While reading, “Beyond the Limits
of Decency: Women in Slavery,” from Out
of the House of Bondage, something that really stood out to me was the
violence that White women faced at the hands of their husbands, and how this
led to some of them abusing not only the house slaves, but their own children
as well. Glymph says that “some evidence suggests that slaveholding women who
beat their slaves and/or were beaten by their husbands, in turn, abused their
own children”1. I believe that this goes to show that hurt people
hurt other people. Men beat their wives, the wives beat the slaves and
children, or whomever else they can control, and the cycle repeats itself. Before
reading this article I had not heard of slaveholders harming their own
children, and was surprised to read that some of their own children were beaten
to the same degree as the enslaved.
This article, without mentioning
the word itself, depicts domestic violence in the Antebellum South. Today, while
domestic violence, is more talked about and more resources are available for
women and children to escape these dangerous situations, it still occurs.
Sometimes women take matters into their own hands and fight back. This can
either have a very beneficial outcome (escaping an abusive partner), or a very
terrible outcome (being seriously harmed or killed).
Can abused White women in the
Antebellum South then be blamed for hurting other people when they themselves were
hurting and had no escape? We often hear about people seeking revenge on those
that hurt them, and I would argue that in these cases, people are sympathetic
to the abused even if they seriously harm the other person. Today we have
outlets for escaping those situations, but did White women have those back
then? Where could they go? Mental health, like domestic violence, is more
talked about than it was years ago, but I expected to know more about the
mental health of White women from readings. That topic has not been addressed
directly in any of readings thus far. It would be very interesting to know more
about the lives of the mistresses and children of slave owners who saw and
endured so much (being beaten by the men in their lives, having to care for
their husbands illegitimate children, seeing the violence inflicted on slaves
by overseers and master, etc.) Were the women right to be cruel, no, but living their
lifestyle would be enough to drive anyone insane.
Pledged
WC 413
Glymph, Thavolia. “Beyond the Limits of
Decency.” In Out of the House of Bondage,
36. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
I don't believe that experiencing violence ever makes commiting violence more understandable. If anything it should give you empathy to what it does to people.
ReplyDeleteHi Alexis! Thank you for writing on this. Erasure of white women’s complicity in the abuse of slaves is an unjust pardon on unacceptable behavior. That being said, your blog post speaks to the process of abuse that exists within the system of domestic violence... it does not excuse the furtherance of such behavior, but certainly aids in explanation and understanding of why it occurs. As the Stanford Prison Experiment so famously proved, those with considerable power over a group of people who have none are all too likely to exploit their power and the people it affects. This will naturally trickle down the power structure of a community, as the powerless will begin to seek control over those even more powerless than them. For poor white men, the purchase of a slave, the exchange of a human life was the ultimate step towards social mobilization, but more broadly, the foundation of white men’s elevation is the privileging of their lives over the lives of anyone who does not look like them. Fundamentally, yes, white women are affected by this, but not to the same extent as people of color are. Hurt people hurt other people, but some are further down the system of abuse than others.
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