Former African-American slave Frederick Douglass wrote his memoir My Servitude and My Freedom in 1855, sixty-three years after Englishwoman Mary Wollstonecraft published her Vindication on the Rights of Woman in 1792, and fourteen years before the Englishman John Stuart Mill published his treatise The Subjection of Women. Douglass's work describes the horrors endured by African slaves on American plantations and invites modern readers to consider how slavery can still exist in today's societies. Could subordination based on sex be analogous to chattel slavery? If yes, to what extent? Furthermore, what is so wrong about marriage being legally similar to slavery? By examining the institution of marriage in the aforementioned works, it is possible to interpret subordination on the basis of sex as being analogous to slavery in that contemporary views are that a woman must be bound to her husband , such that she cannot hold property and is herself technically property when she legally becomes one with him. The comparison of these two institutions then allows us to understand marriage as something fundamentally erroneous insofar as it limits the development of individual female potential. Although not the focus of this article, limiting female potential is also virtually ineffective in eliminating a potential workforce. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an Original EssayTo further define the development of an individual's potential, this article will focus on several component aspects derived from Frederick Douglass' descriptions of slavery. Of particular interest are the instances in which he describes the enslavement of enslaved women, people oppressed not only on the basis of race, but also on the basis of gender. These women lacked physical autonomy, emotional development, intellectual engagement, and personal aspirations. These last three, although separate and clearly distinct, can also be discussed together under the idea of ​​internal desires or functions. These four categories, applied to married women in general, will be explored in this article with American slavery as the lens. Although none of these concepts are quantifiable, they are nonetheless measurable through causal mechanisms. How does patriarchy assert slave-master-like control over physical autonomy or emotional development? How does the legal nature of marriage stifle women's intellectual engagement and personal aspirations? The causal mechanism of physical autonomy is force, while the causal mechanism of the last three is education, although of different types of education. Physical freedom, or lack thereof, was a characteristic of both slaves and married women. Not only is physical freedom a concern, but so is physical well-being. In chattel slavery, the slave is relegated to a piece of property, similar to an object. As such, it can be treated as the master wishes. Slavery, as seen in the American South, opened nebulous spaces between master and servant that could be filled at the whim of the master. The slave being an object in the master's house, he could be subjected to punishment without justification. In one case, a woman named Nelly was accused of "one of the most common and most indefinite offenses in the entire list of offenses usually imputed to slaves, viz.: “impudence”. It can mean almost anything, or nothing at all…” (Douglass, 75). Nelly was whipped, but in front of her children, on unclear terms. Although the harsh punishments of slaves and the use of flogging in American slavery do not directly reflect the treatment of most women in marriages, the system of thought behind them is similar. By virtue of a legal obligation to her husband, women also become property. A woman is one with her husband – they form a legal unit – she is part of him, legally and socially speaking. As property, a woman is subject to arbitrary physical treatment at the hands of her husband. Although the causal mechanism in this physical relationship is not necessarily "force", it is at the primary level. While a slave master or overseer uses the whip to control the slave, men are traditionally able to use physical force to assert their will over a wife who is "property." Mill mocks his opponents who claim that “the domination of men over women differs from all these other [forms of slavery] in that it is not a rule of force; it is accepted voluntarily” (Mill, 484). Even when patriarchal rule is apparently voluntary, the use of physical force strengthens the bonds of marriage and can discourage a woman from leaving a harmful union. Mill also recognizes that "first of all, a great number of women do not accept it" (484), and further that "wives, even in the most extreme and prolonged cases of bodily misuse, do not almost never dare to take advantage of this practice. the laws were made for their protection: and if…they are induced to do so, all their effort afterwards is to divulge as little as possible” (Mill, 486). Fear energizes the closer bonds of physical strength that hold a marriage together. In the physical realm, women are expected to be fragile and domestic, to which the prominent feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft responds: "I don't understand his [Milton, who wrote about fragile mothers] meaning, unless that… he wanted to deprive women. we [women] of souls, and insinuate that we were beings only designed…to gratify the sense of man when it can no longer soar on the wing of contemplation” (Wollstonecraft, 18). She refuses to accept the idea that women must be and act physically weaker than their male counterparts, believing that "the most perfect education, in my opinion, is an exercise in understanding which is best calculated to strengthen body and form. the heart” (Wollstonecraft, 20). At the time in history that Wollstonecraft was writing, women certainly did not have the education, moral or formal, to ensure either a physically fortified body or fully formed internal desires. What about these internal desires? what about a woman's emotional development? While literature on women extensively presented women as emotionally unstable and prone to making bad, rash decisions, men were consistently praised as rational and disciplined superiors. (The eminent 20th-century novelist James Joyce once wrote, “Men are governed by lines of intellect – women: by curves of emotion.” Although it is a generalization, his statement reflects a common conception of his time and before.) In comparison with the treatment of the emotional development of a slave, the case is slightly different, because "men do not only want obedience from women , they want their feelings” (486). On the other hand, the developmentThe emotions of slaves were largely or completely ignored. Landlords and traders would tear families apart (Douglass, Chapter 1; 67, etc.) without considering the emotional baggage, scars, and burdens. Slaves were property and therefore were treated as less than human. Just like married women whose emotions were directed toward their husbands, slaves' emotions were shaped to please only their masters. If the master found the slave's behavior or mood embarrassing to him, he could subject the slave to arbitrary punishment. Wollstonecraft adds to this emotional bias in his examination of a fictional female characterization, in which the female character is essentially told "that a woman should never, for one moment, feel independent, that she should be governed by fear to exercise power.” natural cunning, and made a flirtatious slave in order to make her a more attractive object of desire, a gentler companion for the man, whenever he chooses to relax” (Wollstonecraft, 25). If women are constantly trying to please men and shape their emotions to please a man, then she is not entitled to the full range of her emotions or the means to express them. In the unofficial or “moral” sense of education, “all moralities tell them [women] that it is the duty of women, and all current sentimentalities that it is their nature to live for others; make a complete abnegation of themselves and live only in their affections. And by their affections we mean the only ones they are allowed to have: those towards the men with whom they are related, or towards the children who constitute an additional and unbreakable bond between them and a man” (Mill, 487). Affections and "natural attraction between opposite sexes" (Mill) are a wife's primary goal when meeting the full and wide range of her husband's emotional needs; later, as a mother, her affections and caring qualities are then intended to fulfill the desires of her child. This is so prevalent that “it would be a miracle if the goal of attracting men had not become the North Star of female education and character formation” (Mill, 487). She is not a woman but a wife, and therefore she is not allowed to explore feelings that are not directly related to meeting the needs of others. The retarded intellectual development of chattel slaves and women is another aspect clearly highlighted in the examples given in Douglass's account. Slaves on American plantations – and indeed slaves throughout history – were unable to receive a knowledge-based education. Literate slaves posed an immediate threat to the ruling classes, because with knowledge inevitably came power – the power to communicate, express, and contemplate. Likewise, women were unable to benefit not only from the moral or “emotional” education discussed above, but also from appropriate education on material and knowledge-based subjects. This was due to the desired “total dependence on the husband” (Mill, 487). The intellectual abilities of American plantation slaves are never fully explored if they are held in their plantation situations, and the potential of women is also overlooked when they marry and their labor and thoughts are devoted to the service of their husbands and their homes. It can be argued that women are naturally predisposed to do the kind of work they currently do and are fully satisfied with it, but as Wollstonecraft demonstrates (as a woman), this is not the case. She wonders.