As Mary makes Patsey the target of her upset - and that decanter - she makes vividly clear a dimension of slavery too often unremembered. But the horror of this scene lies precisely in the limits on both women, limits that are at once alike and utterly different. Mary doesn’t call it rape, being a slave owner’s wife and seeing Patsey as property. “You will remove that black bitch from this property,” she hisses: she knows he’s been raping Patsey regularly, and she wants it to end. Now Patsey is crying in pain, off-screen, while the camera in 12 Years a Slave fixes on Mary, now glaring at her husband Edwin (Michael Fassbender). “Sell the negress.” Mary has just then thrown a decanter at the “negress,” Patsey (Lupita Nyong’o), bloodying her forehead and sending her directly to floor. “Sell her,” demands Mary Epps (Sarah Paulson). Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Superadded to the burden common to all, they have wrongs, and sufferings, and mortifications peculiarly their own.” “Slavery is terrible for men but it is far more terrible for women.
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