Melton Mclaurin's Celia, A Slave

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African-American history in the early Americas are for the most part stories from the time when slavery was legal and utilized on many farms in the South and some newer states in the Union. Melton McLaurin’s book Celia, A Slave takes place in a time which Missouri is still a state in its infancy. Just thirty years before the state was a place turmoil within Congress whether or not slavery should be allowed and if it was what laws should be regulating it. This story follows the life of a young slave girl who broke the first rule of being a slave and the trial and consequences that followed suit. The book as a whole provides the reader with a full and easily understood look into the life of a slave that was emotionally and physically taken…show more content…
Hall knew Jameson was the father of three daughters; Hall probably deduced that Jameson may have been sympathetic towards Celia. Thus, Hall may have incorporated gender in picking Jameson. In another instance, during questioning in the trial Jameson did not treat male and female witness equally. Jameson did not ask Virginia Waynescot about her father's sexual relationship with Celia directly. The Victorian sexual mores of that period meant that Jameson was only going for implication with female witnesses. With male witnesses, Jameson adopted a more direct approach, like when he forced Powell to admit that Celia did say that Newsom did force her to have sexual intercourse with him; and that no one was going to stop him. Interesting enough, Celia's fate may have been different if Newsom was exposed as a dominator with his daughters being totally submissive to him (McLaurin 98-99). While white men enjoyed patriarchal power in the antebellum South, white women on the other hand, held little power. White women had to accept slavery no matter what their opinion was. As slavery made both legal and economic power centered on the master, or the white male. It is no surprise that married white women had to depend on other men to protect them from sexual demands brought on by their husbands. One great example of white women dependence in the Antebellum South is: Virgnia Waynescot and Mary Newsom. While not wives, they were
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