Jefferson and Gender-Limbo

{For this week’s analysis on Annette Gordon-Reed’s “The Hemingses of Monticello”, I decided to explore this notion of femininity, particularly among the racialized American slave culture of the 18th century.  I wanted to explore the notion of master-slave relationship as not only white and black, but white male and black female, and how the combination of race and gender played a role in lives of the Hemings slave women. One of the more interesting perspectives and master-slave relationships that Gordon-Reed explores is that of Thomas Jefferson and his slave women, not just the Hemings women.  In Reed’s description, while white men of the era were expanding their economic productivity of slavery, black women were the “’exception to the gender division of labor’” and therefore were not only stripped of their femininity and “hoeicized”, but were likewise acceptable for fieldwork and hard-labor due to this gender limbo that identified them (117).  However, Jefferson’s decision to not agree with this notion of female slave field-labor not only says something about himself and the behaviors, relationships, and lives of his female slaves, but also the dichotomies within American political, legal, and social environment at the time that Jefferson was its Head of State. In this self-reflecting letter from Thomas Jefferson to his fictitious diary/journal, I attempt to exemplify the possible thoughts and perspectives of Jefferson and to examine Jefferson as a rarity in a culture and society which he himself represented at home and abroad.}

Dearest Diary, 

Has it been three long weeks since I wrote last? Oh how time has flown. So many developments, the good and the bad, within such a life I live. I have a question and someone of an interest of mine, which I seek to briefly explore with you oh journal.

As you know, I seek to live a humbled life with the graces of God and our grown country. As I have debated with you previously, the issue of slavery is always something on my mind. But today, one of even greater interest and complexity drains my thoughts: that of the slave woman. I highlight these two parts to this name as both separate but simultaneous; as both complex in both their states and yet even more so combined as one unit. Let me explain: 

A woman represents femininity, poise, of housework if any. This great world that we held is driven mad with the deals of men, but women represent the purity, the families that we seek to protect from ourselves. Yet, many men of great brilliance and of many countries insist on women, the delicate creatures we so love, to work in the fields, in the sun, and labor as we men see fit. This notion I have problems with. You may say diary, “but our women do not labor with such hardships?” But I speak of all women, of slave women as well. Men of our time have combined, too harshly I believe, this notion of slave and woman, as if slave is the only thing that they see, or at least try to see. They say, “She is a Negro slave woman…she is nothing but my hoe, my property.” But yet she is a she. You see my complexity? I have always believed in the good manners, of gentlemanliness, of the responsibilities of men. No matter the creed, she is a she. Should she not be? Should we devalue our own morals and culture so much that we deny the application and existence of gender now? I do not agree. We are formed from nature, from God himself, to have these characteristics and we men defile the existence of Eve with our behavior for greed and institution. 

Alas, these are my frustrations. 

Thomas.