In Thavioloa Glymph's book, Out of the House of Bondage, readers are exposed to a new depiction of the cruelties of slavery in America. This text focuses on the extreme abuse and mistreatment that enslaved people experienced at the hands of their mistress. Glymph uses accounts from enslaved people and their masters to support the idea that mistresses were to be equally feared, if not more feared than a male master.
When thinking of the attributes associated with women, one supposedly thinks of gentility, kindness, and motherhood— all characteristics associated with the domestic sphere. However, the testimonies that Glymph do not support this idea. According to this reading, since men often worked outside of the home, and because it was the woman’s job to ensure that the house ran smoothly, it was often the mistresses who would have to interact the most with the enslaved people that they owned. In order to prove to their husbands that they were capable of running a home, which during this time included maintaining enslaved people, women ruled with an iron fist, often being more harsh and brutal than their male counterparts.
This concept that women enacted crueler is very clearly supported in chapter six of Frederick Douglass’ narrative The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass during Douglass’ interactions with his mistress, Sophia Alud. When he initially came to work for the Auld family, Sophia treated him with kindness and even began teaching him. However, as soon as her husband learned of her interactions, he “forbade” her from instructing Douglass any further. Later, readers see that Sophia Auld transforms, and Douglass makes the observation that : “She now commenced to practise her husbandʹs precepts. She finally became even more violent in her opposition than her husband himself. She was not satisfied with simply doing as well as he had commanded; she seemed anxious to do better”.
In addition to this, Glymph highlights the fact that mistresses themselves were subjected to some forms of ‘torture’. If their husband had an affair with an enslaved woman, a child might result from that encounter, and that mistress would be forced to see and interact with that child. This along with jealousy was an added reason that a mistress could use to excuse her abusive behavior.
Glymph’s text, in addition to Douglass’ narrative, very clearly shows readers that women were just as capable of inflicting abuse to enslaved beings as men were, and in fact they were often more severe in their punishments, thus disproving this idea of female gentility.
In my opinion, the transformation of Fredrick Douglass’ mistress, Sophia Auld, from being a “nice” white woman to “more violent in her opposition than her husband himself,” proves the struggle women faced in regards to finding their own space within the mainstream of American society – which was strongly influenced by patriarchy. In the United State’s Revolutionary Era, women were expected to share a common domestic experience. Unlike men, who mainly worked outside the home, women were the one’s in charge of running the house to support their husbands. For many of the mistresses, the only source of power, or privilege, they could obtain was from using violence to control the slaves within their home. Unfortunately, in efforts to gain a sense of worth – in an oppressive male-dominated society – women would detach themselves from the elegance and gentility found within the female domestic experience and take on more masculine characteristics of violence and brutality. While both woman and slaves were subordinate groups of America’s patriarchal society, white women were inferior in American society only because of the color of their skin, and exercised cruel control over slaves to give them a place within the social hierarchy.
ReplyDeleteSimilar to Alexa’s comment, when I read Out of the House of Bondage I could not help but think of the Stanford Prison experiments. The power of perceived and actual control can dramatically affect the actions of humans in just about any situation. Though I am not saying that how these women acted was in any way acceptable, I can understand how while trying to find their own human space, these rich, white women were likely influenced by the power they held over other individuals, which could have made them crueler than even their male counterpart.
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