A southern white female slave owner only saw black women as another slave, or worse. White women needed to do this in order to keep themselves from feeling that they were of higher status than every one else except for their husband. White women as, Gwin describes, always proved that they had

And even those who were not involved were treated as sub-human and found that life remained hard for them. Gwin describes the black communications with their oppressors as a surrogate mother and her children that need guidance, looking after, and strong discipline. The black women knew that no matter what she did she would get beatings from the white women and their mistresses, they took chattel slavery to its boundaries in how the women treated the black women when they felt threatened. White women didn't just physically abuse the black woman they also mentally abused her. The slave women were "associated with sex and loss of control, sexually suggestive, and wild Negroes."(pg 119) These derogatory names were what most white women came to stereotype as being the definition of the average black woman. So they to had it hard when they were being worked by the woman of the house. Being that the mere idea that if you were a black woman your mistress or lady of the house felt threatened by your presence, so they did there best to make sure the black women got to tired and to low of self-esteem to do anything.

The book discussed how one of the principle reasons as to how the white woman or mistress and the black women got along, depends on whether or not the slave women appeared to threaten the social status of the women. When the white men tried to rape the black women it made the white women socially look like nothing more than a slave. This made the white women feel forced to prove to the black women that power still remained in the white woman's corner regardless of the master's sexual desires. The mistresses made sure that the slave women understood that they valued less than any white women, for the main reason that the white woman had true power as long as the main wanted her. An example of this that I read would be when a white woman outwardly expressed that she worried mainly about her loss of power, not actually about marriage. Saphire, a fictional character that Gwin analyzes, says "...mainly concerned with her power... she views her husbands affections for a slave as an undercutting of her power over him in their relationship which. As the husband himself describes as, what makes her the master and him the miller." (pg 133) The slave that caused this upset usually received many beatings and unnecessary overworking of the slave. At the time, this treatment was not unheard of and needed, the white slave owner

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Approximate Word count = 1653
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)