'12 Years a Slave': life was more terrible for enslaved women

Golden Globe winner has a male protagonist but it rightly focuses on women, says Andrea Livesey

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THE United States was in the middle of a civil war 150 years ago and, while Abraham Lincoln had just issued the emancipation proclamation, it would still be another 18 months until freedom finally came for the four million African Americans held in bondage in the United States.

The status of these people as "non-human" was so ingrained in the American psyche that even the rape of an enslaved woman could only be brought to court if it was considered to be a “trespass” on someone else’s property. On the other hand, a man’s rape of his own enslaved woman could not be a crime - after all, a man is free to do what he likes with his own property. It was this very aspect of enslavement that led former enslaved woman Harriet Jacobs to lament: "Slavery is terrible for men; but it is far more terrible for women".

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