Women could be honoured for being priestesses or family members and had some citizen rights. Slaves, by contrast, had no legal or social standing at all and could be treated as beasts of burden by their masters.

point of viewLinda Brent narrates her life story in the first person. major conflictLinda Brent struggles to protect herself from her lecherous master and is torn between her desire to run away from him and her need to protect her children.

The Slave Girl follows the fortunes of Ogbanje Ojebeta, a Nigerian woman who is sold into slavery in her own land after disease and tragedy leave her orphaned as a child. In her fellow slaves, she finds a surrogate family that clings together under the unbending will of their master.

Harriet Jacobs's autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861), is the most widely-read female antebellum slave narrative. In recounting her life experiences before she was freed, Jacobs offered her contemporary readers a startlingly realistic portrayal of her sexual history while a slave.

Enslaved women were counted on not only to do their house and fieldwork, but also to bear, nourish, and rear the children whom slaveholders sought to continually replenish their labor force. As house slaves, women were domestic servants: cooking, sewing, acting as maids, and rearing the planter's children.

Under bondage, enslaved women had to negotiate often difficult relationships with their enslavers. Matrifocal support networks and supportive spouses helped here, but women still had to cope with the mental, physical, and sexual violence inflicted by those who held them in bondage.