Finley, Alexandra J.

OUR SYNOPSIS: Alexandra J. Finley examines the central role of women in the U.S. domestic slave trade from 1840 to 1861, amplifying the stories of both enslaved and free women. She argues, “Hidden in plain sight, it was women who performed the day-to-day labor necessary to the functioning of the slave trade.” (3) She utilizes four major case studies to show how “the sexual and racial division of labor facilitated the expansion of a burgeoning capitalist economy.” (4) In the case of Corinna Hinton, her objectification by her enslaver as a “fancy girl” is only one of many “overlapping and entangled identities.” (21) She also highlights how slave traders harnessed women’s socially reproductive labor through fabric work, especially for creating clothes to be worn by people being sold. Additionally, she shows that Sarah Conner defied social categorizations and thus embodied the ambiguities of life for mid-nineteenth century women. Indeed, Conner’s relationship to freedom, slavery, and sexuality was substantially situational. Finally, Finley studies women who ran their own households as “a site of production,” organizing, managing, and conducting domestic labor. (96)