Women Experiences in Slavery

Women Experiences in Slavery
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Introduction
Slavery was one of the cruelest developments in the entire of human history. The larger part of the 18th and 19th century saw, humans treat each other with disdain on the virtual of the skin color and their geopolitical significance. People would be treated like animals as they were used as toys for the more advanced societies. This is an era that societies that were considered inferior beaten, over-worked, raped, mutilated, executed in the cruelest manner. For the women, it much worse as most of the societies at the time considered women as inferior to men. This means that that bore the bare humiliation that came with inhumane and unthinkable mistreatment at the hands of their masters. Masters held the right to almost every aspect of the women, including whom they should marry if it ever came to that.
In the book the History of Mary Prince, she had been born in Bermuda to a family that would later be turned into slaves. When she came to England as a slave owned by The Woods, she would later escape after pleading to be free and joined Thomas Pringle a reporter who gave her the chance to write her story. At the time, Pringle was working to expose the atrocities that were committed on the slaves by the British colonies. The aspects of slavery are also echoed in the film Sankofa. The film is about a lady named Mona. In the film Mona is transported into the past where she is a slave called Shola. She works in some of the plantation to the south of United States. The film reflects that atrocities that accompanied the slaves in the united states similar to the acts of slavery in Britain and within its colonies. A comparison of the two pieces brings out some intriguing detail to the aspects of slavery that woman under the British and under the American rule.[. Sankofa, film (hollywood: Haile Gerima, 1993).]
The History of Mary prince
According to Mary, she had been born at a pond that had brackish water in Bermuda. At the time the mother was slave to Mr. Charles Myners, where her mother worked as a household slave while the father was a sawyer belonging to Mr. Trimmingham a ship builder. This is the first hint about how the slaves were treated in Britain and the several of its colonies. Her mother was not afforded the decency of giving birth in a sanitary place, but instead a she worth was a place by the pond that contaminated water. Later one when Mr. Myners dies, her mother, she and the other slaves are divided among the family members. Like property, they were allocated different family members. At the time, Mary was just an infant. She and her mother were given to captain Darrel Williams and apparently the masters gave them up as a gift to the granddaughter, called Betsy Williams. It is surprising to note that, a woman slave could be given away as a gift to another woman just because the latter was considered superior despite her age. Up to the age of twelve, Mary had been a companion to Betsy, but was later on sent away to work as a nurse. As a child, Mary did not make much of the slavery situation, until they were sold off to other owners.
Mr. Williams’s wife died, Mary was sold away to another captain who took her to Bermuda, where she exchanged masters twice before returning to Bermuda. Later she was sold to Mr. Wood who brought her to Britain. When Mr. Wood refuses to give Mary her freedom so that she could reunite with her husband (Daniel James) whom she had met and married in Antigua in 1826, she escaped and went to live with Mr. Pringle a reporter. At during her stay at Mr. Pringle’s home that they had a chance to write and publish the book.
As an adult Mary really got to understand that aspects of being a slave from poor treatment that they got. She details of the physical abuse that they slaves would endure and how being a woman all these beastly acts had impact on them. The master would whip, beat and rape the slaves at will, leaving them with scars and bruises that were rarely treated. Recovering from the injuries was also an uphill task as most of the time the women would be forced to work in their conditions.
When the women slaves got pregnant, this was not a deterrent to the master to force them to work. Like Mary detailed her ordeal of a birth, she was born as her mother worked. The master did not care whether the surroundings were sanitary to the baby or the mother. This would explain why, Mary was born at pond where the water was contaminated and brackish. Ideally, slaves were supposed to be working unless they were incapacitated by their illnesses, in which case the masters could dispose of them in which ever manner they liked. Mary details some of the time where she would refuse to work, which always earn her a beating or emotional torment from her masters.[. Sankofa, film (hollywood: Haile Gerima, 1993).]
Of importance to note is the fact that the slaves were also taken through a great ordeal of emotional turmoil as their masters mistreated them physically and emotionally, by tormenting them on a daily basis. One of the instances she describes a memory of a beating she got from one of the captains wife. In her description the wife taught her the difference between a rope, cart whip and cows skin, as she applied them on Mary skin. This is clear indication of the inhumane way that the slaves were treated. The captain’s wife in this instance did not view Mary as a woman like herself but an animal she needed to tame and enlighten. It should have come naturally for the captain’s wife to place herself as a woman in Mary’s shoes, but she was too consumed with arrogance and self-righteousness that she saw Mary as an object. She chooses instead, to mutilate Mary with whips on her bear skin, to inflict the most pain. This is quite astonishing noting that, the master was act...