Renee K. Harrison Enslaved Women and the Art of Resistance in Antebellum America (2009)

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.IfI went out for a breath of fresh air, after a day of unwearied toil, hisfootsteps dogged me.11In another instance, an enslaved woman recounted how an enslavedwoman named Diana worked tirelessly at resisting her master s vices.She noted that:Diana was the house maid for the Gaskins and lived right in the housewith the family.This girl was old master Gaskins Diana.He had hiswife and children, but he just wanted his Diana in every sense of theword.He was really master of all he surveyed.He made demands onDiana just the same as if she had been his wife.Of course she foughthim, but he wanted her and he had her.He use to send Diana to thebarn to shell corn.Soon he would follow.He tried to cage her in thebarn so she couldn t get out.Once when Diana was successful in fight-ing him off, he bundled her up, put her in a cart, and took her toNorfolk and put her on the auction block.12The pinnacle of this paradox, however, is most noted in slaversattitude and treatment of their house servant commonly known as Mammy. On one hand slavers created the Mammy image to por-tray slavery as a humane institution. 13 They offered Mammy to theworld as a tamed contented house servant saved from the wilds ofAfrica and unsoiled by the grotesque dimensions of American slavery.Mammy was a matriarchal figure of inordinate strength who pro-fessed an undying devotion to the white family she maintained andran the household, nurtured the children, and served as the right76 Enslaved Women and the Art of Resistancehand of the plantation mistress.14 Black feminist Michelle Wallacenotes Mammy was characterized as a superwoman the personifi-cation of the ideal slave and ideal woman. 15Yet, on the other hand, slavers public portrayal of Mammy did notcoincide with their private degradation of her.Mammy was humili-ated.She was overworked and disrespected by the family, and oftenraped by the master or his sons in the house where she labored.Oneformer enslaved woman recalled her mother s brutal rape, whichexemplified whites complex perceptions of African women.The boyswhom Mammy cared for and raised into manhood gang raped her:My mother s mistress had three boys one twenty-one, one nineteen,and one seventeen.One day, Old Mistress had gone away to spend theday.Mother always worked in the house.while she was alone, theboys came in and threw her down on the floor and tied her down soshe couldn t struggle, and one after the other used her as long as theywanted, for the whole afternoon.Mother was sick when her mistresscame home.When Old Mistress wanted to know what was the matterwith her, she told her what the boys had done.She whipped them, andthat s the way I came to be here.16Such generational cycle of abuse existed within the plantation house-hold because the children of slave owners witnessed such behaviors,and then, found themselves enactors of similar behavioral patterns.Thomas Jefferson wrote:Our children see this, and learn to imitate it; for man is an imitativeanimal.If a parent had no other motive, either in his philanthropy orhis self-love, for restraining the intemperance of passion towards hisslave, it should always be a sufficient one that his child is present.Butgenerally it is not sufficient.The parent storms, the child looks on,catches the lineaments of wrath, put on the same airs in the circle ofsmaller slaves, gives a loose to his worst passions, and, thus nursed,educated, and daily exercised in tyranny.17Slavery for many black women was sexual imprisonment anearthly hell wherein overseers, slavers, and their sons gave loose totheir worst passions, and God and heaven appeared at times, out ofsight, unresponsive, and incomprehensible.Many women felt theironly options were to submit or die.As one former enslaved womanremarked, slavery breaks down women s spirits dreadfully, andmakes em wish they was dead. The weight and cycle of sexual abusecaused many women to not only wish they was dead but they also prayed to die. As Jacobs cried out, I prayed to die, but the prayerEnslaved Women and Sexual Violence 77was not answered. 18 In these moments of distress and at these sites ofdeprivation many women also felt caged and unworthy with no reliefin sight.Jacobs continues,I shed bitter tears that I was no longer worthy of being respected by thegood and pure.Alas! Slavery still held me in its poisonous grasp.Therewas no chance for me to be respectable.There was no prospect of beingable to lead a better life.Sometimes when my master found that I stillrefused to accept what he called his kind offers, he would threaten tosell my child. Perhaps that will humble you, said he.Humble me!Was I not already in the dust?19The objectification of enslaved African women as vagina and theirsubsequent rape reduced them to an object of their masters desiresand robbed them of their dignity.It left a lasting psychological imprinton the hearts and minds of men, women, and children throughout theAmerican Union that the black woman was a thing a piece ofmeat to purchase, sell, or indulge at the master s will.RapeOnce objectified, rape was another means to sustain the incarcerationof black women s vaginas.The penis was used as a tool and weaponof domination and preemptive strike not only to break, tame, andreduce enslaved African women for white male pleasure, but also torender them fearful, submissive, and powerless to enforce labor.Suchterroristic tactics were employed to provide slavers and overseers theleverage they sought to conquer and control enslaved women.Blackfeminist scholar Angela Davis argues:The act of copulation reduced by the white man to an animal-like actwould be symbolic of the effort to conquer the resistance the black womancould unloose.In confronting the black woman as adversary in a sexualcontest, the master would be subjecting her to the most elemental formof terrorism distinctively suited for the female: rape.Given the alreadyterroristic texture of plantation life, it would be as potential victim ofrape that the slave woman would be most unguarded.The integrationof rape into the sparsely furnished legitimate social life of the slaves harksback to the feudal right of the first night, the jus primae noctis.Thefeudal lord manifested and reinforced his domination over the serfs byasserting his authority to have sexual intercourse with all the females.20By raping enslaved women and girls, slavers and overseers soughtto assert their authority over the plantation work force.Such warfare78 Enslaved Women and the Art of Resistancetactics were employed in conjunction with flogging.One enslaved manexplained that, women who refuse to submit themselves to the bru-tal desires of their owners, are repeatedly whipt to subdue their vir-tuous repugnance, and in most instances this hellish practice is buttoo successful when it fails, the women are frequently sold off to thesouth [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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