Women in Chains: The Legacy of Slavery in Black Women's Fiction

Introduction

Introduction “Feminism” often conjures up idyllic visions of a united sisterhood; however, black feminists such as Hazel Carby and bell hooks, among others, have questioned the existence of a sisterhood of black and white women. Carby states, “Considering the history of the failure of any significant political alliances between black and white women in the nineteenth century, I challenge the impulse in the contemporary women’s movement to discover a lost sisterhood and to reestablish feminist solidarity.”1 She implies that contemporary feminists are searching for a sisterhood that is more imagined than real. hooks is even more critical of racism within feminist movements : “Every women’s movement in America from its earliest origin to the present day has been built on a racist foundation.”2 They demonstrate that all too often when feminists presume to speak about women, the assumption is that what is true for the white middle-class woman is true for all women. This assumption is evident in the tendency of some feminists to fall into “essentialism .” Feminism is based on the belief that women share a common experience of subordination to men; however, in an attempt to identify an “essence” of a “common” experience, there is a tendency to flatten the experience of all women into an image that denies the rich variety of women’s experiences. This image then forms a static xi xii Introduction gender identity in that a woman’s femininity or gender is boiled down to some aspect that is deemed to be shared by all women.3 However, other aspects of personhood complicate a woman’s gender identity and make it difficult to generalize about women as a group. Contemporary feminists have begun to realize the impossibility of separating gender issues from other aspects of identity such as race, class, sexual preference, and nationality, to name a few. However, despite the greater awareness of the problems of essentialism, there is still the desire among many feminists to speak about women as a group, which is connected by some essential factor. For some, this means returning to biology as a common denominator for all women. Shared biology, and particularly maternity , are then seen as sites from which to speak about females, womanhood, and motherhood. This is not to say that this is the only reason for feminist interest in maternity; the interest is much more complex. How one mothers and the way in which mothering is continued in society have many ramifications for gender identity. However, for the purpose of this project, I am focusing on the understandable, yet problematic attraction to maternity as a common bond for all women. While I appreciate the appeal of such a view of maternity, I will argue in the following pages that maternity or mothering is a social construction that must be separated from the biological process of giving birth. While most women are capable of giving birth, all do not and those that do give birth vary in their approach to mothering. Motherhood is not merely an aspect of gender, but also a function of race, class, sexual preference, nationality, et cetera in that each of these things impact the way in which mothering is performed. In other words, mothering is not a stable, static event, but a changing, flexible phenomenon. This project critiques the notion of maternity and shared biology as a common bond for all women by analyzing the slavery institution . During this period of American history, one sees the separation of the biological process of birthing and the gendered act of mothering. This separation of birthing and mothering was based primarily on race and to a lesser degree on class, as female slaves were excluded from the mothering realm. I argue that the slave system attempted to degender slaves by treating them as chattel. I contend that although slaveowners recognized sex differences by Introduction xiii using female slaves as breeders, they did not acknowledge gender differences. My analysis begins by looking at the work of Hortense Spillers and Angela Davis, who note the degendered status of female slaves. While I will follow the lead of Spillers and Davis, I believe changing their frame of reference enhances their arguments. They both present their arguments from the viewpoint of the slave masters, but the slaves probably did not view themselves as degendered. I argue that despite the intentions of the master class, the degendering process was not...