It had not occured to me until reading this novel about the realities of gender and slavery. I was aware from history classes and such that there were a lot of instances of sexual crimes against women slaves. I did not realize that similar incidents were also true for the males. I had not realized that it was not totally uncommon for women slave owners, or wifes of slave owners, to have sexual encounters with thier male slaves as the white males did with the women slaves. This also makes me wonder about other typed of sexual crimes that may have been commited on plantations.
Today it is not uncommon to hear of sexual crimes that are not commited by someone of the oppostie gender of the victim. Now a lot of crimes are carried out by people of the same gender as the victims. Dessa's encounter with the very cruel wife of her owner, further makes me question the roles of white women during this time in history. I wish that the book touched on this subject more than it did. Althoug, it did do a great job of bringing this mistreatment to my attention that I had not previously heard of.
The concept of white women sleeping with slaves was unheard of to me as well. I have heard of white men sleeping with female slaves but the act of women choosing and seducing young slaves was a striking to me. It is an odd concept of one race thinking so little of another race yet being so intimate with them.
ReplyDelete