Slavery In Different Forms
Slavery In Different Forms
The slavery in the 17th century to the late 18th century was rampant all over the world. The slaves had tough will that made them endure such moments with the hope of having a better life. The women had little rights too. They had no choice on choosing their right suitors and had no choice but to comply. In Africa, tribes that had lost during the wars were captured and solved by the local tribes and the colonial government to the sultans. In Greek, the women had their suitors chosen for them irrespective of love. This article tries to justify if the slaves and the females across different societies had the right to a proper and more free life.
Slaves were not equal to their owners but this only made them strong. The slaves were not equal to their owners because they did not have lives on their own according to the old notion. The people were treated according to their skin color. Tituba’s husband was a slave and so was she; simply because of their dark skin color complexion. Tituba like her mother was raped when she moved from Barbados to Massachussetts in search of her husband. This act showed that slaves were unequal to their slave owners and that people of their skin color were less important.
The actions that occurred on the boat on Tituba’s way to Massachussetts of raping were of animal nature. The act of raping someone and nothing could be done because they were considered lower level creatures because of their skin color was inappropriate. All beings are equal and no one should go through such things. The difference in their skin color did not make them any less of human beings than the white. All human beings are equal to the other irrespective of skin color, wealth amounted or height. Slaves needed better rights and such actions were wrong.
Who decides who is more important than the other ultimately lies in a strong being outside of this world that controls the working of all beings and animals. The declaration by white people that their skin complexion was better than the black and other colored skins was utterly unjustified. Irrespective of your self proclaimed position, taking someone’s innocence would make you an animal. Their rights of freedom had been snatched away from the black people like Tituba and her mother. All people are equal to another and no one should judge anyone on the basis of skin complexion.
Slaves were supposed to be treated cruelly but still they never feared for their lives. The fact of treating slaves cruelly was justified by the white people claiming that the black people and other colored people needed whipping to work better and obey their owners. The Greek people were treated as slaves and did not have any pleasing rights. They would be raped and tormented and no one would care about them. Fear! I’m a Greek, and how should I fear death? A slave, and wherefore should I dread my freedom?I will not live degraded ~ Sardanapalus (Lootens,1999). Black people would be whipped while they worked in the firms and the mines. Their wives and girlfriend would work in their masters’ houses and occasionally they would be taken advantage. Their children would be sold by their owners whenever they wished. The rapport built between the slaves and their masters would save them from such actions.
The black communities often tried to escape because their working conditions were pathetic and cruel. They understood that work had to be done properly but saw that their hateful masters just whipped them out of hatred rather than poor performance. Slaves that were captured escaping were whipped, embarrassed in front of their families and would even be killed just so as to send messages to other slaves who had escaping prospects in mind. The black people felt like their masters’ harshness was a curse from God and most often prayed and made songs of freedom.
The whipping of other human beings is entirely inhuman. Human beings irrespective of their actions needed communication to make things better. Whipping a man without any justifiable reason is inhuman and needs condemnation. Most of their masters whipped them out of hatred rather than performance observation. Taking advantage of someone’s wife is rather inappropriate. Doing such actions of injustice in front of their spouses was enough humiliation and embarrassment. It was wrong for the white slave owners especially of the south to treat black slaves with search injustice and inhumanity.
“You would have said I wasn’t there, standing right there on the threshhold of the room. They were talking about me, but at the same time they were ignoring me. They were scratching me off the map of human beings. I was a non-being. An invisible. More invisible than the invisibles, because they at least have a power that everyone fears. Tituba, Tituba had no more reality than these women wanted to concede to her. It was atrocious. (Condé, 2009)”
Slaves required to treat their owners like gods. The southern slave owners treated their slaves so poorly that slaves worshipped them as mini gods. The white masters of the south justified such actions as a way of establishing authority. They felt like for the black people to comprehend the boss; they believed that such actions would make the people know authority and respect it. They wanted their slaves to understand the order of authority. They believed that making the slaves to view them as gods would solve the mystery tremendously.
Treating the slaves in the form that required them to see their owners and masters as gods was improper. Any human being who proclaims him/herself as a god to other people was wrong. The black people were the servants of the white people but the extent of portraying themselves as gods was wrong. Despite the upper hand of treating the black people as their servants, seeing themselves as gods to these people was improper. All people are the same or rather all people are slightly different but conveying oneself as a god is unforgivable.
The bride did not leave her home on her choosing rather someone else’s opinion. Most of the masters treated the slaves with cruelty of an advanced level. If the animals in the masters’ compound and house faced good conditions when they gave birth; then that meant that the other Greek people were treated as animals with lower ranks in comparison to these farm and house animals. The Greek people would often have their family members sold to other masters at the desire and will of their current masters. This meant that the family was not important as well as their love lives. The white slave owners felt like doing such actions would show their slaves their powers. I leave thee, sister! we have play’d, Thro’ many a joyous hour, Where the silvery green of the olive shade. Hung dim o’er fount and bower. Yes, thou and I, by stream, by shore. In song, in prayer, in sleep, Have been as we may be no more,–Kind sister, let me weep! (Felicia, 1824).
The undermining of the slaves love and family life by the slave masters was improper and unforgivable. Little children and women were separated from their families through the selling transactions. Mothers and their little children would be separated from each other inflicting unimaginable pain just so the slave masters would pass a message. The breaking off of someone’s family just because you have the power to do so is unforgivable and unacceptable. Any human being irrespective of their skin color requires the right to family and love. Taking away these rights would make one inhuman.
“In 1692, a Barbadian slave named Tituba was arrested for witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts. From this historical fact, Conde, an acclaimed writer from Guadeloupe, invents Tituba’s life story from childhood to old age. As a child, Tituba sees her mother executed. She is then raised by an old woman who teaches her the African art of healing and communicating with spirits. As a young woman, she is sold to a Puritan minister who leaves Barbados for America. Tituba uses her powers for good purposes, including the healing of her master’s family. But her powers are misunderstood by the narrow-minded Puritans, who can only associate witchcraft and the blackness of her skin with evil. Far more than an historical novel, Conde’s book makes a powerful social statement about hypocrisy, racial injustice, and feminism through the use of postmodern irony. With a foreword by Angela Davis. Highly recommended ( Brown-Rose, 2009).”
The literature criticism
“Mightier than death, untamable by fate” (Felicia, 1824). This context argues that the rehabilitation of Byron is of the wretched figure of the oriental females; in his verse ardors serves as a common model of femal intrepidness for Felicia Hemans.
These books portray females; the heroines of the form of Eudora and Maimuna in the books of “The Bride of the Greek of Isle” and the “The Indian City” respectively desmonstrated the length they would go to regain their lost humanity and dignity through acts of self-destruction and violence.
The Byronic symbols of Heman not only serve as powerful symbols of English incongruity in the direction of cultural and racial dissimilarities but also bring to light the numerous discrepancies of the 19ty century.
Slaves rights were not important. The white slave masters of the south considered the slaves as things rather than people. The only good the black people proved to the white slave masters was doing jobs and nothing more. The white masters considered the black people as the lowest forms of life forms on earth that they did not even bother about separating their families. They treated the black people with no respect to any human nature irrespective of the kindness and obedience showed by the black people to them. The white slave masters saw the black slaves as important in their eyes and would do anything to them anytime they desired.
In conclusion, people who were treated with less rights had the right to fight for them irrespective of what they would go through. Slavery whether in the form of working for someone or having your rights snatched away as a female needed condemnation and the people under these acts had to act. It is important to note that however big the limit of injustice be, it is still possible to undo it and achieve the freedom they so desperately searched.
References
Brown-Rose, J. A. (2009). Critical nostalgia and Caribbean migration. New York: Peter Lang.
Condé, M. (2009). I, Tituba, black witch of Salem. Charlottesville: University Of Virginia Press.
Lootens, T. A. (1996). Lost saints: Silence, gender, and Victorian literary canonization. Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia.
