CECILY JONES


 Slavery re-ordered the worlds of black and white women, but their
different racialised identities and class positions produced a diversity of
female experiences. The patriarchialism of Caribbean and southern U.S.
slaveholding societies demanded the subjugation of all women to white male
authority, but the exercise of power was not confined to white males. In
racially stratified societies grounded on ideologies of white superiority and
black inferiority, their racial identification with dominant ruling class white
males enabled politically marginalized white women to enjoy a range of social
privileges denied to most black women. The disparate interests of white and
black women in the slave economy ultimately militated against the possibility
that they might forge common ground on which they could stand together
against white male patriarchal authority.8 Black and white women's
responsibility for their families potentially represented a firm foundation for
mutual understanding, but the exigencies of slavery undermined sisterly
solidarity between white and black women. Enslaved mothers suckled their
mistresses' babies at their breasts, sore in the knowledge that at any moment,
they themselves could be forcibly separated from their own children.9
Mistresses enjoyed the right to legal protection from brutal husbands, but
enslaved wives could do little to resist the unwanted sexual attentions of
their masters, who routinely exploited the sexuality of enslaved women,
secure in the knowledge that her husband was rendered virtually powerless
in terms of protecting her.
 White women were idealised as the epitome of female sexual virtue, their
sexuality confined to the bounds of matrimony, and 'protected' from the
'rampant' sexual attentions of 'animalistic' black males. For enslaved women,
there was little protection from her husband, her community, her master
or mistress, or the law. Enslaved women could be forced into involuntary
sexual unions with enslaved men, as slave-owners sought to augment their
labour force by "natural" increase. Most distressingly perhaps, enslaved
women carried the additional burden of the self-knowledge that, in bringing
children into the world, they were often consigning them to a lifetime of
enslavement. In general, British colonial law dictated that children inherit
their mother's status, a legal principle that ensured that the offspring of
enslaved women remained within the slave community. Hence, white women
represented the reproducers of freedom, and black women as the literal
reproducers of unfreedom.10
 Warm, intimate relations might develop between a mistress and her female
slaves, and doubtless many mistresses and their female slaves recognized
their common subjugation to white male patriarchal authority, but ultimately,

8 See Morton (1996:9).
9 For a discussion of the centrality of enslaved women's reproduction, see Morgan
(2004).
10 See Forde-Jones (2003).