Sisters in the

Wilderness

The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk not equal to not equal to Chapter 1

Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk

Delores S. Williams

Audio by Paper2Audio.

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I N Accord with Biblical Scholars Phyllis Trible and Elsa Tamez, this study regards Genesis 16:1 to 16 and Genesis 21:9 to 21 as related episodes in Hagar's life. The two accounts come from different sources written down at different times. They may have circulated as variants of the same story in the oral tradition of Hebrew folks.

When reread with the slave woman Hagar as center of attention, Genesis 16:1 to 6 illustrates what the history of many African-American women taught them long ago; that is, the slave woman's story is and unavoidably has been shaped by the problems and desires of her owners. In these texts Hagar is introduced as the solution to a problem confronting a wealthy Hebrew slave-holding family composed of Sarai (Hagar's owner) and Abram, Sarai's husband. Sarai is barren and has borne Abram no children. But"she had an Egyptian slave-girl called Hagar. So Sarai said to Abram,'Listen, now! Since Yahweh has kept me from having children, go to my slave-girl. Perhaps I shall get children through her.' And Abram took Sarai's advice".

Motherhood: A Forced Condition

Early in the text motherhood is an important issue. Obviously Sarai believes it is Yahweh who controls pro-creation in the family, but it is she who controls Hagar. So, for Hagar, motherhood will be a coerced experience involving the violation of her body over which she, as a slave, has no control. The texts report that after Abram lived in the land of Canaan for ten years, Sarai "took Hagar her Egyptian slave-girl and gave her to Abram as his wife. He went to Hagar and she conceived" (Genesis 16:2-4a). From Sarai's position motherhood is a privilege that will grant her status, for in her world of the ancient Near East a barren woman lost status.

"There was no greater sorrow for an Israelite or Oriental woman than childlessness." While Hagar had no choices in matters of forced motherhood, the law provided options for wealthy free women like Sarai who were barren. Gerhard von Rad reports:

The wife could bring to the marriage her own personal maid, who was not available to her husband as a concubine in the same way his own female slaves were. If she gave her personal maid to her husband, in the event of her own childlessness, then the child born of the maid was considered the wife's child. The child was born"on the knees of the wife herself"! From the legal and moral standpoint, therefore, Sarah's proposal was completely according to custom.

Other legal options were also available to these wealthy slave holders. Nuzi law, which the ancient Hebrews were believed to have often followed, stipulated that the husband of a barren wife could adopt a male slave from his household who would then become heir to the family fortune and see to the master's welfare in his old age. That Abram had considered this option is suggested in Genesis 15:2 to 3. But regardless of the choice exercised, as far as Hagar is concerned the law guarantees that these slave holders will have complete authority over her body and its reproductive capacities.

It is Sarai's option for motherhood (via Hagar) that allows us to see the nature of aspects of the social process affecting the welfare of slave and slave owner alike. Through the lens of moth erhood we see the struggle between power and powerlessness in human relationships disrupt peace in a family unit, breed enmity between women and send a poverty-stricken female slave (Hagar) scurrying into the wilderness. "And once she knew she conceived, her mistress counted for nothing in her eyes. Then Sarai said to Abram, 'This outrage done to me is your fault!

It was I who put my slave-girl into your arms but now she knows that she has conceived, I count for nothing in her eyes. Yahweh judge between me and you' (Genesis 16:4b-6a).

Exegetes have traditionally interpreted this passage so that attention was focused upon the conflict between Hagar and Sarai. And it is usually suggested that this conflict arose because Hagar began to feel that she should take Sarai's place because she was producing the offspring for Abram. Such an interpretation implies that Hagar did not know that the law prescribed stringent punishment for slave surrogates who tried to put themselves on an equal basis with the barren wife. Of course there is nothing in the text to let us know what Hagar knew about the laws governing this situation.

From Hagar's perspective there might be some other realities to consider. For instance, before Sarai gave Hagar to Abram, she had complete control over Hagar because Hagar was her property and handmaid. The job of a handmaid, according to Elsa Tamez was"to look after her mistress, do domestic work, and serve as wet nurse" if the mistress had children. No one else in the household, not even Abram, could make Hagar do anything without Sarai's permission. Hagar's well-being was determined by Sarai. And there is nothing in the text to suggest that Hagar and Sarai were at odds with each other before the issue of motherhood became a major concern for Sarai – and for Abram because of Yahweh's promise to him in Genesis 15 of many descendants. The word used in Genesis 16 to describe Hagar is šipha, meaning"a virgin, dependent maid who serves the mistress of the house." This means that Hagar was a virgin when she was made to lie down with Abram. Female slaves, especially those owned by slave masters, were often rented out as concubines by their masters. Obviously, Sarai had not allowed such a fate to befall Hagar.

Could it be that Hagar, because of her Egyptian heritage and her protection against rape by Sarai, had status among other female slaves? Did she lose pride and status because of Sarai's betrayal of her virginity? Could it be that Hagar's argument with Sarai had nothing to do with her wanting to take over Sarai's position with Abram, but that Hagar's resentment was because Sarai's betrayal of her would become obvious when her pregnancy by Abram became obvious? Could it be that both women were concerned about loss of status but for different reasons? Could it be that in the consciousness of foreign slaves like Hagar there was no particular value assigned to female slaves on the basis of their reproducing babies who became the property of the slave owners?

Obviously these questions cannot be answered until we know more about female slaves during the time of Abram and Sarai. But it is apparent that exegetes have interpreted Hagar's anger toward Sarai in Genesis 16:45 with regard for a patriarchal value system operative in the world of these slave holders – a system that put final authority in the hands of men like Abram. It is also apparent that the redactors who finally connected the many stories making up the book of Genesis were not attempting to preserve the stories of women's relation to each other. Therefore important details may be missing. The redactors' aim was to preserve the story of Yahweh's election and covenant with Abram and therefore with Israel. Since these stories were first transmitted orally and were only written down centuries later, we cannot know the precise form and content in which they originally circulated.

However, if Genesis 16:5 is taken seriously from the perspective of the slave woman Hagar, it can be interpreted as an instance clearly illustrating the right of ownership and domination patriarchal law provided for one class of females (such as Sarai, the slave holder) over another class of females (such as Hagar, the slave). Yet it seems that Sarai's authority is limited here. Her placing of the blame upon Abram seems to be an appeal for him to exercise the law which prohibited (and prescribed punishment for) slave women who sought to be empowered. Also, from Hagar's perspective, one can ask whether Sarai thought Abram, in his relations with Hagar, had encouraged her to feel empowered and to manifest this feeling?

Why, for instance, does Sarai phrase her accusation to Abram in language that suggests intimacy rather than legal relation between Hagar and the slave master ("I...put my slave-girl into your arms")? And does her ultimate appeal to the divine patriarch Yahweh suggest that she doubts that Abram will, himself, take action against Hagar? Von Rad interprets Genesis 16:5 to 6 as instances in which both Sarai and Abram respond to Hagar's belligerence by relating to each other and to Hagar on the basis of what the law allowed. Von Rad claims that the maintenance of justice in the house was the man's affair in any case (the cry h a m a si prime a lek a cannot be translated, "My wrong be upon you," but rather, "My wrong is your responsibility," that is, you are competent and responsible to restore my right. The cry was the customary legal formula with which one appealed for legal protection). Sarah goes the limit with her counterstroke: she appeals to the highest judge, who sees every secret thing.

Phyllis Tribe interprets Abram's response as indicating his choice"not to exercise power and thus remain passive." Technically, however, Hagar no longer belongs to Sarai. She has given Hagar to Abram as second wife. But he returns Hagar to Sarai:"Very well,' Abram said to Sarai,'your slave-girl is at your disposal. Treat her as you think fit'". Sarai is thus in control again, but with Abram's permission. She can determine the punishment for Hagar, who according to modern exegetes broke the law forbidding"a serving maid who has a child by her master... to put herself on a par with her mistress." So"Sarai accordingly treated her so badly that she ran away from her". Rather than being passive, Abram has actively taken charge by allowing Sarai to avenge herself. He has acted according to the law.

Hagar becomes the first female in the Bible to liberate herself from oppressive power structures. Though the law prescribes harsh punishment for run-away slaves, she takes the risk rather than endure more brutal treatment by Sarai. The harshness of the force Sarai exerts upon Hagar is indicated in the passage by the verb ('nh), which is also used in Exodus to indicate the suffering experience of all the Hebrews when they were slaves in Egypt.

But powerlessness defies power and thus affects the welfare of the family and the slave. Hagar, the surrogate mother, runs away into the wilderness. Her leaving means that Sarai cannot become a mother as she had planned.

There will be no son to carry on Abram's posterity and inherit the family fortune. This could signal the extinction of the family line, a very serious mat- ter for Abram and Sarai. As John Marshall Holt points out, “The patriarchs knew no other society than the family.... Once the Hebrews departed from the Mesopotamian homeland they lived in Palestine without participating to any great extent in the larger society of a state or a national group.” Holt goes on to say, “In the absence of any strong demand for loyalty in other directions, the Hebrews of the patriarchal age devote their whole effort toward the family and its work.” Just as the welfare of Abram's family is insecure at this point, so is Hagar insecure. She has run off into the wilderness as a lone woman without family support or protection. Courageous though her liberation action may be, Hagar is without the support and physical sustenance a pregnant woman needs.

Survival, Quality of Life and God

Nevertheless Hagar, by way of her own speech and religious experience, comes through to the reader as a person momentarily in control of her destiny. In the wilderness to which she has escaped, the issues of survival and quality of life come to the surface in her story. And the divinity is at work in the process.

The text reports that “the angel of Yahweh found her by a spring in the desert, the spring on the road to Shur”. With reference to the identity of the divinity here, The New Jerusalem Bible states that in most ancient texts the angel of Yahweh “is not a created being distinct from God…but God himself in visible form.” Most biblical scholarship agrees that in the patriarchal narratives “there is no clear distinction between the angel of the Lord and Yahweh himself.” Thus the divinity is with Hagar in the midst of her personal suffering and destitution. And Hagar herself is obviously on the way to Egypt, for Shur is thought to have been located on the Northeast border of Egypt.

But Yahweh has other plans for Hagar, which will determine her survival and the quality of life she must form and endure for several years. First, God invites her to speak, asking, “Hagar, slave-girl of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?” (Genesis 16:8). The angel of Yahweh still identifies Hagar as Sarai's property, but seeks from Hagar her own words about her past and her sense of destination. Hagar speaks about neither her past nor her future. Rather, she tells only the present: "I am running away from my mistress Sarai" (Genesis 16:8b). Hagar's response here suggests that Hagar still sees herself as property. Then, in what appears to be God's support of slavery, the angel of Yahweh says to Hagar, "Go back to your mistress and submit to her" (Genesis 16:9). If Hagar obeys, she can be sure that her autonomy will be severely restricted.

We cannot help but question this response given to Hagar by the angel of Yahweh. Did God not know about Sarai's brutal treatment of Hagar? Elsa Tamez connects this response with Yahweh's concern for the survival and future quality of life for Hagar and Ishmael. She says:

What God wants is that she and the child should be saved, and at the moment, the only way to accomplish that is not in the desert, but by returning to the house of Abraham. Ishmael hasn't been born.... Hagar simply must wait a little longer, because Ishmael must be born in the house of Abraham to prove that he is the first-born and to enter into the household through the rite of circumcision. This will guarantee him participation in the history of salvation and will give him rights of inheritance in the house of Abraham.

While Tamez's observation has merit, her initial attempt to put this aspect of Hagar's experience with God into a liberation mode stretches the text beyond what it declares. The angel of Yahweh is, in this passage, no liberator God. However, given what we now know about high infant mortality rates in the ancient Near East and about promise and covenant as major themes in the Hebrew testament, we can agree with Tamez's claim about survival. (In the book of Genesis covenant and promise are associated with survival, election and blessing.) We can also speak of quality of life with regard to God's concern for Hagar at this point. God apparently wants Hagar to secure her and her child's well-being by using the resources Abram has to offer. But in this passage, God is not concerned with nor involved in liberation.

Nevertheless, the angel of Yahweh makes a promise to Hagar similar to the promise Yahweh makes to Abram in Genesis 15:2 to 6. “The angel of Yahweh further said to her Hagar, 'I shall make your descendants too numerous to be counted'". This means that Hagar, a foreign female slave whose future would ordinarily not advance past slavery, is given hope not only for the survival of her generation but also hope for the possibility of future freedom for her seed. God forecasts the"methods" Hagar's son, in adult life, will possibly use to secure his well-being:

Now, you have conceived and will bear a son, and you shall name him Ishmael, for Yahweh has heard your cries of distress.

A wild donkey of a man he will be.

his hand against every man, and every man's hand against him, living his life in defiance of all his kinsmen

(Genesis 16:11 to 12).

Using a birth announcement formula like those appearing in several other places in the Bible, the narrator suggests that Ishmael's adult life will be far from peaceful.

From our modern perspective, this announcement may resemble a curse more than a blessing. But the birth announcement and the promise ("I shall make your descendants too numerous to be counted") are connected. The promise assures survival, and the birth announcement forecasts the strategy that will be necessary for survival and for obtaining a quality of life. This is a blessing, suggesting that Ishmael will be free and a warrior. He will be able to help create and protect the quality of life he and his mother, Hagar, will later develop in the desert.

Surrogacy Roles and Wilderness Experience

The last few verses in the Genesis 16 episode in the story remind the reader of the various surrogate roles Hagar assumes or is made to assume in the narrative. She is forced to substitute for Sarai in the reproduction of a male heir for Abram. In her job as handmaid to mistress Sarai, she will also function as wet-nurse for any children who are born, thereby substituting for the mistress in the nurturing role. The human role in the “Yahweh promise modality” has (before Hagar) been filled by a male, the patriarch. Hagar steps into the usual male role of receiving a promise of numerous posterity. Naming of shrines, wells and other places was done by men, but Hagar's authority substitutes for male authority. The text claims, "Hagar gave a name to Yahweh who had spoken to her. 'You are El Roi,' by which she meant, 'Did I not go on seeing here, after him who sees me?' This is why the well is called the well of Lahai Roi; it is between Kadesh and Bered" (Genesis 16:13 to 14). While the text does not actually identify Hagar as the person who named the well, it does suggest that Hagar's experience with God at the well was so significant that the well thereafter bore a name issuing from Hagar's experience of naming. Therefore, Hagar is responsible for the name and is in that sense its author.

As Phyllis Tribe points out, Hagar is the only person in the Bible to whom is attributed the power of naming God, who has ministered to her and empowered her in these surrogate roles:

The expression is striking because it connotes naming rather than invocation. In other words, Hagar does not call upon the name of the deity. Instead she calls the name (qr'šm-yhwy), a power attributed to no one else in the Bible.... The maid... after receiving a divine announcement of the forthcoming birth, sees (r'h) God with new vision.... Her naming unites the divine and human encounter.

Equally significant here is the nature of the name Hagar assigns to God, that is, “El Roi.” Helmer Ringgren, in his discussion of the names for God in the patriarchal narratives, indicates the uniqueness of the name Hagar chose:

El is … familiar as the highest god of the Canaanites (as of most of the Semitic peoples).... These names [i.e., those compounded with El] are never associated with the patriarchs, either as individuals or as tribes; instead, with the exception of El Shaddai, they are always linked to specific cultic sites.... El olam, “the Everlasting God,” appears in Genesis 21:33 in connection with Beer-sheba. El ro'i, “God of seeing,” appears in Genesis 16:13 at another sanctuary in southern Palestine. Beyond this we have no information about these two divinities.

While Hagar's God may be, as Ringgren suggests, a localized form of"a single great divinity," it is interesting that this deity is not associated with Hagar's oppressors, the patriarchal family.

Viewed within the context of Hagar's Egyptian heritage, this act of naming the deity takes on added significance. Though El may also be, as Roland de Vaux contends, an altered form of"Baal" in the text"under the influence of Yahwism," the name of Hagar's God (pointing to sight and therefore eyes of the deity) recalls certain Egyptian myths associated with the God Ra, his eye and the creation of humans. As Egyptian myth has it:

Man, far from being the crowning achievement of creation ... comes into being only incidentally, from the tears shed by Ra. After Shu and Tefnut other deities had been created, they had been left in the happy care of Nun, the Primordial Waters, possibly until they should mature. But Ra's eye (the sun itself) left his head to follow and look after them. Naturally Ra had to make another one to take its place. When the original Eye of the Universal Lord finally returned and saw that it had been replaced, it reproached its master angrily, and Ra wept. From these tears men came into being.

Earthlings being who they are, Egyptian myth provides further insight about Ra's eye and human conduct:

And it came to pass when Ra...had established his kingship over men and gods together...mankind planned evil thoughts against Ra....His majesty discerned the thoughts that were planned against him by mankind. And His Majesty...said to the gods who were among his following: "Come, fetch me my Eye, and also Shu, Tafnut, and Geb other gods, together with the Fathers and Mothers who were with me when I was as yet in Nun....Thou shall come...to the Great palace, that they may give me their counsel."...Then Ra said to Nun: "O thou Eldest God,...behold mankind, who came into being from my Eye! They have planned evil thoughts against me. Tell me what you would do about it!" And...the Majesty of Nun said, "O my son Ra,...great is the fear of thee when thine Eye is against those who have planned against thee!"...And they all the gods said to His majesty: "Let thine Eye go forth to smite for thee those who plan evil.

However, the Eye has not sufficient power within itself to smite them for thee. Let it go forth as Hathor the mother goddess capable of both good and destruction!"

The point here is that Hagar's naming of God gathers additional meaning when we look at her action in relation to Egyptian traditions as well as Hebrew traditions. In the context of Egyptian myth the deity's eye (sight) has been involved in the creation of humanity only incidentally and not through planned choice. The parallels here between Hagar's experience with God in the wilderness and the work of Ra's Eye are considerable. The God in the wilderness has been involved in the creation of Ishmael in the sense that God gives Ishmael his identity, that is, name and temperament.

Hagar's God (like Ra) has incidentally become involved in the creation of man (Ishmael). There is no prior connection between Hagar and the God, while there is a connection between Abram and his God prior to the Hagar-Sarai incident and prior to the birth of Isaac. The appearance of Hagar's God (and God's involvement in Ishmael's creation) is not "an invocation" but a spontaneous happening. Also, the connection of motherhood (the goddess Hathor) and Ra's Eye in the Egyptian myth is an interesting parallel with the connection of God's sight and Hagar's motherhood in the Hebrew testament. Finally, in both the Egyptian context and the biblical context, the issue of women's surrogate roles comes to the surface. When Ra's Eye is transformed into Hathor, she becomes a surrogate for Ra. Hagar is obviously the surrogate for Sarai.

The fact that Hagar does not call upon the God of the slave holders Sarai and Abram and the fact that she does not name her God in accord with their (Sarai and Abram's) patriarchal traditions lifts up another bit of Egyptian tradition. This tradition helps us connect the image of the belligerent Hagar in the household of Sarai and Abram with the image of Hagar in the wilderness, who may not have lost any of her belligerence. Egyptologist Adolph Erman provides this insight:

According to Egyptian faith, one could do nothing better for any one than by inscriptions and representations to "cause his name to live," and nothing worse than to allow it to perish. The Egyptians zealously endeavoured to root out and destroy the names and figures of people they hated; this act of revenge was common at all periods, and was practiced by kings as well as by private individuals.

In light of Hagar's Egyptian heritage, in light of her brutal treatment by Sarai and Abram's complicity in this brutality, a question can be raised. Is Hagar's naming action a strike against patriarchal power at its highest level, since the ultimate head of this ancient Hebrew family was its patriarchal God? Was Hagar's naming of God an act of defiance and resistance as well as an expression of awe?

This act of naming is Hagar's last word in the Genesis 16 account. Verses 7 through 14 show Hagar, the surrogate mother, involved in wilderness experience. This experience holds in solution a woman's self-initiated liberation event, woman's alienation and isolation, economic deprivation, pregnancy and a radical encounter with God, which empowers the female slave of African descent to hope and to act. It is this first wilderness experience that brings to the surface the many surrogate roles Hagar has and will assume. The final two verses in the Genesis account (verses 15, 16) narrate the results of Hagar's return to the household of the slave owners Sarai and Abram. "Hagar bore Abram a son, and Abram gave his son borne by Hagar the name of Ishmael." Thus Hagar's power of naming has been surrendered to the patriarch Abram. Verse 16 (from P) informs the reader that Abram is what we would call an old man. But the fact that Hagar returned to the household of her slave owner after her self-initiated liberation demonstrates her faith and her radical obedience to her God.

A provocative string of stories bridges the gap between the first episode of Hagar's story and the second episode, which appears in Genesis 21:9 to 21. Most of the stories contain some motif in human sexuality essential for understanding either the relation of God to the patriarch's history, or God's response to sexual abuse, or the origin of certain tribes kin to the patriarch or the patriarch's attempt to offer his wife's body to ensure his own survival.

In chapter 17 God seals his covenant with Abraham by commanding a sign demonstrated by snipping skin on the human penis, that is, circumcision. Chapter 18 reveals God's concern for the reproductive capacities of Abraham's wife Sarah and for the sin of Sodom. Chapter 19 tells of God's destruction of Sodom be cause of its alarmingly inhospitable manner and sexual excess. Also recorded in this chapter is the incest by which the Moabite and Bene-Ammon tribes came into being. In chapter 20 Abraham is once again offering Sarah up as his sister (to mate with a king) because he “thought there would be no fear of God here and I would be killed for the sake of my wife” (Genesis 20:11 to 12).

Chapter 21 begins with another motif in human sexuality, birth, and tells of the fulfillment of the promise of a child to Abraham and Sarah. Isaac is born. Once the child is weaned, Hagar and Ishmael come back into the Genesis narrative in 21:9 to 21. Obviously relations between Sarah and Hagar, and Hagar's young son, Ishmael, have not improved. The text claims, "Now Sarah watched the son that Hagar the Egyptian had borne to Abraham, playing with her son Isaac. 'Drive away that slave-girl and her son,' she said to Abram, 'this slave-girl's son is not to share the inheritance with my son Isaac'." (Genesis 21:9 to 10). The Elohist, like the Yahwist in chapter 16, emphasizes Hagar's ethnicity and lowly station. Both women are identified as mothers. But we do not know whether Sarah actually took Ishmael as her own as she stated in Genesis 16. The reference to "this slave-girl's son" leads us to conclude that Sarah did not consider Ishmael her son.

However, there is ambiguity here. Sarah's concern about Ishmael inheriting suggests that Ishmael is not a slave, because among the early Hebrews (and in early Mesopotamian law) the slave sons of the master's concubines could not inherit"unless their father had given them equal rank with the sons of free-born wives, by legal adoption." Legal adoption by the father did not automatically indicate acceptance by the wife (for example, Sarah). But neither custom nor law gave Sarah power to affect the adoption. Her ability to affect decision-making depended upon the degree to which the patriarch, who had all power, would allow himself to be influenced — apparently in Sarah's case, here, this was not a lot.

Economic realities, specifically inheritance, are the central issues here. Hagar is poor; and apparently Sarah does not want Hagar's station elevated, as it no doubt would be if Ishmael received the inheritance from his father that the firstborn son was supposed to receive. According to early Hebrew custom, and Assyrian and Nuzi law, the eldest son received a double portion of his father's wealth. Law forbade the father from showing spe cial privilege to the son of the wife he preferred and thereby protected the firstborn son's inheritance rights.

Hiding beneath these economic realities centered in inheritance are power and property dynamics that could seriously affect the lives of Hagar and Sarah in the future. Among these ancient Hebrews, wives could not inherit their husband's wealth. Therefore, neither Sarah nor Hagar would inherit anything from Abraham should they outlive him.

The responsibility for Sarah's sustenance and care would ordinarily fall upon the firstborn son as chief inheritor of his father's wealth. But if this firstborn son, Ishmael, also becomes head of the family and/or tribe, Sarah may have considerably less power and status than she has as a wife of Abraham and as she would have as mother of the son who inherited the larger share of the wealth and therefore power. Needless to say, Isaac would have considerably less wealth, power and status as brother of the firstborn son.

Sarah faces another possible threat. If Hagar is allowed to remain in the household, Abraham may stipulate that a gift be given her at the time of his death. Slave women who had children by the master could receive such awards.

This concern of Sarah's about inheritance seems to reinforce the idea that she had not accepted Ishmael and thus could not expect the care from him that adopted children were supposed to render their parents in their old age. Sarah's hostility here might also have been aggravated by what she perhaps knew about contemporary women in the surrounding cultures. Roland de Vaux reports:

The social and legal position of an Israelite wife was... inferior to the position a wife occupied in the great countries round about. In Egypt the wife was often the head of the family, with all the rights such a position entailed. In Babylon she could acquire property, take legal action, be a party to contracts, and she even had a certain share in her husband's inheritance.

If Ishmael could claim his right of primogeniture, Hagar's power and status could only increase. Most of what is presented in the text suggests that Ishmael was the son of Abraham and Hagar was regarded as mother, since Sarah appears not to have taken him. However, Hagar is not to realize an elevation in status among these Hebrews. Sarah's demand for the expulsion of mother and child was heard by Abraham:

This greatly distressed Abraham, because the slave-girl's child too was his son, but God said to him, "Do not distress yourself on account of the boy and your slave-girl. Do whatever Sarah says, for Isaac is the one through whom your name will be carried on. But the slave-girl's son I shall also make into a great nation, for he too is your child" (Genesis 21:11 to 13).

Whereas God's voice entered the Genesis 16 episode in conversation with Hagar and not her oppressors, in this episode (Genesis 21) God first communicates with Hagar's oppressor Abraham. In both episodes God sides with Sarah. Here God reaffirms the covenant made with Abraham and qualifies the promise made to Hagar. In Genesis 16 God does not tell Hagar that the promise made to her is in any way connected with Abraham. Rather, God "has heard her cries of distress" (verse 11). Therefore, the gift of numerous progeny will be given her. Now, in Genesis 21, God authenticates the promise to Hagar on the basis of her connection with Abraham. It is God who ultimately destroys Ishmael's right to claim primogeniture and receive the appropriate inheritance. Abraham heeded the advice of God.

So, “early next morning, Abraham took some bread and a skin of water and giving them to Hagar, put the child on her shoulder and sent her away” (verse 14).

Homelessness and Economic Realities

At this point in the narrative, the issue of economic realities connects with the issue of homelessness. Abraham has given Hagar and his son no economic resources to sustain them in their life away from his family. Hagar and Ishmael seem consigned to a future of poverty and homelessness. While the Elohist indicates that Ishmael is young enough to be carried away in his mother's arms, modern scholarly opinion places Ishmael's age at about seventeen at the time he and Hagar were expelled from Abraham's house. Regardless of Ishmael's (or Hagar's) age, bread and a skin of water would not sustain them on their journey, which appar- ently had no destination. The text claims, “She wandered off into the desert of Beersheba. When the skin of water was finished she abandoned the child under a bush. Then she went and sat down at a distance, about a bowshot away, thinking 'I cannot bear to see the child die.' Sitting at a distance, she began to sob” (Genesis 21:15 to 16).

To recognize Hagar's and Ishmael's frightening and insecure predicament at this point, we must understand something about the composition and function of the family among these ancient people. According to de Vaux,"The family consists of those who are united by common blood and common dwelling place. The'family' is a'house'; to found a family is'to build a house'." De Vaux goes on to say,"Noah's family included his wife, sons and their wives....Jacob's family comprises three generations....The family included the servants...who live under the protection of the head of the family." Even for the slave,"to be without family is to be without protection."

So Hagar and Ishmael, expelled from the family, or “house,” of Abraham and Sarah, were not only without economic resources; they were without protection in a nomadic culture where men ruled the families, tribes and clans. As mother and child wander off into the desert of Beersheba, we cannot help but wonder how their survival will be secured. Though this desert or wilderness is the site of many important events in Hebrew and ancient Israelite history, it is hardly a place where a lone woman and child ought to be wandering without sustenance. shelter or protection!

There were some rules peculiar to nomadic life that might finally have alleviated the poverty and homelessness of Hagar and Ishmael. These rules had to do with hospitality and asylum. Roland de Vaux says:

Nomad life...gives rise...to a law of asylum. In this type of society it is impossible and inconceivable that an individual could live isolated, unattached to any tribe. Hence, if a man is expelled from his tribe...for any reason...or he leaves it...he has to seek the protection of another tribe. There he becomes what modern Arabs call a dahil, "he who has come in," and what their forefathers call a jar. The tribe undertakes to protect him, to defend him against his enemies and to avenge his blood, if necessary. These customs are reflected in two Old Testament institutions, that of the ger (which is the same word as the Arabic jar) and that of cities of refuge.

About hospitality, de Vaux says it "is a necessity of life in the desert, but among the nomads this necessity became a virtue, and a most highly esteemed one. The guest is sacred."

In Hagar's case there might have been a problem since she was an expelled slave and a woman. That is, her inferior status as ex-slave was compounded by her sex. But if Ishmael was free because of adoption by his father, Abraham, their chances of joining another tribe could have been better. Whether Hagar's slave status would change in new family and tribal connections is not known. Probably much would depend upon Ishmael's age at the time of expulsion. If he was in fact seventeen, perhaps he could negotiate for a home for himself and his mother.

Information in the biblical texts, however, suggests that Hagar and Ishmael might not have become attached to another family or tribe. One is led to believe that with the aid of God, Ishmael and Hagar maintained an autonomous existence. The Genesis 21 narrative reveals that when their resources for survival (water and bread) had run out, Ishmael was near death and Hagar was a short distance away crying, unable to bear seeing her son perish. “God heard the boy crying, and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven. 'What is wrong Hagar?' he asked. 'Do not be afraid, for God has heard the boy's cry in his plight'” (Genesis 21:17).

Unlike the Yahwist narrative, the Elohist narrative does not present an image of an immanent deity. Rather, in Genesis 21 God is transcendent, calling down to Hagar from heaven. Neither is Ishmael mentioned by name as he is in Genesis 16, though the words"God has heard" reflect the meaning of Ishmael's name. Again, as in Genesis 16, God asks Hagar a question. This time, however, Hagar is not given a chance to speak. God gives her a command that, if obeyed, will end the separation between mother and child (Ishmael is under a bush and Hagar is some distance away crying).

Tender loving care is in order. So God bids her to "Go pick the boy up and hold him safe, for I shall make him into a great nation." Then God opened Hagar's eyes and she saw a well, so she went and filled the skin with water and gave the boy a drink" (Genesis 21:18 to 19). is assured that, contrary to the child's near-death appearance, he will be great. God renews the promise made to Hagar in Genesis 16 and to Abraham in Genesis 21:13. Ishmael will survive. We assume Hagar obeyed, for God gave her new vision to see $survival resources where she saw none before.

The last two verses in the Genesis 21 narrative reflect the real autonomy of Hagar and Ishmael, an autonomy facilitated by the reality that “God was with the boy”. The issue of homelessness is resolved in the statement, “He grew up and made his home in the desert, and he became an archer. He made his home in the desert of Paran”. The fact that he lived in the desert and was an archer could suggest the idea of raiding, which was a practice among the early nomadic tribes. Unlike war, raiding had as its object not killing, but carrying off plunder and escaping unharmed. Ishmael's home (and we would suppose at this point Hagar's home also) is a place where the Israelites, after the Exodus from Egypt, wandered for thirty-eight years. Perhaps raiding was a way Ishmael increased his wealth and was possibly able finally to head the tribe originally bearing his name.

Hagar's autonomy is manifested in the last act she performs in the Genesis 21 narrative. Assuming a role ordinarily prescribed for males in most ancient Near Eastern households, Hagar gets a wife for Ishmael from Egypt. This last action of Hagar suggests several possibilities about the kind of"house" she may want to establish. Apparently she does not want to perpetuate the culture of Abraham and Sarah. Perhaps she wants to reinforce the influence of Egyptian culture, since she chooses Ishmael's wife from among her own people. Or it could be that Hagar, in the choice of Ishmael's wife, is attempting to strengthen or establish Egyptian ties that might prove useful for the kind of nomadic existence she and Ishmael will live in the desert. Egypt was a great center of sophisticated culture and power. Or it could be that Hagar wanted to perpetuate the inheritance customs of Egypt, which were reckoned by the mother and not the father. Whatever her reasons for choosing an Egyptian wife for Ishmael, Hagar may have dealt with the problem of homelessness and poverty by founding her own"house" or tribe. The Hagarites may be more related to Hagar than we have been led to believe. Lee A. Starr, writing in the early twentieth century, has this to say:

Dwelling in the eastern part of Palestine, over whom the tribe of Reuben achieved victory...the Hagarites were a strong and wealthy tribe...evident from the Bible account of the victory gained by the Reubenites (I Chrn. v:18 to 22). The spoils taken from the nomads on the occasion of this battle were fifty thousand camels, two hundred and fifty thousand sheep, two thousand asses and an hundred thousand captives. "And they took away their Cattle" and "there fell many slain."

Addressing the problem of the tendency among scholars to dissociate Hagar from the Hagarites and Hagarenes, Starr says:

No one questions the claim that Dan was the ancestor of the Danites; Reuben of the Reubenites; Ephraim of the Ephraimites; Edom of the Edomites; Moab of the Moabites; Ammon of the Ammonites; Midian of the Midianites, etcetera Why should we deviate from the common rule when we come to the Hagarites and Hagarenes?

(Could it be that the battle between Reuben and the Hagarites is an ancient Hebrew rendering of a victory of patriarchy over matriarchy?) We can only provide a speculative response to this question. However, the Genesis 21 narrative suggests that Hagar and Ishmael fared well, because God was with the child as he grew. Both the Genesis 16 and 21 narratives reveal the faith, hope and struggle with which an African slave woman worked through issues of survival, surrogacy, motherhood, rape, homelessness and economic and sexual oppression.

The African-American community has taken Hagar's story unto itself. Hagar has "spoken" to generation after generation of black women because her story has been validated as true by suffering black people. She and Ishmael together, as family, model many black American families in which a lone woman/mother struggles to hold the family together in spite of the poverty to which ruling class economics consign it. Hagar, like many black women, goes into the wide world to make a living for herself and her child, with only God by her side.

Chapter 3

Social-Role Surrogacy: Naming Black Women's Oppression

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B because she was A Slave, Hagar had no control over her body or her labor. Her body, like her labor, could be exploited in any way her owners desired. Her reproduction capacities belonged to her slave holders, Abraham and Sarah. Thus surrogacy became a major theme in Hagar's story of exploitation. Surrogacy has also been a major theme in African-American women's history. But whereas Hagar's experience with surrogacy was primarily biological, African-American women's experience with surrogacy has been primarily associated with social-role exploitation.

Two kinds of social-role surrogacy have negatively affected the lives of African-American women and mothers: coerced surrogacy and voluntary surrogacy. Coerced surrogacy, belonging to the antebellum period, was a condition in which people and systems more powerful than black people forced black women to function in roles that ordinarily would have been filled by someone else. For example, black female slaves were forced to substitute for the slave-owner's wife in nurturing roles involving white children. Black women were forced to take the place of men in work roles that, according to the larger society's under- standing of male and female roles, belonged to men. Frederick Law Olmsted, a northern architect writing in the nineteenth century, said he “stood for a long time watching slave women repair a road on a South Carolina plantation.” Sometimes black women were even forced to substitute for the slave owner and his wife in governing roles connected directly with the slave-owner's household. Historian Deborah Gray White tells of a white North Carolina planter who put a slave woman (and not his wife) in charge of all domestic duties in his household. This slave woman was not a mammy. Rather, she was the lover of the slave owner. During the antebellum period in America, this coerced surrogacy was legally supported in the ownership rights by which slave masters and their wives controlled their property, for example, black women. Slave women could not exercise the choice of refusing surrogacy roles.

After emancipation, the coercion associated with antebellum surrogacy was replaced by social pressures that influenced many black women to continue to fill some surrogacy roles. But there was an important difference between antebellum surrogacy and postbellum surrogacy. The difference was that black women, after emancipation, could exercise the choice of refusing the surrogate role, but social pressures often influenced the choices black women made as they adjusted to life in a free world. Thus postbellum surrogacy can be referred to as voluntary (though pressured) surrogacy.

Poverty among African Americans often pressured some black women into certain surrogacy roles. For poor black women voluntary surrogacy could mean that, as domestics employed by white families, these women could still perform nurturing tasks for white children. In the black community black women could be pressured by social circumstances to step into the role of head of household in lieu of absent male energy and presence.

Today the growing surrogacy industry in North America and the escalating poverty among black people can pressure poor black women to become heavily involved in this industry at the level of reproduction. Though legislation has been passed that makes surrogacy contracts non-binding for surrogate mothers, poverty can influence black women to honor such contracts. However, the point here is that since emancipation, black women have been able to exercise choice with regard to surrogacy roles, even though economics and other social forces exert undue influence upon the choices black women make.

A closer look at these two modes of social-role surrogacy in the two different periods (antebellum and postbellum) reveals the difference between the modes and describes an aspect of black experience heretofore invisible in the scholarship about black history, religion and culture.

Coerced Surrogacy Roles and Antebellum Realities

In the antebellum South coerced surrogacy roles involving black women were in the areas of nurturance, field labor and sexuality. Some of the traditions associated with these three areas have helped develop stereotypical images of black women that have survived from antebellum times to the present.

One such tradition was that of the southern black mummy. Standing in the place of the slave-owner's wife, mummy nurtured the entire white family. A long and respected tradition among southern whites, mummy was an empowered (but not autonomous) house slave who was given considerable authority by her owners.

According to the existing scattered reports of mammies and how the tradition operated, we know many southerners thought"mammy... could do anything, and do it better than anyone else. Because of her expertise in all domestic matters, she was the premier house servant and all others were her subordinates." Eliza Riply, a southern white woman who received nurture from a mummy, remembers her as a “supernumerary” who, after the children grew up... managed the whole big and mixed household. In her Eliza Riply's father's house, everyone was made to understand that... all applications were to go through Mammy Charlotte. Nobody thought to go to the judge or his wife for anything.

Susan Epps's recollection of mammy attests to the fact that it was often the mammy who taught and instilled values in white children – a teaching role that southern ideology usually assigned to white Christian mothers. Mammies acted as protectors of their young white charges. Epps recalls that “it was Mammy who stood between her 'honey child' and the cold, cold world.” On many occasions, mammies advised slave owners about business matters.

Testimony by ex-slaves themselves also attests to the value and power of mammals in southern households. Drucella Martin remembered “that her mother was in full charge of the house and all 'marse children.'” Katherine Epps of Alabama said that her mother “worked in the Big House, 'aspinnin and 'asussin de white chillun.'” Epps also claimed that the mistress was so fond of her mother “that when she learned . . . the overseer had whipped the woman whom everyone called 'Mammy,' she dismissed him and gave him until sundown to remove himself and his family from the plantation.” An ex-slave woman in Louisiana recalled the unusual respect given to some mammals. She said that “all the niggers have to stoop to Aunt Rachael just like they curtsy to Missy.” Deborah Gray White therefore concludes that mammy was primarily devoted to white families and their children.

A house servant, mammy had complete control of the management of the white household. “She served as friend and advisor. She was, in short, surrogate mistress and mother.”

However, historian Eugene Genovese makes the point that while mammals were devout in their care of white children and families, they were also just as dedicated to their own families and to the well-being of black people. They often interceded to prevent slaves from receiving floggings and abuse, and they performed other services beneficial to the slave community. Therefore, Genovese claims, mummy's tragedy was not that she abandoned her own people.

The tragedy was that she was powerless to offer her gifts to black people "on terms they could accept without, themselves, sliding farther into a system of paternalistic dependence." Though tenable, Genovese's observation forgets some black women who, beyond the plantation, bore the title of mummy but who were subtly engaged in liberation efforts. One such woman was Mummy Pleasant, whose given name was Mary Ellen.

Early in life Mammy Pleasant was a slave in Georgia, but her intelligence was recognized by a planter who sent her to Boston for training. Here, according to W. E. B. Du Bois's account of her life, she was made a household drudge and eventually married.

She inherited fifty thousand dollars from her husband's estate. With this money she migrated to California and made a fortune. Describing the liberation activity of Mammy Pleasant, Du Bois reports that she wanted her epitaph to read:"She was a friend of John Brown." It was rumored that she financed John Brown's raid. In accord with the mammy tradition of advising wealthy white men about business, Mammy Pleasant in California"was the trusted confidante of many of the white California pioneers like Ralston, Mills and Booth."

Much mythology surrounded the figure of the black mammy. White pro-slavery arguments picture mammy as a contented and well-taken-care-of house servant whose activities in the house of her owners were “in keeping with… Victorian ideals of womanhood prevalent in nineteenth century America.” In addition to being maternal, the ideal Victorian woman was virtuous, a sexual, pious, tender and understanding. Mammy exhibited some of these characteristics. Therefore, it could be argued that slavery was a tool for converting some “heathen” black women into “civilized” models of womanhood. Mammy was living proof that the conversion could be accomplished.

Mythology about mummy's well-being in her old age was apt to be just as exaggerated as notions of her "fit" into Victorian notions of womanhood. Mummy's old age was often full of suffering. Deborah Gray White reports that many of these mammies, when old, were not treated well by their owners. They were often abandoned. White cites the case of Frederick Douglass's grandmother, who suffered this fate.

As a devoted nurse to white children and as housekeeper, this grandmother nevertheless lived to see her own children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren sold away from her. When she got too old to work, the slave owners whom she had so devoutly served built her a little hut in the woods and left her there to care for herself, even though she was very frail. "As Frederick Douglass put it, they turned her out to die." White describes other forms of abuse some mammies suffered.

One mummy named Aunt Betty nursed her master from infancy to adulthood. Then she experienced a fatal destiny when"during one of his drunken rampages, he took his shotgun and killed her." Nevertheless, the mummy role was probably the most powerful and authoritative one slave women could fill. And although slave women — in their coerced roles as mammals – were often abused, they were also empowered.

This was not the case, however, with slave women laboring beyond the Big House, that is, the slave-owner's dwelling. In the area of field labor, black women were forced into work usually associated with male roles. In the fields slave women and slave men performed the same tasks. Black feminist scholar Bell Hooks claims that on large plantations "women plowed, planted ... harvested crops.

On some plantations black women worked longer hours in the fields than black men." What this amounted to, in terms of coerced surrogacy, was black female energy substituting for black male energy. This resulted in what Hooks refers to as the masculinization of the black female. Unlike the mammy role of the female house slave, the masculinized roles of the female field slave did not empower black women in the slave structure to the extent that mammies were empowered. In the fields the greatest amount of power a slave could hold was a position of slave driver or overseer. Usually, only males could ascend to these roles.

Thus the driver was a male slave. Though a few black males served as overseers, this role was usually filled by white men of a lower social class than the slave owner.

In their autobiographies many female slaves described the masculine work roles black women were forced to fill. Ex-slave Bethany Veney tells of helping her cruel slave owner haul logs, drive out hogs and set posts into the ground for fences. Louisa Picquet, a slave, told her story in 1861 and mentioned that slave women drove ox wagons, tended mills and plowed just like men. Another slave, Mary Prince, told of a female slave simultaneously performing tasks associated with both male and female roles:

A French Black called Hetty, whom my master took in privateering from another vessel and made his slave ... was the most active woman I ever saw, and she was taxed to her utmost.... She came in from milking the cows, and put the sweet-potatoes on for supper. She then fetched home the sheep, and penned them in the fold; drove home the cattle, and staked them about the pond side; fed and rubbed down my master's horse, and gave the ... hogs and cows their suppers; prepared the beds, and undressed the children, and laid them to sleep. I liked to look at her and watch all her doings, for hers was the only friendly face I had as yet seen, and I felt glad that she was there. She gave me my supper of potatoes and milk, and a blanket to sleep upon, which she spread for me in the passage before the door of Mrs. I __ s the slave-owner's wife] chamber.

Like some of the mammies, the slave woman coerced to perform the masculine tasks sometime met death at the hands of their owners. Prince describes Hetty's end:

Her death was hastened (at least the slaves all believed and said so) by the dreadful chastisement she received from her master during her pregnancy. It...was as follows. One of the cows had dragged the rope away from the stake to which Hetty had fastened it, and got loose. My master flew into a rage and ordered the poor creature Hetty to be stripped quite naked, notwithstanding her pregnancy, and to be tied to a tree in the yard.

He then flogged her as hard as he could lick, both with the whip and cow-skin, till she was all over streaming with blood. He rested, and then beat her again and again....Poor Hetty...was delivered after severe labor of a dead child. She appeared to recover after her confinement...but...ere long her body and limbs swelled to a great size; and she lay on a mat in the kitchen, till the water burst out of her body and she died.

Apparently, in the consciousness of many slaves, the masculinization of the roles of female slaves erased gender boundaries in relation to work. It may well be that this forced substitution of female energy for male energy, which field tasks would ordinarily be thought to require, was a root contributor to some male slaves' lack of gender distinction in their use of pronouns. Union Army officer Higginson said he asked a slave the meaning of a certain female custom and received an answer"framed with their usual indifference to the genders of pronouns." The slave's response was"he meaning she in de lonesome valley, sa." (Today, in both the larger American society and in the African-American community, the tendency to signify only masculinity with the use of the words"the blacks" may derive, in part, from this early American practice of masculinizing black females through their work.)

This focus upon coerced surrogacy roles of female slaves in the areas of nurturance and field labor reveals that women who filled the masculinized roles beyond the Big House were less respected than mammals, were given no recognition for their service, seldom realized the endearment of the white folks as did some mammals, got worse food and clothing and often received more brutal punishment. These masculinized female field slaves were thought to be of a lower social class than the female house slaves who usually did “women's work,” consisting of cleaning, spinning, cooking, sewing and tending children.

All slave women no doubt knew that to refuse any role assigned them in the slavocracy meant severe punishment or even death. The slave woman Harriet Tubman was a notable exception. She refused all roles assigned to her by slave owners and lived with a price upon her head.

In her autobiography she tells of the time she was preparing to go South and liberate more slaves. She was watched for everywhere. Slave holders had held a meeting in a courthouse in Maryland and increased the reward for her capture.

They discussed the various cruel ways by which she should be tortured and put to death. Nevertheless, Tubman continued in her role as liberator of slaves—a role usually thought to be filled by males.

More than in the areas of nurturance and field labor, coerced surrogacy in the area of sexuality was threatening to slave women's self-esteem and sense of self-worth. This is the area in which slave women were forced to stand in place of white women and provide sexual pleasure for white male slave owners. The Victorian ideal of true womanhood (for Anglo-American women) supported a consciousness which, in the area of sexual relations, imagined sex between free white men and their wives to be for the purpose of procreation rather than for pleasure. Many white males turned to slave women for sexual pleasure and forced these women to fulfill needs that, according to racist ideology during the time, should have been fulfilled by white women.

In her narrative Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Linda Brent presents a vivid description of her slave owner, Dr. Flint, who tried to force her into one of these illicit relations in which she would have provided him sexual pleasure. Brent escaped his advances by fleeing from his house and hiding for seven years in a crawl space in the roof of her grandmother's home. Octoroon slave woman Louisa Picquet was not as fortunate as Linda Brent. Picquet was purchased by a Mr. Williams when she was about fourteen and a half years old. She told an interviewer about the nature of her relation with this slave owner:

Answer by Louisa:

...I was sold to Mr. Williams. I went right to New Orleans then.

Question by interviewer:

... Well how was it with you after Mr. Williams bought you?

A. Well, he took me right away to New Orleans.

Q. How did you go?

A. In a boat. . Mr Williams told me what he bought me for, soon as we started for New Orleans. He said he was getting old, and when he saw me he thought he'd buy me, and end his days with me. He said if I behave myself he'd treat me well; but if not, he'd whip me almost to death.

Q. How old was he?

A. ...I guess pretty near fifty....That's the reason he was always so jealous. He never let me go out anywhere.

Q. Had you any children in New Orleans?

A. Yes; I had four.

Q. Who was their father?

A. Mr. Williams.

Q. Was it known that he was living with you?

A. Everybody knew I was housekeeper, but he never let on that he was the father of my children. I did all the work in his house – nobody there but me and the children.

Q. Were your children Mulattoes?

A. No, Sir! They were all white. They look just like him. The neighbors all see that....I told him one day, I wished he would sell me... because I had no peace at all. I rather die than live in that way. Then he got awful mad, and said notin' but death should separate us; and, if I run off, he'd blow my brains out. Then I thought, if that be the way, all I could do was just pray for him to die.

Louisa also relates details of the sexual liaison between a white slave owner and the female relatives of another slave woman named Lucy, who had white skin, “light hair and blue eyes.” The slave holder purchased Lucy's sister Elcy and lived with her until she died. Then he purchased Elcy's and Lucy's sister Judy. He lived with her. Louisa thought the slave master's sexual liaison with Elcy was beneficial to Elcy, because he taught her to read and write and he taught her music.

Apparently this slave master and Lucy's brothers and sisters were instrumental in buying Lucy and setting her free. In his slave narrative William Wells Brown tells of a female slave Cynthia purchased by a slave trader who told her she would either accompany him home to St. Louis and become his “housekeeper” or he would sell her as a field worker to one of the worst plantations on the Mississippi River. Cynthia accepted the first offer and became the slave-trader's mistress and housekeeper.

There was in the antebellum South a kind of institutionalizing of female-slave/slave-master sexual liaisons that was maintained through something called the"fancy trade." This was a special kind of slave trading involving the sale of beautiful black women for the exclusive purpose of becoming the mistresses of wealthy slave owners. Though New Orleans seems to have been the center of this trade, it also flourished in Charleston, South Carolina; St. Louis; Lexington; Richmond, Virginia; and Columbia, South Carolina. The famous octoroon balls that occurred in New Orleans allowed rich white men to meet and purchase these black women, who became their mistresses and often bore their children.

Beyond this special kind of arrangement, slave owners also frequented the slave quarters and established sexual connections with any female slave they chose. The woman in either kind of arrangement had no power to refuse this coerced surrogacy. Sometimes she hoped for (and was promised) her freedom through these sexual liaisons with the slave master. But more of ten than not, her expectations were few-tul, and she was “sold off to plantations where… she shared the misery of all slaves.”

All three antebellum forms of coerced surrogacy have contributed to the formation of negative images of black women that prevail in America to this day. From the mammy tradition has emerged the image of black women as perpetual mother figures – religious, fat, a-sexual, loving children better than themselves, self-sacrificing, giving up self-concern for group advancement. Delcy in William Faulkner's Requiem for a Nun is such a figure. Sophia in The Color Purple protests against this image in her conversation with her white charge, Miss Eleanor Jane, who believes that all black women love children, including white ones. Sophia's response to her is "I love children. . . But all the colored women that say they love yours is lying."

The antebellum tradition of masculinizing black women by means of their work has given rise to the idea that black women are not feminine and do not desire to be so. This phenomenon of masculinization of the female slave in the South was also supported by the general attitude among slave holders that blacks could stand any kind of labor, could not be overworked and were “comparatively insensitive to sufferings that would be unbearable to whites.” This meant, then, that black women were considered to have far more physical strength and more capacity for pain than white women. The image of black women as superwomen has emerged from these kinds of ideas and practices. In our time, Michele Wallace has written Black Macho and the Myth of Superwoman, which attempts to shatter this image of black women and instead present them as vulnerable, angry, hurt, frightened and not very successful in their struggle to rid their lives of sexist oppression.

One of the most prevalent images of black women today has its roots in the antebellum slave-woman/slave-master sexual liaison. Black women as “loose, over-sexed, erotic, readily responsive to the sexual advances of men, especially white men” derives from the antebellum southern way of putting the responsibility for this sexual liaison upon “immoral” slave women – black females whose “passionate” nature was supposed to have stemmed from their African heritage. Deborah Gray White discusses the making of this image under the rubric of “Jezebel.” According to White, this “Jezebel” was not pious and hence did not “lead men and children to God.” Neither was she prudent nor domestic. “Domesticity paled in importance before matters of the flesh.”

Bell Hooks contends that this kind of white, antebellum image-making about black women's sexuality has contributed greatly to the process of devaluing black womanhood that continues to this day. According to Hooks, the rape of slave women led to the devaluation of black womanhood in the American psyche. And television keeps this notion of black womanhood alive today. Hooks says American television continues to project images of the black woman "as 'fallen' woman, the whore, the slut, the prostitute."

All forms of coerced surrogacy evidence the exploitation of the slave woman by the slavocracy. Like the slave system among the ancient Hebrews (Abraham and Sarah), slavery in the United States demanded that slave women surrender their bodies to their owners against their wills. Thus African-American slave women (like the Egyptian Hagar) were bound to a system that had no respect for their bodies, their dignities or their motherhood, except as it was put to the service of securing the well-being of ruling-class families. In North America fierce and violent struggle had to afflict the entire nation before southern slave women could experience a measure of relief from coerced surrogacy roles.

Voluntary Surrogacy and Postbellum Realities

When the American Civil War ended and the master-slave relation was officially terminated in the South, black people tried to determine for whom or what black women would not stand in place. They were especially anxious to relieve black women from those coerced surrogacy roles related to field work and to black women's sexuality involving black-female/white-male sexual liaisons. Ex-slave women themselves are reported to have said that"they never mean to do any outdoor work, that white men support their wives and they black women mean that their husbands shall support them." Black men were just as anxious for black women to quit the fields. According to historians Carter G. Woodson and Lorenzo Greene,"The Negro male when he worked for wages... tended to imitate the whites by keeping his wife and daughters at home." Both black men and black women were obviously trying to pattern black family life after the patriarchal model of family sanctioned in mainline America. This would, of course, necessitate "feminizing" black female field workers by relieving them of those roles where female power and energy matched and often surpassed that of black males. The black field women would have to become proficient solely in those tasks the larger American society associated with women's work. If this practice of consigning black women to the home had been able to be consistently adopted after emancipation, the black family would have developed into a more rigid patriarchal structure.

Of even greater concern to black males and females were their efforts to terminate the forced sexual relations between black women and white men that existed during slavery. Inasmuch as marriage between African-American women and men became legal after freedom and droves of black women and men came to official locations to be married, sexual liaisons between black women and white men could be curtailed, although white men (without regard for black marriage) still took advantage of some black women. Hooks points out that after black Reconstruction (1867 to 77) “black women were often… pressured into sexual liaisons with white employers who would threaten to fire them unless they capitulated to sexual demands.”

Nevertheless, there was not nearly as much sexual activity between black women and white men after slavery because black women could refuse to substitute for white women in providing sexual pleasure for white males. Nancy White, a contemporary black female domestic worker, testified about refusing this role of playmate to white male employers:

I've had to ask some white male employer's hands off me and I've had to just give up some jobs if they got too hot behind me....I have lost some money that way, but that's all right. When you lose control of your body, you have just about lost all you have in the world.

Nancy White makes it clear that some white female employers approved of black women standing in their places to provide sexual favors for their husbands. White says, One day that woman her white female employer told me that she wouldn't be mad if I let her husband treat me the same way he treated her. I told her I would be mad…if he tried to treat me like I was as married to him as she was.

She goes on to describe her method of declining this surrogate role her female and male employers wanted to assign her. Says White, “I had to threaten that devil with a pot of hot grease to get him to keep his hands to hisself.”

While black women and men did realize a small measure of success in determining surrogate roles black women would not fill after emancipation, certain social realities limited black women's power to choose full emancipation from all surrogacy roles. Poverty and the nature of work available, especially to southern black families, caused many black women to participate in some of the most strenuous areas of the work force. Black people were also involved in what historian Joel Williamson describes as an acculturation process that began in slavery and continued in freedom. These realities pressured black women to choose to continue in two surrogate roles: that of substituting female power and energy for male power and energy, and that of mammy. However, the nature of the mammy role changed somewhat when it served black people instead of white families.

Black women were pressured to choose to substitute their energy and power for male energy and power in the area of farm labor in postbellum America. Greene and Woodson tell of urban Negro male laborers in 1901 who saved money and invested in farms. “It was not uncommon … to see Negro mechanics owning well-kept farms, which were cared for chiefly by wives and families.” Wives of poor black sharecroppers in the South worked every day in the fields beside their husbands. The United States Census of 1910 reported that 967,837 black women were farm laborers and 79,309 were farmers. In 1910 Addie W. Hunton reported that black women were still engaged in agriculture “from its roughest and rudest form to its highest and most attractive.” Of the two million black workers involved in farming, more than half were black women. She said that the fifteen million and more “acres owned and cultivated by Negroes represent not only the hardhood and perseverance of the Negro man but also the power of physical and mental endurance of the woman working by his side." Black men who owned farms often left the management of the farm to the women in the family while the men had employment elsewhere. Hunton speaks of knowing"a number of women who were successful farmers and supported their children in a boarding school by their earnings."

There were other areas in which some black women stepped in and filled roles that might be thought to require male power and strength. When many black people migrated from the South to the North to fill factory jobs during World War 1, black women worked in all kinds of difficult positions. Paula Giddings describes their work in the metal industries where they “drilled, polished, punch-pressed, soldered.” Black women did the heavy work in laundries, and in the garment industry they were hired in factories to labor in any position that had to be filled.

The Black Mammy Memorial Association

It was the surrogate role of mummy that some blacks and whites consciously tried to perpetuate beyond slavery and reconstruction. In Athens, Georgia, in the early twentieth century, Samuel Harris, the black principal of Athens Colored High School, dreamed up the idea of starting the Black Mummy Memorial Institute in that city. With the help of prominent white citizens, this institute was founded.

Nine white educators and businessmen filed a petition with the county clerk for a charter on September 19, 1910, and the institute was authorized to operate for twenty years. According to a brochure published by the Black Mummy Memorial Association, the institute was to be a memorial where men and women learn… how to work and to love their work; where the mantle of the “Old Black Mammy” may fall on those who go forth to serve; where the story of these women will be told to the generations that come and go; where better mothers for homes will be trained; a building from which those who go forth in life may speak louder in their works than their words…. The Monumental Industrial Institute to the Old Black Mammy of the South will be devoted to the industrial and moral training of young Negro men and women. The work that is to receive special emphasis is the training of young women in Domestic Arts.

Obviously the prominent white citizens wanted to perpetuate mummy roles so that the comfort of the white family could be assured by a type of black female servant who (after slavery) was properly trained in the skills of nurturing, supporting and caring for the well-being of white children. During slavery the Big House itself had been the “school” where the training of house slaves took place. Here, mummy modeled her role for generations of young black female house slaves and thus the mummy skills could be passed on and the mummy tradition could be maintained. With the passing of the coercion associated with slavery, with the absence after emancipation of black female children from the work force in the Big House, and with free black women's reluctance to spend nights in their white employers' houses, black females could not be thoroughly trained in the antebellum style of mummying. Therefore, a school dedicated to training black women in these skills could substitute for the Big House and be an adequate training place.

Not so obvious, but possible, is the suggestion that black educator Mr. Harris was seeking the financial means from white people to provide education to the black masses, many of whom had been field slaves or were the direct descendants of field hands. The assumption could be made that by training black women in the skills of mammying, they would also choose to use these skills to foster the well-being of the black family and the black community. By learning how to be mammals, black women (especially those with field-work heritages) would learn to be the kind of mothers and nurturers who could organize and manage black households as white households were organized and managed.

A variety of skills went into the performance of this managerial task. Mammy had to be skillful at exerting authority in the household while being careful not to offend or usurp the power of the main authority figures, the slave master and his wife. She was skilled in about every form of what was thought to be women's work, that is, sewing, spinning, cooking, tending to children, cleaning.

This meant that she could supervise other members of the household work force. With regard to human relations in the family, she knew how to be a diplomat, a peacemaker who often healed relationships that had gone awry. Mammy had lived in close proximity to “quality” white people and therefore understood upper-class white values. Her life had been shaped by them, and she knew how to use them to shape the lives of others, especially the children.

All of these skills that mammy had were needed after emancipation if the black community was to continue a process of acculturation in which black people became what historian Joel Williamson describes as “more white,” that is, more mainline American. To illustrate his point, Williamson makes reference to free black people who, during slavery, educated their children with white values. He also illustrates his point by describing some of the activity of ex-slaves after emancipation. According to Williamson, in the Reconstruction period, black people attempted to reject everything that had the appearance of servility and to embrace white cultural ideals.

Testimony of some ex-slaves seems to corroborate Williamson's claim about rejecting servility. Lee Guidon's description of the renaming that ex-slaves engaged in after the Civil War is a case in point:

After freedom a heap of people say they was going to name theirselves over.... They changed up so it was hard to tell who or where anybody was.... Some of the names was Abraham, and some called themselves Lincum. Any big name 'cepting their master's name.

But there is evidence demonstrating that some ex-slaves kept the names they had because, in freedom, they wanted to indicate that they had been"raised" by quality white folk during slavery. Therefore Guidon's father said,"Fine folks raise us and we gonna hold to our own names." This suggests that even though slaves wanted in freedom to reject all appearances of servility, some of them also wanted to hold on to and perpetuate the values of the quality white folks they had been in contact with during slavery. There was belief among some slaves that some quality white folks lived by higher ethical standards than poor whites and poor blacks. A Georgia ex-slave man, Tines Kendricks, describes his mother's father as an overseer who was not a Kendricks (the slave-holding family's name) because the Kendricks"wasn't... mixed up in nothing like that [i.e., raping slave women]. They didn't believe in that kind of business."

Nicey Kinney, an ex-slave woman also living in Georgia, was grateful for the values her master and mistress taught her. She believed these values sustained her through a bad marriage to a poor black man. Kinney said she thanked her former owners"for the pains they took with the little nigger gal that growed up to be me, trying to show her the right road to travel.... I've still trying to follow the road that leads to where they are." (Her former owners were dead and she believed them to be in heaven.) Cato, an ex-slave living in Alabama, tells of his days as a slave when he was taken by"Missy Angela" to live in the Big House. He was a very young child.

His slave owners built a special room for him onto the Big House because Cato was"one of their blood." They never hit him, and they promised that they would never sell him away from them. Thus Cato concludes that his slave owners were"the best-quality white folks." In the understanding of some ex-slaves, the adherence to white cultural ideals and quality white folks' values was important for cleanliness in the black home.

An ex-slave woman, accounting for the difference between "the Davis and the Bethea Negroes" during slavery, says

My God, child, you could go through there the slave quarter and spot Sara Davis niggers from the Bethea niggers time you see them.... We she was a Davis Negro was raised decent... and that how come me and my children is that way to this very day. There that child in the house now, she does put fresh sheet on all us bed every week just like they was white people's bed.

It was in the area of conditioning ex-slaves to continue to perpetuate and/or to be trained in quality white folks' cultural ideals and values that mammy's skills were so important for the black family. One of the key ideals and values was the sanctity of patriarchalism in the family. The fact that mammy knew how to exert authority in household management while not usurping the power invested in the patriarchal male head of the household meant that if other ex-slave women could be taught this, the patriarchal acculturation of the black family could continue. The model of female authority that ex-slave field women saw and experienced in the work force was that of women who were cap tains of industry in the fields. Often their authority extended to both female and male field hands. Williamson makes reference to an ex-slave, “Captain Margaret,” who was a captain of industry in the fields of one plantation.

Apparently the freedmen did not want to perpetuate a model of authority subordinating black men to black women. Williamson's description of black male authority after slavery suggests that the development of patriarchal values in the black family was reinforced by social, legal and economic customs of black men:

In Reconstruction, Negro males, like white males, asserted themselves by insisting that wives spend more time in home management and less in field work, by demanding that mothers care for their children, and by exhibiting such common masculine exclusiveness as leaving the wives at home while they themselves attended fraternal and political gatherings. In legal and economic matters, black men assumed the power to speak for their wives and children.

Williamson cites two cases showing patriarchal patterning in the training of young black males:

In January 1866 on one Carolina cotton plantation, Ned affixed the mark of his wife, Victoria, to a contract with the landowner, and their son, Zack, made his mark “with Ned's consent.” On the same contract, another laborer named Frank Tom made his own mark and those of Giles and Neil, his wife and his son.

There can be little dispute that mammies had the desired skills needed to support male dominance, to nurture children, to accomplish the tasks associated with good household management and to know how to get along with “quality” white people – tasks necessary after slavery to support a black patriarchal model of family life and to “induct” former slaves into “white ways of life.” So, as the mammies began to die out during the postbellum period, it became desirable to some black people (as it was to some white people) to find a way to pass on the skills belonging to the mammy profession. Thus the Black Mammy Memorial Institute would serve black as well as white needs.

However, after emancipation the mammy reality (as far as black life was concerned) underwent changes that began to ter- minute the kind of mummy tradition that existed during slavery. One transformation had to do with the name mummy. Apparently during the antebellum period, a common practice among many slaves was to call their own mothers Mummy. At some point the mummy nomenclature was lost, and black people began to refer to their maternal figures as Mother or some other appellation more in accord with the names prevalent in mainline American culture. But black people apparently retained their respect for the kind of dedication to the family (especially to children) that mammies demonstrated.

The institution of mothers of the church that developed in some black churches after emancipation perhaps has some kinship with the antebellum mummy tradition. Like the slave mummy, the mother of the church exerts considerable authority in the church family. But more often than not she uses her power in a way that does not challenge the power and authority of the patriarchal head of the church, usually a male preacher.

She is often called upon to be a healer of relationships within the congregation. She is well versed in and knows how to pass along the highest values for living the Christian life. Her power and influence often extend beyond the church into her community, because she has been empowered by one of the central authority agents of the community — the African-American church — to provide care and nurture for the children of God.

Another area in which the mammy role experienced transformation, albeit a limited one, was that of protecting children. Inasmuch as a conscientious effort was afoot to invest the primary power and authority in black males and fathers (that is, to bring notions of black manhood in agreement with the manhood notions of mainline American culture), it was necessary for the black community to begin to see not a woman but the black man or the black father as protector – as the one who stood between black children and the cold, cold world. Some forces in white society exerted much energy aborting these manhood and fatherhood efforts to protect the black family.

The Ku Klux Klan came to life shortly after the emancipation of slaves. One of its aims was, through the use of violence, to stamp out any manifestation of black male power, the very power necessary for the protection of the family. Then, in the twentieth century, certain governmental welfare policies have had the effect of hindering the building of the black father's financial strength, important for protecting the family economically. Today, black working fathers cannot reside with their destitute families if the mother is to receive welfare payments for the children.

Both of these realities (Ku Klux Klan and welfare as it is presently structured) have helped contribute to the continuous devaluation of black fatherhood in North American society. This means that the mammy chore of protector – as the one standing between children and the cold, cold world – has remained the responsibility of many black women. But there are differences between the mammy role as protector in the white context and the mammy role as protector in the black context. These differences cast a shadow of ambivalence upon the black mother's role of protector. The differences are of two sorts.

First, this mammy role in the black context lacked the financial and institutional resources that supported the mammy role in which black mammies stood between white children and the cold, cold world. Second, black people have, since emancipation, come to expect the protector role in the family to be filled by the black man, as the protector role in the white family is expected to be filled by the white male. Thus "mammy roles" of any variety are looked upon with disdain by most black people as the black community focuses its attention upon strengthening models of black masculinity.

The black woman in the protector role in the black community is not respected and is often critically labeled matriarch.

This assessment of the mammy reality in postbellum America is not meant to suggest that all black women chose to appropriate the mammy style of female authority figure in the home and community exclusive of all other styles. Possibly the way of being mother or female authority figure in many black homes and communities, in the early days after slavery, was a mixed bag; that is, insights and characteristics of the former field hands and captains of industry in the fields merged with insights and characteristics of former mammies in the Big House. How this could have happened, one can only speculate. Perhaps the African-American denominational churches were arenas where field women's ee-thoss and mammy's knowledge of what was thought to be upper-class values merged in the work of sustaining the life of the church. The suggestion of this kind of blend of field and house could, in part, account for certain philosophies and ac tion on the part of black women that are obvious to this day. The following testimony of an ordinary contemporary black woman points to this mix: "I do not need a man to feed myself," she says. "I scrubbed and cooked and busted suds at home and then went out there and did the same for white women."

She continues: "I had two children and kept them just like they should have been kept....I believe in knowing some of everything out there in the public arena beyond the home." This woman's testimony shows a mixture of what could be considered a field woman's posture (working hard inside and outside the home), mummy's concern for proper values (keeping children "as they should have been kept") and the task of knowing the way of the world of both mummy and field woman.

Whatever may be the case with regard to the style of power and authority black women exert in their homes and beyond, one thing is certain. Surrogacy has been a negative force in African-American women's lives. It has been used by both men and women of the ruling class, as well as by some black men, to keep black women in the service of other people's needs and goals. By appropriating the biblical Hagar stories, African-American people have kept the issue of surrogacy alive in the community's memory. Thus generations of African Americans can understand the struggle black women wage against the devaluation of their womanhood that social-role surrogacy supports.

Old Oppression. New Threat

Even today, the newly developing “breeder women” industries (commercial surrogacy institutes) pose a threat to poor women of color in North America. If black women take seriously the wish of the director of one of these commercial surrogacy institutes, they have cause to be alarmed. Ethicist Elizabeth Bettenhausen reports that one of the early operators of an agency arranging these pregnancies looked forward to the day when embryo transplants would eliminate the need to use the surrogate's egg (thus reducing her claim to the child) and when the surrogates would be recruited in foreign countries [or in poor African-American communities?] where poverty would drive women to accept less pay for functioning as the surrogate

What many black women know is that some of the language associated with commercial surrogacy today is a throw-back to American slavery, when certain slave women were set apart to function as “breeder women.” Women participating in today's surrogacy industry are sometimes referred to as “breeders.” During slavery, breeder women were mated with any male the slave holder chose so that the women could birth children every twelve months. These children would become the property of the slave holder. If the white slave holder could not find a male he deemed adequate for mating with the “breeder woman,” he would mate with her himself. Slave women were mated with a “stud,” just as race horses are today and for the same reason — profit.

In Hagar's time Mesopotamian law legitimated surrogacy, which was evidently adopted by many Semitic people. The question for black women today is whether forced surrogacy can happen again in their history. Can black women again be used by groups more powerful than they to produce children for the profit of other more powerful groups? Will the law legitimate surrogacy to the point that black women's ovaries are targeted for use by groups more powerful than poor black women?

Will surrogacy become such a common practice in wealthy women's experience that laws are established to regulate it — laws that work to the advantage of the wealthy and the disadvantage of the poor? Given the declining birth rate among middle-class white women, will poverty pressure poor black women to rent their bodies out as incubators for wealthier women unable to birth children? Will it become the custom for some middle-and upper-class women to choose to remain in their careers and not become pregnant but pay poor black women to carry and birth their children?

Reproduction technology has perfected the process whereby one woman can be implanted with the reproduction material of another woman and man. Then the host woman births a child having the physical characteristics of the woman and man who furnished the reproduction material. Thus a black woman can carry and birth a white child. Is Elizabeth Betten hausen correct when she labels this surrogacy phase of women's reproduction history "Hagar Revisited"? Are American women stepping into an age of reproduction control so rigid that women will be set against each other like Hagar and Sarah? Will the operation of certain reproduction technologies, acting in white women's favor, put even more strain upon the already strained relation between black and white women?