5 Assignment 04

In Morgan’s novel, chapter 1 discusses the concept of monstrosity because of how the Europeans used biblical references such as satan to describe the black women of their indigenous lands such as Jamaica or the West Indies. Several Englishmen have portrayed black women during this time as monsters by exploiting their labor on their own land and described the cultural differences between them in racial ways. An example of how they were portrayed at this time as monstrous would be the description of the black women’s bodies while naked during laborious work. They went into significant detail of how different they were from the Europeans to make them feel like they needed to be put into labor. Native Americans were also made to be seem monstrous because of their cannibalistic behavior and rituals which gathering dead human remains. Again the Englishmen went into detail of the Native Americans eating habits which were made to be seen as culturally inferior from that of Europeans.

The concept of monstrosity can also be seen in Federici’s chapter discussing the degradation of women and those who were forced into labor. When an open – field system failed and returned back to feudalism, this led people to scavenge for food and hunter/gather for crops. There was an increase in poor squatters and they were led to beg to their knees for a job. There was a deep hatred for this economic system and led to great instability between social classes after the collapse of these open fields. Even the elderly had to take care of themselves and had no on to watch over them, they’ve even started to loot. After the appropriation of a wage slave system, many workers defied this because this led them to have to defend their land from being taken away from them because of an inability to pay. The workers felt that they would rather work on the roads than to be offered a wage.

The concept of “monstrosity” bridges both Morgan’s and Davis’ works.  In Morgan’s work, the history how European countries justified the exploitation and the enslavement of black women is explored. In Davis’ work, Davis further explores the history but also connects the “dehumanization of slavery” and the role of a black woman as a slave in America.

Morgan discusses how Europeans saw the physical features of black women as flawed. Morgan shares that through the writings of English authors, these physical features were being compared to European women. An African woman’s features were depicted as less beautiful and more “monstrous”. This image of “monstrosity” dehumanized women and was used to justify the enslavement of African women. Further images were depicted of women delivery children without suffering and pain. Moreover, these women supposedly fed their children with their long sagging breast while their children were on their backs. These horrendous images further portrayed African women as barbaric and even as cannibals. Morgan’s establishes the history of how by dehumanizing African women, Europeans were able to justify why they enslaved African women.

Davis connects the European history of the enslavement of women to further justify the exploitation of black women in America during slavery. Davis’ cites that because the Europeans already dehumanized black women, the womanhood of the black woman was also taken away. The ‘monstrosity” concept lived on in America. Davis implies that they had no identity in society, and could almost be seen as being “genderless”. A black woman who was a slave had a clear role to slave owners. Black woman were their possessions and were not seen as individuals. Their roles were to work and reproduce in order to ensure the future of the workforce. Davis describes woman as being “breeders”. Because of the “monstrous” and “dehumanized” images of black women slaves, Davis cites that this was not only justification for enslavement, but also justification for the horrendous abuse that women faced at the hands of their slave owners.

Women are often told how they should raise their children. Often time if a mother does not live up to society expectations they are subjected as bad mothers/unfitted mother only to have their children taking away by social services and placed in an orphanage home. Women continuously fight against political and social structure to keep their children. Only one slip up and their child or children is taken away. Consequently because of the oppression these women faces Davis and Morgan emphasize in their novel about motherhood and how women are seen and treated based on demography and ideology as their core structure. Morgan emphasis that African women were savage and cannibalism; their only purpose for children is to feed the population. Many of these women didn’t take any pride and consolidation in murdering their children. They only purpose of having children was for survival. These women didn’t portray motherly instinct of protection towards their vulnerable toddlers instead they were simply means of nutriment. Similarly, Davis emphasizes that women did not only fought against slavery but fought for the emancipation to free their children. Davis uses Sojourner Truth to illustrate that women were not only workers but breeders. Even though they rear children they were subjected to giving them away. Like cows and dogs after labor they would return to work with their babies placed with another slave child, retired black midwives or sadly lay their new born at the end of the row of corn in the blazing sun. These women did not have a chance to see their babies grow into a man or woman instead like cows and dogs once their babies were wean they are simply sold . Women fought back when they were told their children will be sold. Davis uses the narrative from Uncle Tom’s Cabin of this good Christian slave house keeper who rebelled against the idea that her son will be sold. She believed if she was a good house keeper to her white family her son would be save only to find out that the family couldn’t provide for the house hold and selling a member was urgent. She soon took her son and ran away. She risked being killed only to protect her son. She loved her son even though blacks were portrayed as breeders and emotionless instead she felt like a mother and did what any mother would do, which is to protect. Both authors writes about motherhood but their conclusion and assumption of motherhood were based on social economy and demography.

The concept of Motherhood is discussed, both in Frederici and Morgan’s works. Both of them addressed different time periods in which the concept was being developed differently. In “The Accumulation of Labor and the Degradation of Difference”, Frederici takes a more modern approach to the concept of motherhood. She starts to discuss how the women were already being controlled alone with their bodies. After the Black Plague, natives were dying or even killed by the Europeans, who had brought this burden to them. But in order to keep the population balanced, as people were dying more needed to be born. But after the oppresion society had been onder, specially women, they had decided to take stand up for themselves and protest in some way. The introduction of birth control was now a new cause for society to attack women for wanting to control their bodies. Women were trying to decide amongst themselves when they wanted to be mothers or if they wanted to at all. But now it would be almost impossible for them to take those decisions themselves. Pregnancies started to be almost a requirement for women. But in the other hand we have Jennifer Morgan, in “Some could suckle over their shoulder”, discussing the base for how motherhood was seen in a much earlier time. In around the 1500’s , conquistadors were criticizing women in the new lands for how they maintained their bodies. They described how it was nothing to these women when it came to giving birth. They continued to describe with very degrading words, how to them these women were having basically animals. Motherhood was said to be absent from this time, which was something just outrageous for these Europeans. It could had been better one of the main reasons as to why women started to be controlled when it came to pregnancies and the way they were mothers

Both Morgan and Davis works, talks about the concept of labor within woman and how overtime they were oppressed with little opportunities given to them. During these time periods, women were not treated with equal rights. In Morgans work, he described that when the English men and women were settled into the New World colonies, they had struggled with the females being too weak to do any work. They needed both White and Black women to do the hard manual labor. The women were forced to do these hard labors no matter what condition they were in, if they were sick or even if they were pregnant, they worked. People would disagree that the women shouldn’t be working if having any of these conditions but they would not back down from the job. In Davis work, it talked about how women had faced many obstacles with oppression but more so Black women then White women.  Black women have worked outside of their homes. Since Black women were considered slaves, the labor they went through took over their lives. Women were viewed no less than men, so they were viewed as profitable labor units. One of the scholars in Davis work said that the slave woman was first a full-time worker for her owner, and then a wife, mother and homemaker. Back then women’s roles were emphasizes as nurturing mothers and gentle companions and housekeepers for their husband, however, Black women were anomalies. Most Black who were slaves were either a house servant or a nanny. Both of these works talked about the struggles regarding the harsh labor the women back then had to experience. I believed regardless if you were a women, the difficulty of the labor back then was more determined on what race you were if anything. I think Black women had faced more serve labor than a White women faced during this time period. What made these too works connected was that these women would refuse to give up  doing labor because they felt like they needed to do something for themselves, by sustaining a proper and consistent lifestyles.

In this response I am focusing on the concept of “motherhood”, and how it’s been covered in different readings. Throughout the readings, we read about how women were oppressed and given very little opportunities. In particular, we read about how mothers had severe expectations placed on them, such as obeying their husbands and taking care of their children. However, in this passage, Davis discusses how this ideal of motherhood doesn’t fully apply to female black slaves. “The slave system defined Black people as chattel. Since women, no less than men, were viewed as profitable labor-units, they might as well have been genderless as far as the slaveholders were concerned. In the words of one scholar, “the slave woman was first a full-time worker for her owner, and only incidentally a wife, mother and homemaker.”10 Judged by the evolving nineteenth century ideology of femininity, which emphasized women’s roles as nurturing mothers and gentle companions and housekeepers for their husbands, Black women were practically anomalies.” (Davis, 9) Like Davis, Morgan talked about the different standards that applied to black mothers. “Like his predecessors, Ligon offered further proof of Africans’ capacity for physical labor-their aptitude for slavery-through ease of childbearing. “In a fortnight [after giving birth] this woman is at worke with her Pickaninny at her back, as merry a soule as any is there.” 104 In the Americas, African women’s purportedly pain-free childbearing thus continued to be central… “when slave mothers go to work, they tie the young children onto their backs. While they work they frequently give their children the breasts, across the armpits, and let them suckle.” In less outlandish terms then, Spoeri worked to reconcile the tension between mothering and hard labor.” (Morgan, 48-49) In this passage, Morgan discusses how travelers reconciled the contradiction between the hard labor that would be expected of black female slaves and the usual expectations of motherhood at that time. At that time, (white) women were expected to be nurturing, gentle and to not work.

Davis and Morgan both discuss the concept of motherhood and how it is applied differently to white and black mothers. In my opinion, these standards are applied to maintain white male supremacy. When it comes to white women, these men want women to be obedient and gentle, and not work (not have economic power). As for black women, these man want them to preform hard labor. Therefore, the expectation or stereotype placed on women is that they can handle both hard labor and child rearing.

One concept that is mentioned in Morgan’s and Federici’s works’ is labor. In Federici’s book, she discusses at one point of the conditions women had to often go through in Europe in order to survive. In Morgan’s book, she discusses mostly about how women are perceived in the New World and Africa. These perceptions often dealt with marriage, children, their bodies, and labor. Even though both authors’ views were based on different locations, there is still a connection between the two works.

Federici mentions how women were often left behind to take care of the home and the children. Their husbands would work and it was not enough to sustain a life, so this would cause the women to work. During that time, women did not get paid so much compared to men. They often had to purchase the cheapest food thy could get. Even that was not enough and it would lead to riots in France. They had to leave their children behind at home just to work since they were living in a lower class area.

In Morgan’s book, Vespucci mentions that women would never refuse labor even when having children. However, it did not seem appropriate for them to do that since they are women. They should be maintaining the home and taking care of the children. He never saw it as something more modern. The women also would not work in the house because they were too busy trying to do labor to sustain a life as well, just the women in Europe of Federici’s book.

In both books they discussed the labor of women of different locations, but still seem to be connected through the fact that they could not refuse labor because it was their way of sustaining their own life along with their children’s. It does not matter of the location but women were still getting the same kind of hassle.

Throughout history the black woman has been depicted as a strong able woman who could endure laborious hours as oppose to her white counterpart. This is portrayed in both Morgan’s and Federici’s works. Morgan describes European settlers traveling to Africa and describing the women with breasts hanging below their Navels  (Morgan, 1997:14). In the European’s perspective, the women’s hanging breasts predetermined them to a life of labor. This narrative was used to justify their enslavement, as they were seen as inferior and could only be used to benefit the white man’s growing authority in the capitalistic society. The black woman’s physical characteristics were used again and again to predispose them to labor. This ideology was later turned widespread as their beliefs were published in dozens of pieces of literature. Federici’s publication focuses more so on the troubles women faced due to limitations. Prior to land privatization women were able to fend for themselves alongside their male counterparts. After the creation of land enclosures women were not able to compare themselves to men. It limited women to domestic labors such as cooking, cleaning and caring for. Reproductive work was paid, for limited time, at low costs. Throughout the years reproductive labor was no longer compensated in capital but was expected and became a “natural vocation” (Federici, 2004:86). Although Federici focused her piece on the European woman of the sixteen hundreds the degradation resembled that of the African woman during the Exploration era. In Europe the men had control over women’s reproduction, they were able to regulate their capital and image. The woman was yet again diminished into a second class citizen, who was forced to settle with the limits put upon them. European women were not in control of their socioeconomic state in the growing capitalistic world. The African women was limited to image fixed upon them as they were seen as masculine meaning they could endure both manual labor and reproductive labor. Both the European and African women were seen as inferior to the white man and were exposed to labors that European men dictated.

Davis and Morgan both discuss the concept of motherhood in both of their works. During this time, black women were view as assets. They were objects and breeders who were of great financial value. Black women were only good for increasing the slave population during this time. Females were valued more than males because they were capable of bearing children and working in the fields simultaneously. In the works of Davis the concept of “motherhood” was mentioned on page 12, where the black mothers would still have to be working on the field while their babies would be on their backs. Black mothers would also go through the hardship of their own babies being sold off to slavery.  Black women could not be viewed as the weaker sex in the work force as while as black males couldn’t be considered the family provider since all men, women and children were considered to be provider for the slave owners. Black mothers would have to be very strong to be able to go through that much hardship and that is why in the works of Davis the concept of “motherhood” for black women was considered to be a very difficult struggle knowing the fact that your kids will be sold at any point in time. In Morgan’s work, she mentions how black women were depicted as animals due to their race. The concept of “motherhood” is discuss in Morgan’s work when she states that due to the race of black women their were only viewed as a form of income. Motherhood was a concept that was nonexistent for black women, they were forced into giving birth and their kids were sold in order to increase slave population and the slaves owners income. Whereas white women enjoyed the full affect of “motherhood” they gave birth to their kids and raised them without any fear of their kids being sold away. Morgan also talks about how in some culture women were shamed for having many kids and often their kids would be killed right after birth. Both Davis and Morgan’s work demonstrate the concept of motherhood and how black women were viewed as breeders instead of mothers and because of this the concept of “motherhood” was pretty much nonexistent to black women.