"To BE FREE IS VERY SWEET:" RACIAULSED REPRESENTATIONS OF SLAVERY...


 who attended the vendue.. .Strange men.. .examined and handled me in the
 same manner that a butcher would a calf or a lamb he was about to purchase,
 and who talked about my shape and size in like words and I could no more
 understand their meaning than the dumb beasts. (Ferguson 62-63)

Before being led off to her new home, Mary further endured the spectacle of
her younger sisters subjected to the same ordeal, sold to different owners,
the family torn apart by separation, "one went one way, one another, and
our poor mammy went home with nothing" (Ferguson 63).
 The degradation endured on the auction block, and the subsequent
enforced separation from her mother and siblings represented the defining
moment of young Mary's coming to knowledge of herself as a species of
property that could be owned, bought, sold, mortgaged, hired out, put to
long hours of hard labour, and subjected to brutal punishment for alleged
infractions without legal protection. This was what it truly meant to be an
enslaved "negro," a state which until then Mary admitted only partial
knowledge. From this point, her world was abruptly and rudely transformed.
Before, life had been tolerable, but in the house of her new owners, Captain
and Mrs. Ingham, Mary's life became a constant struggle for survival, as they
strenuously sought to assert their control and the power "of the white
people's law" over this young girl's body. Mrs. Ingham immediately set about
showing Mary her duties; no sooner had Mary entered her new home than
her mistress thrust her young child into Mary's arms, before issuing a
reprimand to Mary, still raw with grief at the loss of her own family. "You are
not come here to stand up in corners and cry, you are come here to work."
Besides nursing her mistresses' young child, Mrs. Ingham taught Mary

 ...to do all sorts of household work; to wash to bake, pick cotton and wool,
 and wash floors and cook. And she taught me, how can I ever forget it!
 More things than these; she caused me to know the exact difference between
 the smart of the rope, the cart-whip and the cow-skin, when applied to my
 naked body by her cruel hand. And there was scarcely any punishment
 more dreadful than the blows I received on my face and my head from her
 hard heavy fist. She was a fearful woman, and a savage mistress to her slaves.
 (Ferguson 64-66)

 With these words, Mary challenges extant understandings of the white-
black female relationship under slavery. It was Mrs. Ingham who most
forcefully made her understand, not only what it meant to be a slave, but the
vast racial and social chasm separating free white and enslaved black women.
Mrs. Ingham's gender denied her public power, but within her household,
the mistress reigned, vigorously exercising authority and power over her
slave. Violence patterned and structured the relationship between Mary
and Mrs. Ingham, as the latter resorted to brute force in efforts to force
Mary's submission to her authority. Mrs. Ingham's brutal treatment extended