In the 1800s, white women were
expected to be chaste, virtuous, timid, and completely dependent on their
husbands.[2]Although white women of this time period were considered free, they
were enslaved to conform with the ideal of the ‘True Woman’ and restricted by
the stereotypes that existed against
women.[3] Black women in the Antebellum South were considered to have similar
qualities as white women such as weakness and submissiveness; yet were viewed
to have a sexual libido equivalent to and sometimes greater than their male counterparts.
“The uniqueness of the African-American females situations is that she stands
at the crossroads of the most well developed ideologies in America, that
regarding women and that regarding the Negro.” [4] During this time period the
only true meaning of the word or label ‘woman’ would be submissive and subservient.
Aside from being submissive and
subservient the label of women does not accurately describe black enslaved female
experiences. As children slave girls were never separated from boys and gender
roles were never taught. Slave boys were expected to complete domestic duties,
just as girls were expected to work in the field doing manual labor. [5]
Enslaved women were stripped of their maternal instinct to become mothers even after
childbearing. Enslaved women were often separated from their children as they
sold by slave traders for profit. In some cases, slave women even killed their
babies to prevent them from living a life of suffering. [6]
According to Deborah Gray White,
the Antebellum South viewed enslaved black women in two separate ways, either
the Jezebel or the Mammy. [7]The Jezebel image was influenced from
misinterpretations of the African culture and concluded black women were
promiscuous, lewd, and lascivious. The perception of the black woman as a
Jezebel character stemmed from slave traders mistaking polygamy for lust,
tribal dances for orgies, and nudity for indecency.[8] “In every way Jezebel
was the counterimage of the mid-nineteenth-century ideal of the Victorian
Lady.”[9] Women Southerners were very conservative in dress, never exposing
their legs or arms unless for the purpose of arousing her husband. In contrast,
enslaved women were barely clothed further equating black women with
promiscuity.[10] Offspring of slave women were considered prolific and this
encouraged slave owners to make sexual overtures, and the increase slave population
was always attributed to black women’s promiscuity. [11] “By contrast, Southern
white women were kept free and pure from the taint of immorality because black
women acted as a buffer against their degradation.”[12] White mistresses came
to envy the sexual freedom of enslaved women and the time their husbands spent
in slave quarters. “If her husband stopped loving her, she had to suffer in
silence.”[13]Ultimately, both women were enslaved to white men and men had
their sexual deviant and the virtuous housewife.
When the South was forced to
defend the purpose of slavery the character of the Mammy erupted. The mammy characterization
was opposite from the Jezebel characterization and was similar to the ideal “true
woman”. “She was a woman completely
dedicated to the white family, especially to the children of that family. She
was the house servant who was given complete charge of domestic management. She
served also as friend and advisor. She was, in short, surrogate mistress and
mother.”[15] But just as the Jezebel image was inaccurate description of the
enslaved black women, so was the image of the Mammy.
- Deborah Gray White, Ar'n't I a Woman? (New York; W.W. Norton and Company Ltd.), 31.
- Gail Collins, America's Women 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines. (New York; Harper Collins Publishers), 87.
- Collins, America's Women, 88
- Deborah Gray White, Ar'n't I a Woman?, 27
- Ibid, 92.
- Ibid, 88
- Ibid, 28-61.
- Ibid, 29.
- Ibid, 29.
- Ibid, 31.
- Ibid, 33.
- Ibid, 39.
- Collins, America's Women, 88
- Deborah Gray White White, Ar'n't I a Woman?, 48
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