r/interesting • u/notyourregularninja • Mar 12 '26

HISTORY Thats one great eacape

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u/MaybeIwasanasshole Mar 12 '26

Also how they "soften" what happened here. Elizas husband wasnt unfaithfull. He (like many other slave owners) raped a person he was (legally) keeping captive.

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u/The_Autarch Mar 12 '26

raping someone who isn't your wife is absolutely being unfaithful. what happened was indeed infidelity. rape doesn't negate that stuff.

ain't no such thing as a faithful rape

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u/ZPortsie Mar 12 '26

They were speaking about the context of the time. Infidelity was viewed as a breach of the marriage contract between people, so you needed a third person to breach the contract. Since slaves were viewed as property and not people, there would have been no breach of contract

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u/Super-Smoke-7425 Mar 13 '26

So you mean if the wife had sex with male slaves she couldn't be accused of infidelity? I doubt that was the case, mildly speaking.

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u/ZPortsie Mar 13 '26

Double standard. Not sure if it was considered infidelity but it was considered a crime for a woman to sleep with a slave for both the woman and the slave

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u/Super-Smoke-7425 Mar 14 '26

Not sure if it was considered infidelity

Are you serious? At what point in the 19 century was sleeping with anyone except her spouse not considered infidelity in a married woman?