Female slaves and their famili
Female slaves and their familiSlave families had a tendency to be unstable, due to the nature of the institution of slavery. Masters could sell members of the family away if they desired, or could separate the family on the plantation, making them work in different areas. Despite this instability, the family tended to be a central part of a slave's life, and women played a significant role in the development of this family.
Slave owners often did not differentiate between genders on the field, and thus the women often ended up working alongside men in fieldwork. However, within the slave community, there was a more marked gender differentiation. The men usually did chores such as trapping and hunting animals for food, while the women did more of the domestic duties. While these domestic duties tended to add more work to the slave woman's day, the domestic work was a way for women to rebel against the master to a degree. Women did this work to keep themselves and their families healthy, and would on occassion help a runaway slave by providing for him or her. These responsibilities were in some ways a joy to slave women, since they "offered a degree of personal fulfillment." One slave woman, Mary Colquitt, remarked that her grandmother and mother had often stayed up late sewing clothes for the children, saying, "Dey done it 'cause dey wanted to. Dey wuz workin' for deyselves den." (Jones, 29) Ironically, this work caring for themselves and their families also benifitted the slave owners, since healthy slaves meant that the masters could get more work out of them, and thus make more money when the crops were harvested.
The family was important to most slave women, and they had ways of making sure that they stayed together, though these weren't foolproof. A woman assigned to the Big House when the rest of her family was on the fields could rebel, thus making "a mistress's life miserable by literally doing nothing." This would often cause the mistress to send the woman to the fields, which is what she wanted anyway, so she could be with her family. (25) Another way a young female...
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