'Sable Venus', 'she-devil' or 'drudge'? British slavery and the 'fabulous fiction' of Black Women's identities, c.1650-1838

In this article, the author addresses the problem of how much historians ca n understand about the identities of individuals living in a different epoc h in time, in relation to what has been termed the 'fabulous fiction' of bl ack women's identities in slavery and freedom. A central argument is that s tereotypes of black women were highly gendered and clustered around contrad ictory representations, particularly the 'Sable Venus,' 'She Devil' and pas sive 'drudge.' Thus, the persistence of an African-centred 'woman's culture ' and strategies of resistance, collaboration and survival are vital to und erstanding black women's self-defined(as opposed to white attributed) ident ities. The first section examines the relationship between gender, race and culture in the mediation of African and slave women's identities. This is followed by a critical deconstruction of the 'Sable Venus' and interrelated black and white gendered identities in colonial slave society. The final s ection analyses the importance of the 'She Devil' in representing the resis tant slave woman who defied the 'fabulous fiction' of white stereotyping of black women. A wide time span is adopted in order to analyse how black wom en's relationship to the gendered power structures underpinning colonial sl avery shifted over time, as did 'white visons' of their identities. Unifyin g themes are the central location black women had in the development of col onial relations between black and white and the implications of contact at the harsh interface of African and European cultures for black women's gend ered identities.