ABSTRACT
Many white women reacted with physical force towards the victims of their husbands' sexual violence; however, this was not the only threatening response evoked by these women. Reports in the Works Progress Administration slave narratives, autobiographies, and diaries written by a number of witnesses to slavery describe a variety of ways in which white women reacted to the rape of enslaved women. Together they reveal white women's most common reactions to rape: to ignore and deny the rape; physically and verbally abuse the victim; or sell the victim and/or the resulting children in an attempt to eliminate evidence of the rape. In addition to physical and verbal abuse, one of the most common ways in which white women responded to their husbands' rape of enslaved black women was to ignore it. Constrained by sexism, white women had limited options for influencing their husbands' behavior or resisting their decisions.
