'For the Murder of His Own Female Slave, a Woman Named Mira…': Slavery, Law and Incoherence in Antebellum Culture

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony V. Baker
Keyword(s):  
Female Slave ◽  
Antebellum Culture

The Paradox of the Female Slave Body in the Islamic Legal System: The Cases of Morocco and Sudan

Hawwa ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 9 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 215-233
Author(s):  
Ahmad A. Sikainga
Keyword(s):  
American South ◽  
The Body ◽  
Cultural Codes ◽  
Power And Control ◽  
Slave Women ◽  
The American South ◽  
Female Slave ◽  
Female Slaves ◽  
Relations Of Power ◽  
And Control

AbstractThis chapter is concerned with the way in which Muslim jurisprudence dealt with the body of female slaves in two Muslim societies: Morocco and the Sudan. While the depiction and the representation of the slave body have generated a great deal of debate among scholars working on slavery in the New World, this subject has received little attention amongst both Islamicists and Africanists. The literature on slavery in the American South and in the Caribbean has shown that the depiction of the slave body reveals a great deal about the reality of slavery, the relations of power and control, and the cultural codes that existed within the slave societies. The slave physical appearance and gestures were used to distinguish between the slaves and free and to justify slavery. Throughout the Americas slaves were routinely branded as a form of identification right up to the eighteenth century. Although the body of the slaves from both sexes was subjected to the same depiction, the treatment of female slaves deserves further exploration. As many scholars have argued, slave women suffer the double jeopardy of being both a slave and a woman. Moreover, the body of the female slave in Muslim societies is of particular significance as many of them were used for sexual purposes, as mistresses and concubines. The chapter shows that the reproductive role of female slaves became a major justice issue, particularly in their struggle for freedom.

scholarly journals “A right kind of rogue”: Lisa McInerney’s "The Glorious Heresies" (2015) and "The Blood Miracles" (2017)

Text Matters ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 237-258
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Ostalska
Keyword(s):  
Moral Code ◽  
Middle Aged ◽  
Death Rates ◽  
Unmarried Mothers ◽  
Fallen Women ◽  
Irish Women ◽  
High Death ◽  
Illegitimate Children ◽  
Female Slave ◽  
The Church

The following article analyzes two novels, published recently by a new, powerful voice in Irish fiction, Lisa McInerney: her critically acclaimed debut The Glorious Heresies (2015) and its continuation The Blood Miracles (2017). McInerney’s works can be distinguished by the crucial qualities of the Irish Noir genre. The Glorious Heresies and The Blood Miracles are presented from the perspective of a middle-aged “right-rogue” heroine, Maureen Phelan. Due to her violent and law-breaking revenge activities, such as burning down the institutions signifying Irishwomen’s oppression (i.e. the church and a former brothel) and committing an involuntary murder, Maureen remains a multi-dimensional rogue character, not easily definable or even identifiable. The focal character’s narrative operates around the abuse of unmarried, young Irish mothers of previous generations who were coerced to give up their “illegitimate” children for adoption and led a solitary existence away from them. The article examines other “options” available to “fallen women” (especially unmarried mothers) in Ireland in the mid-twenty century, such as the Magdalene Laundries based on female slave work, and sending children born “out of wedlock” abroad, or to Mother and Baby Homes with high death-rates. Maureen’s rage and her need for retaliation speak for Irish women who, due to the Church-governed moral code, were held in contempt both by their families and religious authorities. As a representative of the Irish noir genre, McInerney’s fiction depicts the narrative of “rogue” Irish motherhood in a non-apologetic, ironic, irreverent and vengeful manner.

Terms for Thralls and Their Meanings

2021 ◽  
pp. 122-183
Author(s):  
Stefan Brink
Keyword(s):  
Personal Names ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Grey Scale ◽  
Legal Situation ◽  
Loan Word ◽  
Cultural Code ◽  
Female Slave

In this chapter words for slaves are discussed using etymological and semantic analyses, and confronting the result with non-linguistic contextual evidence. The main words for a male and a female slave was obviously þræll and ambótt, the former probably an indigenous North-Germanic construction, the latter a loan word from Gallo-Latin. The terminological analysis reveal that although the legal situation for a slave in early Scandinavia was rather black-and-white – you where either free or unfree – socially there was more of a gliding grey-scale. This is also found in the earliest laws, especially where the laws describe the penalties for killing or abusing a slave; the penalties differed, sometimes quite remarkably. This analysis leads over to a discussion of a “patron–client” kind of situation. With a background in personal names, such as Wealtheow, Ansedeus, Angelþéow etc., where the second element is a word tewaz ‘slave, servant’, and the first element often the name of a god or a people, it is possible to identify an cultural code in early European societies.

‘Unsafe Convictions’: ‘Unhappy’ Confessions in The Crucible

1994 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 175-195 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valerie Lowe
Keyword(s):  
Social Status ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
Black Female ◽  
The Social ◽  
Female Slave

This article examines the speech act of confession in Arthur Miller's play The Crucible, and the differing conditions under which the act occurs. By examining the confession of a black female slave which is pivotal to the plot of the play, I will argue that under Austin's rules for ‘happy’ performatives the confession is void, and that the social status of the individuals involved affects the constitutive rules governing the act of confession itself.

A Jariya’s Prospects in Abbasid Baghdad

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pernilla Myrne
Keyword(s):  
Social Hierarchies ◽  
Cautious Approach ◽  
Slave Women ◽  
Female Slave ◽  
The Book Of Songs

The chapter takes up several related questions surrounding slave women in Abbasid culture. It considers the image of the jawari (slave women) in modern scholarship, arguing for a cautious approach to the Arabic sources. It also looks at elite women’s relations to slave women, and the manner in which the dichotomy of free/slave intersected with gender in shaping Abbasid social hierarchies. The career of the slave poet Inan al-Natifi illustrates both the vulnerabilities and possibilities inherent to the lives of jawari. Her main biographer is Abu al-Faraj al-Isbahani, who accords her the first and longest biographical entry in al-Ima al-Shawa’ir (The Female Slave Poets), and an entry in the Kitab al-Aghani (The Book of Songs).

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