léon Gérôme, in how he depicts the black female body. Instead of having the black female in the background surrounded by darker colors and lighting, while the white female is in the brighter lighting, allow them both to be in the same brighter more focused lighting. Also the role of the black female should be reexamined in that she is serving the white female and bathing her. A more progressive version could be both the females bathing themselves making them both the main subjects, instead of objectifying the black body as one that only serves. Another aspect that should be addressed is the fact that the white female is fully naked while the black

The understanding of the life of a slave woman is far beyond the knowledge of you or I, unless you have actually been an enslaved woman. These literary elements depicting the passage from this story are the only

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.

The slave is compositionally arranged in front of the Mistress in a predominant position, however as noted in our text this week, most of the slaves placed in the foreground of a painting in this era were done so in humor, to tease or to make them look immature (Pohl 278). As the title suggests, this slave has been dressed up by her Mistress in her Mistress’s clothing as a way for the Mistress to make fun of the slave, teasing her with a taste of wealth and upper class. Cany Peale’s previous career in fancy-goods gave her the understanding of what was in fashion

Was slavery an economic engine for the Southern economy before the Civil War? Men like Senator and businessman James Henry Hammond would say yes immediately without a second thought. People like Hammond believed that slavery in these times were critical to the growth of the southern economy. They made points such as that agricultural sales were a main percentage of business in the south and with the large area of fertile land that slave ownership was a necessary evil. Along with those, the decades preceding the civil war, the north began to industrialize, which in turn created a large demand for cotton, which was heavily supported by slavery. Not only was slavery a supporting crutch for the immense cotton market, but also slave trade proved to be a highly profitable market of his own. Finally, from the perspective of a plantation owner as a business enterprise, owning slaves proved to be most effective by implementing business strategies, much like Henry James Hammond’s. Without slavery, small planters would have been unable to make a steadfast profit, leaving the cotton industry to rely on large plantation owners who would mainly invest their fortune in British luxurious imports, instead of diversifying and reinvesting in schooling or infrastructure. I personally believe that James Henry Hammond and others were correct, with exception to my ethical beliefs, that slavery was a key factor in the growth and preservation of

The experiences of enslaved women differed from the experience of enslaved men in ancient Rome; slavery within ancient Rome can be traced back to the first century BCE and was based primarily on the chattel slave system. Slavery within the ancient roman society was highly normalised as it was considered a part of roman culture. Slavery within ancient Rome was so heavily normalised that it is considered to be described as a “slave society” Joshel (2010, p. 6) states that “For slaves living in the Roman world, there was no outside – no place without slavery and no movement that declared slavery wrong. Slavery was a normal part of life, and this was true not only for the Romans but for every neighbouring ancient culture”. Not only was

It is now so deeply integrated in our society that a piece of entertainment loses its value when nudity is not present in some form. With all this nudity floating around,one may ask what role does it play in displaying the message of the image. Nudity itself is a challenging ideology to our society, the line between appropriate vs inappropriate and acceptable versis unacceptable have seem to grow thin. The act of nudity can represent a multitude of ideology before being nude was seen as sacred and the act of being seen nude especially in public was forbidden.But as the narrative has evolved overtime being nude is now correlated to being free and open minded. Being nude in our society is expressing yourself in a manner that you deem acceptable, that we shouldn't lot be limited to what society deems appropriate. It is actually a very selfish narrative where everything revolves around the person and his or her personal goals.Marita Sturkin and Lisa Cartwright hit on the ideology of individual in the “Practices of Looking,” “One could say that ideology is the means by which certain values, such as individual freedom, progress, and the importance of home, are made to seem like natural, inevitable aspects of everyday life (Sturkin & Cartwright 21).” This kind of egocentric narrative is present in the Rolling Stone cover when dissected fully,and it shows how the narrative in America is more like me, me, me instead of us, us, us. Even though nudity is now somewhat encouraged by our entertainment, there are still levels to nudity. In most cases when a woman is presented nude she is usually presented in a way that is not too exposing, just as Julia Dreyfus is doing in the cover. This is due to the fact that there is still a

Once Jacobs original mistress passed away, she was sold to a manipulative and lustful master. Forty years her senior, Dr. Flint, began to manipulate her at the age of fifteen “ But I now entered on my fifteenth year—a sad epoch in the life of a slave girl. My master began to whisper foul words in my ear (chapter V).” The manipulation not only troubled her, but her mistress became jealous and full of hatred over fourteen year old Jacobs. This caused tension between the mistress, Dr. Flint and Jacobs. Jacobs directed to the audience that beauty is an asset to those who are not slaves, but an immense disadvantage to slaves. Jacobs understood that she is able to induce the jealousy and anger of Mrs. Flint, “She will be compelled to realize that she is no longer a child. If God has bestowed beauty upon her, it will prove her greatest curse. That which commands admiration in the white woman only hastens the degradation of the female slave (chapter V).” Although, Mrs. Flint was aware of the manipulation, Mrs.Flint could not control her husband’s behavior towards Jacobs. Thus, leading Mrs. Flint to take her jealousy and rage onto Jacobs. Even though Mrs.Flint understood that Jacobs was not in control of the situation, Mr. Flint was. “I was an object of her jealousy, and, consequently, of her hatred; and I knew I could not expect kindness or confidence from her under the circumstances in which I

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.

Since the dawn of early civilisation and subsequent traditional gender roles, one of the most prominent issues with which society struggles is gender inequality. The Book of Negroes illustrates Aminata’s worries as she is provided only one option: to entertain men with her body. “...I wondered how I would earn enough for food, clothes and repairs for my shelter. ‘What?’ Sam said. ‘You think rebels don’t have brothels? As long as there are fighting men, there will be work for girls like Rosetta - and work for you as well.’” (Hill 312) British soldiers and American rebels both sexualised the bodies of black women to the point of encouraging the prostitution of young girls. In a similar context, a 2008 study conducted by researchers from Wesleyan

Central to the experience to slavery is the body. Every tale, every Movie, and every story you have ever heard has concentrated on the slave and their body either with detail of how scared it is or what color and features it represents. And this is one mode of stripping a human being of their humanity, to reduce their existence to only their body and give them nothing else to look at or look forward to. Only having your body to look forward to, or only knowing that you are you because of your body makes you nothing less than an animal some might say. And this consequently has brought tensions that emerge between the literal and symbolic experience and

Even though some artists, as Berger claims, tried to resist this tradition, they couldn’t overcome the cultural tradition of female objectification that has continued to the present. These artists failed to create a different view in culture because of the media and how the perception wouldn’t change in the eyes of men. One famous artist who tried to resist this awful trend was an artist name Rubens. In his portrait of his second wife, the painting named Helene Fourment in a Fur Coat, he tried to portray the same message with a different image.The image is of a women with no other clothing other than a fur coat looking shameful. The middle-aged looking women in the painting was wearing a big brown fur coat. The difference between a regular “nude”

Have you ever looked at a piece of art and wondered how it could be based on real life, because it was just so beautiful? Well Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun was able to paint in such new and exciting ways; people were left wondering just this. Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun was a woman of many talents. In her life time she came up with new ways of painting, revolutionized fashion in France, and overcame any prejudice thinking because she was a woman. Before dying at the age of eighty-seven, she had gained the respect of women and men all across the world. Being a female artist in the eighteenth century was not easy, especially when you had to keep a career and your life together during the

In Juliao image the first thing believed to catch the audience attention is the marketing woman in the left region of the image holding what looks like food above her head, a fair skinned child, wrapped in a black cloth to carry on her back, and a rodent in her hand and a pig by her side. The gaze of the child appears to be the only one looking at the audience while the other two woman’s expression seem to display sadness or regret. Since Julião focus was to make sense of the hierarchal status, his inclusion of sad facial expressions may demonstrate the acceptance and assimilation of slavery in a way that is meant to present the same sadness to the viewer when examining his image. Unlike Eckhout, the figure of these two women do not give precise implications of physiognomy and body build, instead our eyes are focused more on the slight difference in clothing patterns and usages and how these imply differences in social status.