Please forgive the frankness of this question, but I want to know - what makes you a woman? Why is it that white men look at you and see beauty, femininity, and sophistication while they look at me and see a body to be worked? These tattered clothes, this natural African hair, this dark brown skin - are these the external features that exclude me from the world of women? I feel that there is so commonality between us, though I've yet to figure out what it is. I wonder what it will take for me to be granted that same access to femininity that you have. I want to feel like the lady that I know I am.
Yours,
The lady in the fields
Questions:
1) In chapter 5, Gordon-Reed discusses the difference in the way womanhood is defined for black and white women. Can femininity be essentialized in any way? What kind of commonality can exist between a black female slave and an upper-class white woman?
2) I found the discussion in the first chapter about the different perspectives on whiteness and blackness to be very interesting. Why did the negative white notion of black people dominate once black slaves were brought to the colonies? Why do these negative ideas of both races still persist?
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