Women in the African Slave Trade
Newton describes the hardships that female slaves faced aboard slave ships; though these struggles differ from their male counterparts, they are equally as horrible. For example, Newton retells his experience with a young mother who was bought with her baby: When the baby would not stop crying at night, a shipmate complained to the mother and demanded the child be silenced. When the child continued crying, the mate ripped him from his mother's arms and tossed him overboard. Newton uses this tale to gain the sympathy of all mothers. He says that surely all mothers can sympathize with the slave who lost her new son, and begins to make the European readers of his work put themselves in the place of the slaves to further his point and assist in the abolition of slavery (Newton 18).
In addition, Newton heavily implies that the seamen aboard the ship sexually harass and abuse the female slaves when he says, “… and they [female slaves] are carefully kept from the men. I mean, from the black men" (Newton 19). The black men, who are kept as slaves aboard the ship, are physically restrained from their female counterparts, but the white men aboard the ship feel no need to distance themselves.
Similarly, in Heart of Darkness the native woman on the shore (Kurtz's presumed lover) is longing for Kurtz (Conrad 55). In that
narrative, Marlow did not physically say that the woman was Kurtz’ mistress, but it was implied by her appearance and the way she moved: "She walked with measured steps, draped in striped and fringed clothes, treading the earth proudly..." (Conrad, 55). Just as it is implied by Marlow that the woman is Kurtz's mistress, it is implied by Newton in the quote above that the white men aboard the slave ship took female slaves as lovers.
Nevertheless, the men on the ship in Newton’s account are surely not seen as crossing a line into savagery when they receive sexual favors from the female slaves on the ship. Perhaps this is because the white men are still dominant and there is no real “relationship” between the seamen and the female slaves, though one could make a case for an actual relationship between Kurtz and his mistress. The abuse of female slaves by white seamen is just another example of “the white savage” and the disgusting things that white men did to slaves.
Newton further documents the atrocities towards women in his work. He calls them the white man's "prey" and says that "Resistance, or refusal, would be utterly in vain, even the solicitation of consent is seldom thought of" (Newton 20). His accusations against the white seamen are very clear and he ends his argument about women by simply stating, "Facts like these, so certain, and so numerous, speak for themselves."
