If given the choice to be a slave, a white woman, or a white man throughout the pre-civil war era, a white man would always end up being the common choice. Catherine Clinton delved into the oppression of women in the 19th century, which was often overlooked in history, throughout her book: The Plantation Mistresses: Woman’s World in the Old South. From the role of religion, to the importance of the family circle, and even the examination of moral standards, Clinton pointed out that in every aspect of Old South living, a woman’s status always fell beneath that of a man’s. Throughout her book, Catherine Clinton brought forth an argument of a biracial salve society that had never been mentioned before; through the use of personal accounts written …show more content…
It was an interesting read despite being written similarly to a textbook. At first glance I thought the book was going to be written more like a novel based on true facts; however, despite the rather dull data, Clinton’s book opened my eyes to a whole new part of history. This book challenged previous ideas put forth in history textbooks about how plantation life in the south was all anyone could dream of. First, was the author’s point about the rough times the women would go through and their dependence on family. Throughout a women’s life, her ultimate job was to uphold the household. This included responsibility over the children, slaves, property, and of course their husband. With such high expectations, newlywed life became difficult for these young women, who at an average were only twenty. “Most young plantation mistresses depended upon their female relatives…rescued many a young housekeeper from dreadful straits” (25). Being able to maintain these relationships allowed the new mistresses a support system that was lacking at the time. Since, their oppression was not widely known, or acknowledged, the personal accounts Catherine Clinton included, truly described how these women felt with all this responsibility on their shoulders. It was my first impression, that plantations had slaves who would take care of all the cooking, cleaning, and childcare …show more content…
This book would be an important addition to history classes since most focus on the oppression of the slaves, but most did not realize that the subjugation went further up the chain of command. Most people believed that women in the south had the perfect lives, living in a charming mansion, with the perfect husband, and slaves to complete all her chores. By recommending this book to others, their eyes will be opened to a piece of history that has been lost, it contributes everything one would need to know the extent of the situation, leaving nothing to the
If someone asks about a slaveholding widow, most will say Martha Washington, but there were many more. The reason why these women are not acknowledged is because they did not have the social status like Martha Washington did, due to her husband’s social standing as president. These women went through the same difficult things as Martha, such as dealing with a death, slaves, and sometimes businesses or crops. For example Martha Cocke went through a tough grievance over her husband and wrote to her sister saying that she was thinking about suicide due to stress.
Two features I thought were interesting in the book was the observance of urban slavery, although Tennessee is still in the South, and the amount of help Sally received from Whites in the community. Probably because Tennessee is considered the ‘Upper South’ they have a concept of urban slavery, where slaves contract themselves to work, what I was not expecting was the ‘quasi slave’ (21). With this status, she could rent out her own space, could go about freely and ultimately had the economical function similar to that of a free person, however she was still under threat of being sold at any time, because she owned. Because of this unclear and murky social status, she was adamant about ensuring her children became free men.
Tera W. Hunter is a scholar of U. S. history, with specializations in African-Americans, gender, labor, and the South. She is particularly interested in the history of slavery and freedom. She is currently writing a book on African-American marriages in the nineteenth century. Her first book received several prizes including the H. L. Mitchell Award from the Southern Historical Association, the Letitia Brown Memorial Book Prize from the Association of Black Women’s Historians, and the Book of the Year Award from the International Labor History Association. She was a Mary I. Bunting Institute Fellow, at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, 2005-2006.
It was suppose to improve the lives of slaves so that they would no longer be treated as objects, as inferiors to their Anglo-Saxon counterparts. However, Anne Moody’s comparison of her living space and Mr.Carter’s castle paints a painfully obvious reality. African Americans were still inferior to their Anglo-Saxon counterparts because they were living in the dark shacks whereas the wealthy plantation owners were living in brightly lit castles. Similar to the former system of slavery, African Americans were kept in the dark, stripped of their basic rights, and forced to endure disproportionate hardships. Anne Moody and her mother also had to endure other hardships.
The taxing nature of “southern womanhood” is demonstrated in every aspect of the 19th century. During the era of slavery women were conditioned to withstanding the emotional toll of violence towards slaves. An illustration from (DuBois 215) Through Women’s Eyes provides and illustration of a women beating a slave and consequently a women being beaten by a man for doing so. This is the pinnacle of hypocrisy, being that despite the ideals of “southern womanhood” a women is taught that violence is only ok against slaves, although when put into application it is prohibited. In the 19th the south had been going through a lot of change and the hardships and as a result the most effected were southern woman and female slaves, as they received the
Around seven years after Brown’s phenomenal work, Terri L. Snyder released Brabbling Women: Disorderly Speech and Law in Early Virginia. To advance the image of women in early Virginia, this book is an early examination of colonial Virginians attitudes towards women’s speech and how men viewed this speech as undesirable. The title of the book is taken from a 1662 Virginia law passed by the General Assembly that stipulated that “brabbling signified a wrangling, quibbling, quarrelsome, or riotous disposition.” This law turned an otherwise un-gendered type of speech into a gendered style of conversation, which recognized the speech of disorderly women as a key factor in the mayhem in the colony in addition to Bacon’s Rebellion. According to Snyder,
Analogous in form to the spiritual autobiography, the slave narrative emphasizes the difficulty of upholding moral goodness under the weight of slavery. By revealing herself as a “fallen woman” Jacobs creates a hazardous problem, capable of eliminating the sympathies of a primarily white audience. Moreover, Jacobs risks portraying herself as an impure woman, whose virtuousness departs from the piousness and gracefulness typically exemplified by the ideal woman or “angel in the house,” according to the “Cult of True Womanhood.” Therefore, in an effort to preserve the ethos of her argument, Jacobs attributes her unchaste condition to the systemic effects of American slavery. Hoping to destroy the ideology of benign paternalism, Jacobs reveals her consequential ethical dilemma through a faint description of her master’s, Dr. Flint’s, licentious behavior.
Republican spirit and intellectual movements present in the early 1800’s had an impact on women and slaves in America, both positively and negatively. Women were affected by both republican spirit and intellectual movements that took place in the early 1800’s. The general trend of the early 1800’s was a push for women’s rights and suffrage, overall wanting to make women equal to men. Around 1800, the Romantic movement in Europe spread to America, giving rise to the idea of sentimentalism. Pushing for decisions based on feeling instead of solely rationale, marriages shifted from being arranged to companionate marriages.
Even though Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs write about the common experience of slavery, their distinct stories are unique through their individual genders. From his male perspective, Douglass connects to his male readers through his objective writing, physical abuse, and desire for freedom. On the other hand, Jacobs uses her female perspective to connect with her readers through her emotional language, sexual abuse, and motherly nature. These individual accounts of slavery sculpted by gender provide an even more encompassing perspective on the matter, for by themselves they miss a key perspective in understanding the experience of slavery.
The Help, by Kathryn Stockett, exhibits both acts and opposition towards racism that lead to mistreatment, lost and found opportunities, as well as unlikely friendships White housewives, such as Hilly and Elizabeth, take their maids for granted and verbally abuse them. Aibileen and Minny, two black maids working in Jackson, Mississippi, either missed chances for success or lost them because of racism in their society. Also, Skeeter’s book not only accomplishes her goal of creating a published piece of literature, but also results in new, dangerous friendships with the maids. Moreover, black maids working in white homes are brutalized and treated unfairly for obscure reasons. The housewives disregard their black maids because of societal influences, which leads to maltreatment.
Slavery has been a very big issue since 1700s of inequality among enslaved people; especially, black woman. Starting in the early 1700s, the news that the planter took advantage of their power by raping enslaved women were pervasive(Henretta 95). According to Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacob, she described her hardness in working days and nights, and she was forced to have sexual intercourse with her white owner(Henretta 370). In addition, she pointed out that the sexual abuse of women is a profound moral failing of the slave regime(Henretta 370). After Jacob’s book, in 1831, Maria Stewart gave her speeches to black men and women persuading black women to consider their place in the society(Hartmann 21).
Frederick Douglass: An American Slave Destined to Escape the Menacing Effects of Slavery and Humanize Himself in the Eyes of White Culture Frederick Douglass, a former slave and human rights leader in the abolition movement, was born into slavery in Tuckahoe, Maryland in 1818. He spent the first seven years of his life living with his maternal grandmother in a plantation owned by Colonel Edward Lloyd in Talbot County. He was eventually sold to a man named Hugh Auld and sent to live in Baltimore. It was here that Douglass first acquired the skills that would vault him to national prominence as one of the most sought after anti-slavery speakers of the nineteenth century. Defying tremendous odds, Douglass secretly taught himself to read and write.
In the book “The Free State of Jones”, by Victoria Bynum, the war between the Union and the Confederacy was described. Not only that, but the author reveals many things about the war that is not widely known, or largely mistaken for something else. The style this book is written is not fiction, as it has raw facts splattered across the pages. One of the main topics that is covered in this book is slavery, and how the South contributed to it. Tying to that, the main character’s relationship with an African American woman is also mentioned.
In the novel, Kindred, by Octavia E. Butler, a lot of ignorance and intelligence is demonstrated all through the book which in a way is dangerous. Kindred is a wonderful work of science fiction that catches the attention of readers by telling a story of Dana, a modern-day African-American woman, who is abruptly transported from California in 1976 to the antebellum South. Not only is Dana abruptly transported back in time but she’s able to experience first-hand the cruelty of enslaved black women and men in the 1800s. The experiences of Dana and the enslaved women in the novel were viewed as mostly women working in households.
Alexus Corley Book Review Book: Uncle Toms Cabin Author: Harriet Beecher Stowe As a feature of the Compromise of 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act made the national government, through elected officials, in charge of catching runaway slaves and returning them to their claimed proprietors in the South. The government officials were permitted to delegate residents and constrain them to seize and report criminal slaves, even against their wills, or face fines and detainment. This demonstration stirred suppositions in the North against subjugation and energized the development for abrogation.