The Enslaved Female

Think about Davis’ claim on page 5 that “Since women [under slavery], no less than men, were viewed as profitable labor-units, they might as well have been genderless as far as the slaveholders were concerned.” This is a remarkably different view than that presented by Stowe and Child in their fiction, in which the enslaved female characters Eliza and Rosa were highly gendered. Take a moment and think through this split. Why might Stowe and Child written such highly gendered characters? Why is it important for Davis to be arguing something different, in the context of her historical study?12 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 122. Read articlePlease choose one female character in Incidents (not including Harriet Jacobs/ Linda Brent) and write a character analysis of her. Where and how does she hold power in her life? What are her motivations? How is she described, and what values are assigned to how she looks? What does Jacobs/Brent think of her? Is she a “good” character, a bad one, or something more complicated than that? How so? How would you connect this character back to the question raised in Part 1 – how and where do constructs of “womanhood” play into this person’s character?01 02 03 04 05