Joshism
Captain
- Joined
- Apr 30, 2012
- Location
- Jupiter, FL
There were a number of reasons I can imagine for the plantation mistress to be harsh on the slaves.
1. If she subscribed to the stereotype of black men as animal brutes lusting after white women she was, in her mind, keeping them cowed and proving her toughness.
2. If her husband was using his slave women as a personal harem she may have taken out her frustrations on them because she couldn't do much to him. Maybe beatings, overwork, etc could even make the slave women undesirable.
3. Taking out her frustrations in an era when she was trapped in a particular kind of life whether she wanted it or not (also explains the drug use).
It may seem strange now that white and black women didn't feel much common cause in antebellum times. But I think at the time an enslaved black woman was thought of by whites in that order: slave first, black second, woman third.
Alot of the feminism of the 20th century just didn't exist in most of the 19th, especially the antebellum South. Voting and other equal rights weren't even widely popular among women at the time (and aren't even universal today). What seems today like an obvious alliance didn't seem so at the time.
1. If she subscribed to the stereotype of black men as animal brutes lusting after white women she was, in her mind, keeping them cowed and proving her toughness.
2. If her husband was using his slave women as a personal harem she may have taken out her frustrations on them because she couldn't do much to him. Maybe beatings, overwork, etc could even make the slave women undesirable.
3. Taking out her frustrations in an era when she was trapped in a particular kind of life whether she wanted it or not (also explains the drug use).
It may seem strange now that white and black women didn't feel much common cause in antebellum times. But I think at the time an enslaved black woman was thought of by whites in that order: slave first, black second, woman third.
Alot of the feminism of the 20th century just didn't exist in most of the 19th, especially the antebellum South. Voting and other equal rights weren't even widely popular among women at the time (and aren't even universal today). What seems today like an obvious alliance didn't seem so at the time.