FEMALE SLAVERY AND

RESISTANCE

Slavery as an institution had a massive impact on women according to the

historiography of the antebellum south. Most historians generally accepted
that for black men and women, slavery was an equally devastating experience
and both were torn from homeland and family. They were forced to perform
grueling labor under harsh conditions , subjected to mental and physical
degradation, and denied their most basic rights.
Historians like Deborah gray white through her work Ar’n’t I a Woman? Tried
to debunk some myths , stereotypes, and misconceptions of enslaved women as
the promiscuous Jezebel, the angry Sapphire, or the loyal Mammy. She
raised indispensable questions regarding the character of female slavery like
what was the role of women in West African communities, during the
transatlantic slave trade, on board the slavers crossing the Atlantic, and in
colonial and antebellum America. Such questions were of utmost importance
due to the fact that most people had believed that a women’s experience to
slavery could not have been any different to a man’s. They had not considered
how a lactating mother had to take care of an infant during the middle passage;
how a woman who had recently given birth had to labor in the tobacco, cotton,
and rice fields of Virginia, Georgia, or South Carolina; or how women and men
employed different resistance strategies.
Deborah gay white had explored the contours of black female slaves' daily life
within the gendered confluence of work and sex, and explained the ways in
which their resistance to dehumanization helped to fashion an oppositional
racial consciousness and a female idntity that made survival and advancement
possible, not only for the women, but for the entire slave community. According
to Deborah Gray White, one of the most significant aspects that distinguished
the nature female slavery was that females did ‘reproductive work’. This
she further argues included not only the bearing and nurturing of children but
also the domestic work within the slave quarters that fed husbands, fathers
and children. Hence according to her, as ‘child bearing women’, they
were physically vulnerable in ways that men were not. Michael P Johnson
has shown that slaves suffered heavy proportion of deaths due to sudden infant
death syndrome because of the malnutrition and overwork of mothers.
Female slaves were discriminated highly on the basis of colour. American white
women were expected to be passive because they were female. But black
women had to be submissive because they were black and slaves. This made a
difference in the sex roles of black and white women, as well as in the
expectations that their respective societies had of them. The book provides a
deep insight in the daily life and struggles of the black female slaves and made
it possible for young historians to understand the convoluted gender relations
within racial slavery while highlighting the varied resistance strategies adopted
by the enslaved people.
White opined that in Africa a woman’s primary social role was that of a mother
and how womanhood was debased. Childbirth in Africa was the foundation of
respect for a woman, but in the American plantation system, it was an
economic advantage for the master, who multiplied his labor force through slave
pregnancy. The women were provided a negligible maternity leave and were
expected to return back to the fields as soon as possible. Another significant
aspect was that Female slaves were cheaper because of the underlying
assumption of ‘biological male superiority.’ However later on, economic
benefits of engaging female workers also became important, though the
primary focus still remained on their reproductive ability. White noted that
women in a society ruled by men, had the least formal power and were termed
to be as the most vulnerable group of the antebellum south.
E. Stevenson in key articles and a magisterial comparative study of black and
white families amply documented the ways in which enslaved women garnered
the will to rescue their femininity and preserve moral virtues. Stephanie Camp's
Closer to Freedom: Enslaved Women and Everyday Resistance in the Plantation
Souths an insightful study, demonstrates how enslaved women gathered
resources to adorn themselves for after sunset dances held in the alternative
spaces of deep woods and swamps. She persuasively argues that thus adorned
and in command of their bodies, they exhibited a positive feminine self identity
and individual creativity that an entire community relished.
A few scholars also highlighted the double oppression faced by the black
women slaves, one shared by all women and the one shared particularly by the
African americans. A consequence of this double jeopardy was the black
woman’s invisibility. She pointed out that slave women were everywhere yet
nowhere. They were present in the southern households and the southern fields,
but there was no evidence of the female status in the slave community and the
bondwoman’s self perception.
In the early historiographical writings the black women were portrayed to be
having a jezebel character. ‘She did not lead men and children to God; piety was
foreign to her. She saw no advantage in prudery, indeed domesticity paled in
importance before matters of the flesh’.
Deborah gray white, while trying to focus upon the differing nature of male and
female slavery tried to highlight that Women were kept on the upper decks
during the middle passage, not in the holds. According to the 1789 report of
the committee of the Privy Council, the female passage was further
distinguished from that of the males in that women and girls were not
shackled. This policy of segregation according to Deborah Gray White had two
significant implications. First they were more easily accessible to the
criminal whims and sexual desires of seamen, Secondly, African women
were able to incite and assist slave insurrections that occurred at the sea.
She also highlighted an important aspect about the male and female sex ratio.
The number of male slaves out numbered the females. This made difficult for a
male to find a spouse. Hence, it made made colonial slavery very lonely and
desolate for men. However in the latter half of the 19th century, the
demographic pattern changed towards a more even sex ration.
Stephanie M H Camp examines the everyday containment and movement of
enslaved men and, especially, enslaved women. Professor Camp’s book,
“Closer to Freedom: Enslaved Women and Everyday Resistance in the
Plantation South,”, led to a new understanding of how enslaved women resisted
their captivity in the 19th century She brings new depth to our understanding of
the lives of enslaved women, whose bodies and homes were inevitably political
arenas. Instead of using the term slave she uses the term Bondswomen.
The slaves did not merely accept their fate, a contrary to the belief of many, they
tried to resist enslavement and sexual exploitation. , it was generally
individualistic and aimed at maintaining what the slaves, master, and overseer
had, in the course of their relationships, perceived as an acceptable level of
work, shelter, food, punishment, and free time. Slaves may have thought about
overthrowing the system of slavery but the odds against them were so
overwhelming that the best most could hope for was survival with a modicum
of dignity. Slave resistance was aimed at maintaining what seemed to all
concerned to be the status quo. It was extremely short scaled and focused upon
a smooth sailing of their lives. Bondwomen, were adept in inventing schemes
and excuses to get their own way. The most prominent ones being disobedience.
This behaviour was termed as ‘rascality’.
Some bondwomen were more direct in their resistance. They adopted a more
violent method. Some murdered their masters and some were arsonists. Slave
women also sometimes violently resisted sexual exploitation. Since Southern
laws did not recognize the rape of a black woman as a crime, often the only
recourse slave women had was to fight off their assailants.
Another method of resistance used was use of poison and this suited women
because they officiated as cooks and nurses on the plantation.
Another form of passive resistance that was used was that bondswomen
often faked their illness. However, this can not be said for certain, as diseases
were highly prevalent due to the poor condition they lived in. they were indeed
plagued by sickness. Slaves suffered and often died from pneumonia, diarrhea,
cholera, and smallpox. The slave diet was high in calories but suffered from
dangerously low levels of protein and other nutrients. Lean meats, poultry, eggs,
milk, and grain products other than corn—foods needed to help the human
immune system produce antibodies to fight off infections—were only
sporadically seen on most slave’s plates.
Apart from all of this the slave women were also vulnerable due to the
complications associated to with the menstrual cycle and childbirth.
Convulsions, retention of placenta, ectopic pregnancy, breech presentation,
premature labor, and uterine rigidity were among the difficulties they faced.
Birthing was complicated further by the unsanitary practices of midwives and
physicians who delivered a series of children in the course of a day without
washing their hands, thereby triggering outbreaks of puerperal (child bed) fever.
These infections of the reproductive organs were often fatal.

In “Mining the Forgotten: Manuscript Sources for Black Women’s History,” an

essay White published in 1987, just two years after Ar’n’t I a Woman? was
released, she explained that “our ability to understand the complex ways in
which race and gender have shaped black women’s lives depends on intensive
work in primary sources.”9 Like White, It is argued that it is equally
challenging is the historical invisibility of black women as a whole. For far too
long in the historiography, the terms slave and male were synonymous; Ar’n’t I
a Woman? made black women more visible. Deborah white through her work
did not try to prove a point about whether female slavery was more harsh than
the male, instead she tried to create differentiating boundaries between the
struggles faced by women slaves which were comparatively more challenging
as they revolved around their natural subordination, sexual abuse, child
bearing and illness

BIBLIOGRAPGY.
Aren’t I a woman? Deborah gray white.

Deborah Gray White; ‘The Nature of Female Slavery’s

Stephanie M H Camp, Closer to Freedom: Enslaved

Women and Everyday Resistance in
the Plantation South.”