In the past few weeks we have read various passages about different events and also learned about them during lectures in class. However, there is a specific passage that has helped me further my understanding on a topic I didn’t really know much about which in short involves how patriarchy has been an issue since the beginning of time. The book Out Of The House Of Bondage by Thavolia Glymph, first chapter “The Gender of Violence” gives a great understanding and interpretation of how life for women got harder when the patriarchy and slavery issues combined. “If anything, the joining of patriarchy and slavery made the lives of mistresses harsher and more difficult overall, (Glymh, 21). I found this very intriguing to start off because in the past I thought of slavery as obviously a very broad topic but here specifically shows that there is a-lot of things to slavery that I will continue to learn about. Previously I connected slavery with capitalism which for me was already a great “discovery” and here learning that patriarchy is another thing that plays its role in slavery. Women are usually taking on their role of being the housewife in the past as well, “..the mistress emerges from slave testimony as the plantation authority figure who pled for better treatment of slaves, ‘as a white woman who tried to to live up to the responsibilities of her position,” (Glymph,23). Although women of plantations were “taking up their responsibilities,” they were still in a way enslaved themselves. In a way their “master” was their husband, once again supporting this idea that patriarchy and slavery are interconnected and women being seen as objects. As the passage goes very in depth about this topic there was a specific question at the end that intrigued me the most, “ If rich white women in the Cotton Kingdom had gained equal rights with their men, how likely is it that they would have agitated for their slaves’ emancipation?,”(Glymph, 31). I started asking myself this question because the truth is we don’t know. Every human is different but given the time racism was a huge thing so, would color have impacted their decision on whether to fight for their slaves, or not? Or were the rich white women only pleasant because how (some may say) they were in similar positions as the slaves themselves? This passage bought not only a deeper understanding on how slavery was and how patriarchy had a role in it but also raised a bigger question to think about. What if things happened differently and the women were in charge instead of the men?
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A very thoughtful post—I’m glad that you found the Glymph reading so illuminating! That said, I wonder if you miss an important dimension of her argument, which is also critical of previous feminist histories of plantation mistresses. Like them, Glymph also sees both enslaved women and white mistresses as trapped in a system of patriarchy (though I would caution against describing the latter as “enslaved”); but she is critical of what she says has been their tendency to excuse their behavior or explain it as a function of paternalism. Rather, Glymph says that slaveowning women were just as cruel, violent, and invested in slavery as male planters. So it seems unlikely (to me at least) that she would answer the question she raises on p. 31 in the affirmative.