In Melton McLaurin’s book, Celia, A Slave, Celia faces the struggle for justice as an enslaved woman in central Missouri in the 1850s. Celia is at a major disadvantage during this time because of her identity as an enslaved woman. This disadvantage negatively impacted her social circumstances throughout her life, especially since rights were severely limited for her. Celia's status as both an enslaved person and a woman forced her to experience more injustice as she was unprotected from abuse and Missouri law. She stood no chance during her trial due to her “double burden” status. Celia faced tragic social and legal challenges including her interactions with her family, her owner and his family, other slaves, and whites in the area. Celia's …show more content…
For example, “anger and resentment was a characteristic response of white women in slaveholding households when faced with the possibility of a relationship between a male in the household and a female slave” (McLaurin, 26). Virginia and Mary were economically dependent on their father since Mary was still a child and Virginia had three children. Although they didn't have the power to prevent the actions of their father, they might have viewed their father as the victim because “many southerners viewed black women as naturally sensual and promiscuous” (McLaurin, 26). Conversely, Newsom’s sons had a different reaction towards Celia. His son, David, might have enjoyed Celia's presence because it was common for fathers and sons to share mistresses. However, the sons didn't stay for long because they were expected to leave and start their own household as they got older. Newsom’s family didn't have the power to intervene with the abuse if they wanted to because he had total control of his farm and slaves. Newsom’s daughters found ways to justify slavery and male supremacy because their lives would be at risk if they helped Celia. Even if they supported Celia, “white women were in no position, legally or economically, to challenge the power of the master effectively” (McLaurin, 138). Yet many plantation women, like Newsom’s daughters, …show more content…
Southern white women “were on the whole supportive of the institution, in addition to being relatively powerless to prevent the sexual exploitation of female slaves, which they bitterly resented” (McLaurin, 32). Society rationalized slavery and the patriarchy in many different ways. They also viewed enslaved women like Celia as seductive and promiscuous, proving further that Celia and other enslaved women truly held no power in society. Slavery, power dynamics, and the legal system shaped the search for justice for enslaved
Melton McLaurin’s book Celia, A Slave is the account of the trial, conviction, and execution of a female slave for the murder of her “master” Robert Newsom in 1855. The author uses evidence compiled through studying documents from Callaway County, Missouri and the surrounding area during the middle of the Nineteenth Century. Although much of what can be determine about this event is merely speculation, McLaurin proposes arguments for the different motives that contribute to the way in which many of the events unfold. Now throughout the book the “main characters”, being Celia, her lawyer Jameson, and the judge William Hall, are all faced with moral decisions that affect the lives of two different people.
In times when slavery was abundant, female slaves faced oppression in many ways unthinkable. Collectively, the multitude of injustices changed the way American society functioned. Celia, A Slave tells the truly tragic story of Celia, a young slave girl, and her attempt to resist oppression. Celia was sexually abused and repeatedly taken advantage of by her slave master, Robert Newsom. Eventually, Celia retaliated and murdered Newsom. Though her fight of self-defense was supported by many, Celia was hung as punishment for the crime she had committed.
Celia, a Slave, a book by author Melton McLaurin, shows the typical relationship between a slave woman and her master in America during the 1850s. The story is the perfect example of how relationships between slave and their masters and other non-blacks within the community. This is shown through Celia’s murder of her slave owner, Robert Newsom. It was also shown through the community’s reaction that was involved in unraveling her court case. The Celia personal story illustrated how slave women was treated by their slave owners and how the laws wasn’t effective at protecting slave during the 1850s. Celia’s story help shed light on woman injustices, unconstitutional rights and most importantly racial issues/discrimination.
Women who were enslaved during the slave period endured much suffrage. Not only were they the subject of chattel slavery, but some were also molested by their masters, for their own personal pleasure. In some cases, masters would pair “good breeders” together so their farm would benefit and they would have more slaves. This behavior would lead to force rape. The purpose of the book is to demonstrate how slavery crippled African American slaves from defending themselves due to oppression, particularly women. The trial of Celia, A Slave opens a gateway where people’s morals and actions were put into question after the death of her master. Themes such as gender oppression, chattel slavery, race, prejudice, revolt are some themes present in Celia,
In the nineteenth century, slaves were afforded very few, if any, civil rights and freedoms, often being treated very cruelly. Although the abusive treatment of slaves was not unusual, the act of a slave protecting themselves against a master was. In the book Celia, A Slave, McLaurin recounts the trial of a female slave who was charged, convicted, and later executed for the crime of murdering her master in 1855. The author provides evidence for her argument through analyzation of documents gathered from Callaway County, Missouri, and the area surrounding, during the mid-nineteenth century. As the circumstances of Celia’s case were unique, in the fact that she had violently retaliated, the debate arose as to whether she was afforded rights to
Celia, A Slave by Melton McLaurin tells a true story of a female slave who was sexually exploited by her master and the trial she faced as a result. At the young age of fourteen, Celia was brought to Callaway County under her new master, Robert Newsom. Celia later murdered Newsom, in an act of self-defense, and was placed on a trial challenging the institute of slavery and the moral beliefs of anyone involved with slavery in the South. The short life of the young Celia revealed a slave girl who had pushed beyond the ideal limit of a system that denied her humanity and threatened to erode the base of the antebellum southern society.
Deborah Gray White’s Ar’n’t I a Woman? details the grueling experiences of the African American female slaves on Southern plantations. White resented the fact that African American women were nearly invisible throughout historical text, because many historians failed to see them as important contributors to America’s social, economic, or political development (3). Despite limited historical sources, she was determined to establish the African American woman as an intricate part of American history, and thus, White first published her novel in 1985. However, the novel has since been revised to include newly revealed sources that have been worked into the novel. Ar’n’t I a Woman? presents African American females’ struggle with race and gender through the years of slavery and Reconstruction. The novel also depicts the courage behind the female slave resistance to the sexual, racial, and psychological subjugation they faced at the hands of slave masters and their wives. The study argues that “slave women were not submissive, subordinate, or prudish and that they were not expected to be (22).” Essentially, White declares the unique and complex nature of the prejudices endured by African American females, and contends that the oppression of their community were unlike those of the black male or white female communities.
Celia, a Slave was a factual interpretation of one isolated incident that depicted common slave fear during the antebellum period of the United States. Melton A. McLaurin, the author, used this account of a young slave woman's struggle through the undeserved hardships of rape and injustice to explain to today's naive society a better depiction of what slavery could have been like. The story of Celia illustrates the root of racial problems Americans still face in their society. Although not nearly as extreme, they continue to live in a white-male dominated culture that looks down upon African-Americans, especially females. McLaurin looks at the views of the time, and speculates the probabilities of this pre - Civil War era, the values of which still pierce daily life in the United States.
The issue of Slavery in the South was an unresolved issue in the United States during the seventeenth and eighteenth century. During these years, the south kept having slavery, even though most states had slavery abolished. Due to the fact that slaves were treated as inferior, they did not have the same rights and their chances of becoming an educated person were almost impossible. However, some information about slavery, from the slaves’ point of view, has been saved. In this essay, we are comparing two different books that show us what being a slave actually was. This will be seen with the help of two different characters: Linda Brent in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and Frederick Douglass in The Narrative of the life of Frederick
In Harriet Jacobs Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, the author subjects the reader to a dystopian slave narrative based on a true story of a woman’s struggle for self-identity, self-preservation and freedom. This non-fictional personal account chronicles the journey of Harriet Jacobs (1813-1897) life of servitude and degradation in the state of North Carolina to the shackle-free promise land of liberty in the North. The reoccurring theme throughout that I strive to exploit is how the women’s sphere, known as the Cult of True Womanhood (Domesticity), is a corrupt concept that is full of white bias and privilege that has been compromised by the harsh oppression of slavery’s racial barrier. Women and the female race are falling for man’s
In fact, women had to carry with the pain of having their children wrenched from them. Women were forced to be “breeders” they were meant to bear children to add to their master’s “stock”, but they were denied the right to care for them. It was not something unusual to happen to these women it was considered normal. The master didn’t believe the female slaves had feelings, or the right to ruin their merchandise. It was also not unusual for the plantation master to satisfy his sexual lust with his female slaves and force them to have his children. Children that were born from these unions were often sold to protect the honor and dignity of the slave owner’s wife, who would be forced to face the undeniable proof of her husband’s lust for “black women.”
During the eighteenth and nineteenth-century, notions of freedom for Black slaves and White women were distinctively different than they are now. Slavery was a form of exploitation of black slaves, whom through enslavement, lost their humanity and freedom, and were subjected to dehumanizing conditions. African women and men were often mistreated through similar ways, especially when induced to labor, they would eventually become a genderless individual in the sight of the master. Despite being considered “genderless” for labor, female slaves suddenly became women who endured sexual violence. Although a white woman was superior to the slaves, she had little power over the household, and was restricted to perform additional actions without the consent of their husbands. The enslaved women’s notion to conceive freedom was different, yet similar to the way enslaved men and white women conceived freedom. Black women during slavery fought to resist oppression in order to gain their freedom by running away, rebel against the slaveholders, or by slowing down work. Although that didn’t guarantee them absolute freedom from slavery, it helped them preserve the autonomy and a bare minimum of their human rights that otherwise, would’ve been taken away from them. Black
In “The Trial of Girlhood” and “A Perilous Passage In the Slave Girl’s Life” Jacobs’s narrative emphasizes the problems that are faced by female slaves. She shares the sexual abuses that are commonly practiced by slave master against young female slaves. She does this through revealing the unique humiliation and the brutalities that were inflicted upon young slave girls. In this narrative we come to understand the psychological damage caused by sexual harassment. We also realize how this sexual harassment done by the slaveholders went against morality and “violated the most sacred commandment of nature,”(Harriet 289)as well as fundamental religious beliefs.
Chaucer lived in a time dictated by religion and religious ideas in which he uses The Canterbury Tales to show some of his views. Religion played a significant role in fourteenth-century England and also in Chaucer’s writing. His ideas of the Church are first seen in “The Prologue,” and he uses seven religious persons to show the influence of the religion in his writing. Although many of his characters appear to portray part of the corruption in the Church, he does give a small example in which one can conclude that he is speaking in praise.
Globally, scholars are in great in harmony that the Atlantic Slave Trade is one of the most inhumane and brutal historical event, that the world has ever imagined. As millions of black men, women and children were subjected to gruesome conditions, as they were separated from their original homes and forced to perform gruelling labour. However, albeit, men and women in particular were subject to the horrific experiences. It should be borne in mind that the experiences and circumstances of enslavement for black men and women, were different in various ways. This paper argues that the gendered character of Atlantic slave trade registered conditions of unequal power relations between men and women (i.e. gendered division of labour), in which women’s