Bibliographic details and abstracts are available to all. Downloads of full-text dissertations are restricted to University of Portsmouth members who must login. MPhils may be accessed by all.

Abstract

When considering maternal experiences within the eighteenth and nineteenth-century antebellum south, a whole plethora of difficult and harrowing experiences are present.  This dissertation will focus on such experiences but mainly identifies and analyses those of rape, sexual coercion, family separation and exploitation over wet-nursing. Of course, as this dissertation focuses on the narrative of the enslaved, it will utilise source bases which are representative of this scarce and historically ignored account. To do so, it will include and has studied sources such as those within the South Carolina, Texas and Georgia Slave Narratives and the autobiography of Harriet Jacobs, alongside others like Charles Ball and images from Henry Bibb.  These sources (amongst others) are utilised within the analysis, which explains that the bodily autonomy of enslaved women was consistently underscored, both through a political (Partus Sequitur Ventrum) and social (economically driven slaveholders) purview. These structures enabled the normalisation of the abuse of enslaved women’s abilities to reproduce to maintain the institution of Slavery, particularly after the abolishment of the Slave Trade in 1808. Moreover, it will assess the topic of family separations and exploitations in wet-nursing which either interfered or altogether stopped the mother’s ability to rear and nurture her children.  Importantly, this dissertation reflects on the aspect of resistance, such as the employment of contraception, aborticides, kinship networks and continuing to identify as mothers with maternal sentiments. These modes of resistance demonstrate the enslaved mothers’ resilience and perseverance despite their exposure to these traumatic experiences.

Course: History - BA (Hons) - C1087

Date Deposited: 2023-10-11

URI/permalink: https://library.port.ac.uk/dissert/dis14201.html