{"id":805,"date":"2024-03-12T15:10:27","date_gmt":"2024-03-12T15:10:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bexroden.com\/?p=805"},"modified":"2024-03-12T15:10:27","modified_gmt":"2024-03-12T15:10:27","slug":"after-the-condition-of-the-mother-an-analysis-of-the-1662-act-in-incidents-in-the-life-of-a-slave-girl-and-narrative-of-the-life-of-frederick-douglass","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bexroden.com\/?p=805","title":{"rendered":"“After the condition of the mother”: An Analysis of the 1662 Act in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In his chapter on the \u201cMythic Dimensions of American Capitalism,\u201d Richard Hughes presents the concept of \u201csystemic racism,\u201d which he defines as \u201ca form of racism that is embedded into the American economic system\u201d (Hughes 189). Still present in modern America, this system \u201ctends to ensure that whites benefit from a capitalist economy while blacks do not\u201d (188). While centering his argument on the more recent manifestations of systemic racism, Hughes first directs the audience to its origin\u2014American laws established to support and further the institution of slavery, which he calls a \u201cvast economic system of human bondage and death\u201d (188). The key term in these observations is “economy”; and of the many laws instituted to support slavery in terms of both collective and personal American economy, one stands out significantly among the others by the extent to which it dehumanizes enslaved people, capitalizes upon the abuse of human bodies, and not only permits but rewards scandalous behavior by white oppressors. The 1662 Act, passed by the Virginia House of Burgesses, ordained that the social status of newborn children would be determined \u201caccording to the condition of the mother\u201d (Morgan 4). This clause was later termed, Partus Sequitur Ventrem<\/em> <\/em>after the tradition of the ancient laws governing Roman slavery.[1]<\/sup><\/a> Through it\u2019s inclusion into American society, slaveowners were provided a free and effortless avenue for increasing their \u2018property,’ as well as an unchecked outlet for incontinent, licentious desires. By assessing comments pertaining to this clause from two slave narratives\u2014Harriet Jacob\u2019s Incidents <\/em>and Frederick Douglass\u2019 Narrative<\/em>\u2014it becomes evident that while the institution of slavery inflicted immeasurable suffering indiscriminately upon the men and women bound by its chains, the victims of this law specifically\u2014the abused women and abandoned children\u2014endured additional afflictions, undergoing what Douglass names the \u201cgreater hardships\u201d of slavery (Douglass 18).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In their narratives, both Jacobs and Douglass spend considerable time reflecting on the hypocrisy of southern Christianity\u2014that of slaveowners, specifically. In a chapter dedicated to this observation, Jacobs appeals to American missionaries to focus their ministry on the \u201cheathen[s]\u201d at home (that is, the slaveowners), rather than those abroad; she implores them, \u201cTell [the slaveowners] it is sinful to sell their own children, and atrocious to violate their own daughters\u201d (Jacobs 62). These two “sinful” and “atrocious” acts that Jacobs highlights in this instance are direct results of the immoral freedoms provided by the Partus<\/em> law\u2014a legal manifestation of hypocritical Christianity. As presented in both narratives, this law removes all legal, and therefore moral, obligations for slaveowners to defend the purity of enslaved women and to acknowledge the children born of their seed, giving them instead the freedom to \u201csell their own children\u201d and \u201cviolate their own daughters\u201d for personal gain. Both Jacobs and Douglass provide interpretations of this law in their narratives, emphasizing its significance in the enslaved community, and offering their personal explanations for the motives that ostensibly lie at its core.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Incidents<\/em>, Jacobs posits that \u201cslaveholders have been cunning enough to enact that ‘the child shall follow the condition of the\u00a0mother<\/em>,’ not of the\u00a0father<\/em>, thus taking care that licentiousness shall not interfere with avarice\u201d (64 emphasis original). The term, “cunning,” that she initially attributes to slaveholders and legislators implies that the law was enacted with secret, underlying motives not evident on the surface, yet fully known by those who established it. The suggested need to satisfy these motives through secret means speaks to the nature of motives\u2014simply unfit to be observed in the light; motives so base, they must not be mentioned or referenced directly. Yet Jacobs uproots and exposes them here, claiming that the reason for establishing the Partus<\/em> law is strategically to authorize licentious behavior as a means to achieve capital increase. By the establishment of this law, sexual abuse of enslaved women not only goes unchecked and unpunished, but is encouraged<\/em> as it becomes, through the law, an effortless and profitable avenue of increasing one\u2019s \u2018property.\u2019 As the historian, Jennifer Morgan explains, the \u201cincrease of enslaved women [was] the by-product of a commodified maternity,\u201d the objectification and exploitation of human bodies for capital gain (Morgan 14). Douglass presents a similar interpretation in his Narrative<\/em>, implementing into his argument the same terminology as that used by Jacobs, calling the law a \u201ccunning arrangement\u201d by slaveowners (Douglass 18).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Douglass proclaims that \u201cslaveholders have ordained, and by law established, that the children of slave women shall in all cases follow the condition of their mothers; and this is done too obviously to administer to their own lusts, and make a gratification of their wicked desires profitable as well as pleasurable\u201d (18). While Jacobs, in her interpretation, positions “avarice” as a driving force behind slaveowners\u2019 licentious behavior, Douglass positions licentious behavior\u2014”lust,” “wicked desires,” and sexual “pleasure”\u2014as the central factor driving slaveowners to violate enslaved women\u2019s bodies, enjoying the capital increase of any offspring that may result from such behavior as a secondary benefit. By further claiming that \u201cthis is done too obviously,\u201d Douglass asserts that the heinous motives behind the establishment of the Partus<\/em> law are, in fact, entirely evident to all those not benefitting from its permissions\u2014those victimized by the law as well as those within abolitionist societies working to eradicate it. Yet despite the number of those who saw the law for what it was\u2014a facade, an immoral outlet for licentious behavior and personal gain\u2014it remained legal because of the legislative tactics masking it under regulations of “property rights” and other common, widely-accepted laws regarding the institution of slavery.[2]<\/sup><\/a> Thus, it was only by the “cunning” aspects of this arrangement\u2014the deceit and immorality characterizing its enforcement\u2014that slaveholders emerged, without a guilty verdict, rewarded by \u201csell[ing] their own children\u201d and \u201cviolat[ing] their own daughters\u201d (Jacobs 62). Such experiences are what Douglass determines fall under the \u201cgreater hardships\u201d of bondage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jacob\u2019s Incidents<\/em> reveals insights particularly into the \u201cgreater hardships\u201d inflicted on enslaved women by the Partus<\/em> law; women who were, as previously expressed, compelled by unspeakable means, to act as vessels of increase for their masters, as objects abused into advancing the lines of slavery and fueling the beast of \u201cracial capitalism\u201d (Morgan 14). In her article on the Partus<\/em> law, Morgan links slavery to capitalism through this term based on \u201cantebellum plantation econom[ies]\u201d that evidently benefitted from the P<\/em>artus<\/em> clause (14). She explains that \u201cthe law locked enslaved women into a productive relationship whereby everything that a body could do was harnessed to the capital accumulation of another\u201d (17). The black female body, then, was not only viewed by law as subhuman, but moreover as an object of capital increase, of reproductive labor that could be controlled and regulated, like a factory of material goods, for strategic capital production. Aware of these treacherous legal implications for enslaved women, as well as the inevitable implications of emotional and physical distress, Jacobs laments the birth of her daughter, expressing, \u201cslavery is terrible for men; but it is far more terrible for women. Superadded to the burden common to all,\u00a0they\u00a0have wrongs, and sufferings, and mortifications peculiarly their own\u201d (Jacobs 64). Her lamentations are rooted in experience, as she herself was a victim of daily unwelcome sexual advances by her master (who was protected and encouraged to act by the Partus<\/em> law), and the resultant fits of jealousy and maltreatment from her mistress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Jacobs\u2019 Incidents <\/em>depicts the hardships of enslaved women under the Partus<\/em> law, Douglass\u2019 Narrative<\/em> reveals insights specifically into the \u201cgreater hardships\u201d inflicted on the children affected by the the same. While a master\u2019s unwelcome sexual advances most often fell upon enslaved women, a mistress\u2019s jealous fits were common afflictions for both the women and children victimized by the Partus<\/em> law; and while mistresses often viewed enslaved women as potential threats of the husbands\u2019 infidelity, mulatto children born to enslaved women by their masters were, to them, the proof of it. Douglass notes that as such, they were \u201ca constant offense to their mistress,\u201d trapped in a tumultuous situation that often resulted in the hideous act of fathers marketing their own children for capital gain (Douglass 19). In a manner similar to Jacobs, Douglass presents the conditions of such children from his own experience as a mulatto child born after the condition of his enslaved mother and\u2014as \u201cwhisper[s]\u201d and rumors would have it\u2014born also of his first master\u2019s seed and sold shortly thereafter (Douglass 18). Thus, through the insights born of experience regarding the Partus<\/em> law in both of these narratives, Jacobs and Douglass communicate not only the extent to which victims of such law suffered arguably \u201cgreater hardships\u201d within their chains, but also draw vital attention to the absurdity, hypocrisy, and cruelty of “systemic racism” (as previously termed by Hughes) infiltrating the American economy at the time\u2014attention that modern readers ought not dismiss, as the subtle remains of such potent “systemic racism” still permeate the American economy today.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

April 20, 2020<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Works Cited<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave<\/em>. Edited by Robert G. O\u2019Meally. Barnes and Noble Classics, New York, 2003.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hughes, Richard, T. Myths America Lives By: White Supremacy and the Stories that Give Us Meaning<\/em>. University of Illinois Press, Urbana, 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jacobs, Harriet. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl<\/em>. Edited by Nellie Y. McKay and Frances Smith Foster. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, 2001.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Morgan, Jennifer L. \u201cPartus sequitur ventrem: Law, Race, and Reproduction in Colonial Slavery.\u201d Small Axe<\/em>, Vol. 22, No. 1, March 2018, pp. 1-17.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

[1]<\/sup><\/a> See p. 4 of Jennifer Morgan\u2019s article cited above. Here, she explains that the Partus<\/em> clause was given its Latin name in the nineteenth-century by the historian, William Henig.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[2]<\/sup><\/a> See p. 4 of\u00a0 Jennifer Morgan\u2019s article for the legal conversations of “property rights” and notions of heritability concerning enslaved offspring that all led to the institution of Partus<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In his chapter on the \u201cMythic Dimensions of American Capitalism,\u201d Richard Hughes presents the concept of \u201csystemic racism,\u201d which he defines as \u201ca form of racism that is embedded into the American economic system\u201d (Hughes 189). Still present in modern America, this system \u201ctends to ensure that whites benefit from a capitalist economy while blacks…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[875,870,876,817,863,867,862,864,878,879,865,822,861,871,877,872,882,842,881,866,880,869,868,883,874,823,873],"class_list":["post-805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-critical-analyses","tag-1662-act","tag-american","tag-condition-of-the-mother","tag-frederick-douglass","tag-harriet-jacobs","tag-hughes","tag-incidents-in-the-life-of-a-slave-girl","tag-jennifer-l-morgan","tag-licentious","tag-lust","tag-morgan","tag-myths-america-lives-by","tag-narrative-of-the-life","tag-partus","tag-partus-sequitur-ventrem","tag-property-rights","tag-racial-capitalism","tag-racism","tag-rape","tag-richard-t-hughes-2","tag-sexual-abuse","tag-slave","tag-stories-that-give-us-meaning","tag-systematic-racism","tag-systemic-racism","tag-white-supremacy","tag-william-henig"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bexroden.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bexroden.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bexroden.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bexroden.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bexroden.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=805"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bexroden.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":806,"href":"https:\/\/bexroden.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805\/revisions\/806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bexroden.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bexroden.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bexroden.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}