African American Women In The 19th Century

The lives of women in the nineteenth century were greatly shaped by an attitude that believed women should be domesticated, pure, pious, and submissive; true women focused their lives around the family and the home, influencing husbands and children by providing them a moral compass. These women, however, were shielded from the outside world and were neither influenced by nor a part of the politics and business taking place on the other side of their doors. The idea that women were meant for households, unable to complete demanding labor, developed into the idea of the “cult of true womanhood” and limited the interactions of women to their homes and families. However, strong conflicts arose between the traditional and untraditional idealists
The hard labor on the backs of enslaved women helped build the Southern economy and drove forward the Northern industrial development. Treated like men, African American women planted, picked, harvested, and many other laborious activities. They were not spared either from beatings, separation from family, even rape; they had no right to their own body, their own children, or their belongings. White women were superior to all others, yet became so at the expense of African American women whose work resulted in the seamlessly domestic household. In her narrative, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs highlights the paradox of nineteenth-century womanhood: “Slavery is terrible for men; but it is far more terrible for women. Superadded to the burden common to all, they have wrongs, and sufferings, and mortifications peculiarly their
Black women assumed multiple roles while enslaved: field hands, servants, mothers, etc. Slavery was a very demanding position to be in, requiring full participation in work. For a woman who had many roles, life was constant labor, sometimes literally. Because slaves were considered property with no personal liberty, reproduction was necessary for slave women and increased the property of the slave master. The reproductive ability of a slave woman was just as important as her ability to work and was a vital part of the slave economy: she supplied more workers. While motherhood was sweet, there was a strong reality that women bred property, not