Difference between revisions of "Week 8 Questions/Comments-327 11"
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This essay was certainly not without its own biases. I was with Lebsock up until her explanation of women using their wills to free their slaves. According to Lebsock, the vast majority of southern women were really opposed to slavery deep down, and showed it in their wills, and slavery was really perpetuated by all those evil men. I buy her explanations (personalization) for wills, administration, etc, but this is a little too romanticized for me. --Stef L. | This essay was certainly not without its own biases. I was with Lebsock up until her explanation of women using their wills to free their slaves. According to Lebsock, the vast majority of southern women were really opposed to slavery deep down, and showed it in their wills, and slavery was really perpetuated by all those evil men. I buy her explanations (personalization) for wills, administration, etc, but this is a little too romanticized for me. --Stef L. | ||
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| + | As Lebsock notes, "Women, more than men, noticed and responded to the needs and merits of particular persons." (142) Throughout this reading, Lebsock emphasized this point. What I find most interesting about the reading, though, is the manner in which it seemed (to me, anyway) that Lebsock almost danced around a fairly obvious point while describing attitudes about slavery and slaves, without coming out and saying it. For me, after reading Mary Cumming's description of her specific slaves ("...Mary is a pretty good worker at her needle, she is now sitting beside me making a slip for herself) it seemed so patently obvious to me that women's more individualistic approach to slaves was due to their far greater and more meaningful interactions with slaves. While Lebsock goes part of the way--discussing, as Stef mentions, women's increasing likelihood to personalize their wills relative to their actual relationships, not custom or law--she fails to explore why that was the case. While men would interact with slaves more fleetingly, while in transit, overseeing work, or giving orders, it was not--as far as I know--uncommon for white women and their slaves to be performing household tasks at the same time, and in the same location. That is the exact set of circumstances that can lead to regular discussion, to feelings of intimacy, and to a meaningful individual relationship. That seemed even clearer to me when compared with men like Edmund Ruffin, the proslavery apologist who--almost intentionally, it seems--omitted any mention of his slaves from his otherwise intensely personal writings. For Ruffin, his interactions with slaves ("...yanking off his boots, one imagines, stirring up his woodstove, serving his suppers") tended to be shorter, single-action based interactions, unlike the prolongued interactions between white women and their slaves (as with Cummings, sitting beside her slave while one wrote a letter and the other sewed). -- Nicole | ||
== Malefactors and Complainants == | == Malefactors and Complainants == | ||
After reading these complaints, I was struck by the fact that all of these read “after she confessed”. Did all of these women really stand up in court and say yes it was me. I did this horrible thing that you are accusing me of. Were these women force to say these things, simply to get a more bearable punishment? –Kayle P | After reading these complaints, I was struck by the fact that all of these read “after she confessed”. Did all of these women really stand up in court and say yes it was me. I did this horrible thing that you are accusing me of. Were these women force to say these things, simply to get a more bearable punishment? –Kayle P | ||
