Blog # 6

I am taking a different approach than probably most people for this topic. However, I am going to analyze the life of the wives of these slave owners. Most people focus on the struggles of the slaves and people who were not white. These people did face many struggles and I would never want to undermine that issue. I do believe the white women suffered quite a bit, also. They did not suffer as much as the african american women.. their life was hard, though. The wives of these slave owners in " Jacobs: Incidents In The Life of A Slave Girl" had to feel so helpless. They really had very few rights, also. I cannot imagine having to stay married to a man whom was having children with a woman who was working in my house every day, having to see her pregnant with his baby, then having to see that baby once it was born. At one point, the narrator is talking about having no where to go, she is pregnant and helpless. Even if she wanted to she could not go back to her master because, "his wife vowed, by all that was good and great, she would kill me if I came back; and he did not doubt her word" (Jacobs 779). This seems very harsh and must be so scary to have no where to go. However, when I put myself in the wife's place, I see it from a different perspective. I wouldn't want a woman in my home who was pregnant with my husbands child. Very seldom could these women do anything about this. This is something we take for granted today. Just recently Arnold Schwarzenegger's wife found out that he had had a baby with the woman who worked in their house and she simply divorced him and is able to be an independent woman now. During this time period, a woman didn't really have the option to do this. Not only would it be looked down upon but a woman really had no way of supporting herself unless she had a particular talent such as writing. Through these recent readings, I am really starting to see history in different perspectives. Not just the way I have always been taught.