17
argued that enslaved women were able to take pleasure and control in some of their bodily decisions as they secretly attended enslaved community parties or were purposefully absent from their labour. 30 Other scholars such as Emily West and Stephanie Li have even argued that enslaved women used motherhood as a form of resistance. 31 These acts by enslaved women were more discreet forms of everyday resistance which were not noticed by slaveholders as often as overt acts of resistance. Scholars such as Stephanie Camp and Erin Shearer demonstrate that some enslaved women were committed to overt acts of resistance such as violence against their slaveholders or running away from the plantation. 32 Enslaved women’ s resistance must not be understood as impulsive but rather shaped by the ongoing relationship between systematic gendered exploitation and survival; studies of enslaved women’ s exploitation must sit alongside studies of resistance. Therefore, this study highlights how slaveholders spatially organised the plantation to exploit enslaved women’ s bodies through violent and systematic means.
The Plantation Layout
In the last two decades, there has been a focus on slavery and the antebellum South outside of the plantation into the public slave market. However, dominance on the plantation was one of the ruling strategies for slaveholders to have power over enslaved women’ s bodies and uphold the institution of slavery. As Glymph and Stephanie Jones-Rogers have shown, the plantation was a domestic and
1851” In Black and White Masculinity in the American South, 1800-2000, ed. by Sergio Lussana and Lydia Plath.( Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009).
30
Stephanie Camp,“ The Pleasures of Resistance: Enslaved Women and Body Politics in the Plantation South, 1830-1861,” The Journal of Southern History 68, no. 3( 2002): 533 – 572 https:// link. gale. com / apps / doc / A90471645 / ITOF? u = keele _ tr & sid = bookmark-ITOF & xid = d8a21667 and Stephanie Camp, Closer to freedom: enslaved women and everyday resistance in the plantation South( University of North Carolina Press, 2004).
31
Emily West and Erin Shearer,“ Fertility control, shared nurturing, and dual exploitation: the lives of enslaved mothers in the antebellum United States." In Motherhood, Childlessness and the Care of Children in Atlantic Slave Societies, ed. By Camillia Cowling et al.( Routledge, 2020), 117-131. See also, Stephanie Li " Motherhood as Resistance in Harriet Jacobs ' s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl," Legacy 23, no. 1( 2006): 14-29. https:// doi. org / 10.1353 / leg. 2006.0009
32
Erin Fiona Shearer, " Women of violence: challenging perceptions of enslaved women’ s resistance in the antebellum United States, 1808-1861 "( PhD diss., University of Reading, 2024) 10.48683 / 1926.00115296 and Stephanie Camp, Closer to freedom: enslaved women and everyday resistance in the plantation South( University of North Carolina Press, 2004).