Bethany Veney

For my midterm paper, I hope to write about the life of Bethany Veney as described in her self-penned narrative, "Aunt Betty's Story." I want to talk about the psychological trauma that enslaved women who were treated comparatively well worked through because of the ever-present oppression and slavery around them, picking up on ideas of soul murder and social death. I also want to explore the idea of home, and how slaveholding systems make it difficult to form a clear sense of where one's home is, although as Veney describes, there can still be a tie to the state or city that one grew up in. Finally, I want to talk about the strong ties of family that 19th century black women forged, and how Veney managed to hold compassion for the people that held up the system that treated her as less than human.