They found probable cause to charge her with murder of her master, and she was arrested and housed in the Fulton County jail. Celia’s defense for murdering her master Robert Newsom was that she did not mean to kill him, and that she just meant to harm him to deter his attempt to have sexual intercourse with him. She was raped by Newsom on his way home from purchasing her. This started a continuous abusive sexual relationship between the two, resulting in two children fathered by Newsom, of which there is no record of their whereabouts after her execution. Celia started a forbidden relationship with a Newsom slave named George.
He first stated to pit the different aspects of a black slave against another black slave; old black male vs. young black male, light skin slaves vs. dark skin slaves, female vs. male and vice versa in all the situations stated. He also suggested that the slave master have white servants and overseers, who distrust all Blacks. But after doing so, he still felt as though it was of importance for their slaves to trust and depend on their slave masters. He felt the slaves must love, respect and trust only US gentlemen. This was going to be the slave masters’ successor to control.
It wasn’t until her mother had died that she actually became exposed to the cruelty of slavery. Jacobs was a house slave and was taught to read, write and sew by her mistress. When Jacobs was about fifteen years old she began to experience a sexual relationship with a white man named Mr. Sands in order to escape from her Master Dr. Flint. Harriet Jacobs’s became a slave of Dr. Flint when her mother died. She desperately wanted to escape from Dr. Flint because he wanted to make her his concubine and she very much disapproved of such a thing.
In The History of Mary Prince, A West Indian Slave Related by Herself, she gave first-person account of the inhumane nature of slavery and impacts it has on human dignity. Born in 1788 in Brackish Pond, Bermuda, her mother was a slave in the household of Mr. Charles Myners, and her father belonged to a shipbuilder called Mr. Trimmingham. Mary prince experience with slavery started at the tender age of twelve when she was hired to a neighboring household. Prince narrated her story in order to make sure that the "good people in England might hear from a slave what a slave had felt and suffered" (Prince, p.1). Mary’s motivation for writing The History of Mary Prince, A West Indian Slave Related by Herself was to enlighten the English people about the dehumanizing nature of slavery.
She explains how slaves suffered when being denied basic human rights and legal protection, how female slaves suffered from sexual harassment and the feeling of responsibility towards her family, particularly her children. She points out, with her personal experiences, that the psychological abuses of slavery were more devastating than its physical abuses. Jacobs was not a slave of always being beat and doing hard labor, but she was a slave that was denied of her basic human rights. Black slave women’s rights were non-existent. They could not have a legal marriage, they were frequently forced to sleep with the masters they despise, and their families were torn apart, with their children sold to a place far away from them.
Upon saving the spirit, Ariel, he made a deal with him that forced him into slavery until Prospero was ready to release him. Already in the play, before we meet Caliban, we see Prospero enslave a spirit and refuse to free it after loyal service. Caliban’s primitive nature arose when he attempted to rape Prospero’s daughter, after this Prospero enslaved Caliban. We then meet Caliban who as Prospero calls, “…my slave, who never yields us a kind word” (Act 1.2, lns 307-308). In this scene where Prospero and his daughter converse with the monster, we see Prospero enjoy having possession over other creatures.
Most masters had to learn how to become a slave owner, they had to learn the system, which most of the time meant that one must become a person of evil doing. Being a slave owners turned a good person into a bad person. A master was not allowed to be kind to his/her slave. They were not allowed to tech the slave anything or let them do as they pleased. “Master Hugh was amazed at the simplicity of his spouse, and, probably for the first time, he unfolded to her the true philosophy of slavery, and the peculiar rules necessary to be observed by masters and mistresses, in the management of their human chattels.” (Douglass, 95).
Mrs. Davis, Jared Davis’s wife submitted to her husband’s cruelty, drunkenness, lies, scandalous behavior and indolence. She went on about how she was not treated right by Mr. Davis. He had no compassion and no humanity towards her. He also degraded her because, he did something that all puritans thought was something dangerous, something you just don’t do, he tried and “insisted” that they have sex during her pregnancy. Mr. Davis to me had no heart and wanted his wife whenever he felt like it, to make her go through so much.
If they had been the doctors, he would have used them for slaves without even thinking twice about it. With Linda’s thinking, if they were Mr. Sands, she believed they would have a chance to be free due to Dr. Flint’s disgust. Though this was not the case, it was a choice she had to make. In addition, Linda had to take into consideration the fact that Mrs. Flint already disliked her so she would be likely to kill her if she fathered Dr. Flint’s
Men were taken from their families and sold to slave masters. Women were constantly violated physically as well as sexually. This story played a major role in exposing the heartaches and pains, and just inhumane treatment that slaves received at the hands of their owners. Jacobs was a slave girl who suffered many traumatic experiences in the hands of her slave master. She eventually fled from her master, but remained on the plantation in hiding to watch after her children.