Invisible Chains: From Slavery to Patriarchy in Selected Women’s Writings

Abstract

Even though legal slavery was outlawed in the nineteenth century, its ideological underpinnings are still present in modern dominance structures. The shift from physical enslavement to psychological, cultural, and social forms of control shows that oppression has only taken on new forms rather than vanishing. Through a comparison of Toni Morrison's Beloved, Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things, Nadine Gordimer's July's People, and Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, this essay explores the similarities between historical slavery and contemporary patriarchal oppression. The study explores how power structures govern women's bodies, identities, sexuality, labor, and social roles in various cultural and historical contexts, drawing on Simone de Beauvoir's idea of women as the "Other." The study makes the case that patriarchy acts as a modern-day version of slavery by establishing covert control mechanisms that limit women's agency and autonomy. Roy and Gordimer show how gender discrimination, caste hierarchies, racial inequality, and cultural constraints continue to subjugate women in postcolonial societies, while Jacobs and Morrison highlight the harsh realities and psychological legacy of racial slavery. The study uses a comparative literary analysis to show how institutionalized gender norms, economic dependence, and social conditioning create dominance relationships that mimic the logic of slavery. In addition, women are portrayed in the chosen texts as active agents of resistance who fight for self-definition and oppose oppressive systems. This essay illustrates how patriarchal power endures across national and cultural borders by drawing connections between South African, Indian, and African American literary traditions. It argues that even though oppressive practices have evolved, the ways in which women are disadvantaged still bear the scars of slavery. In the end, the article suggests that modern patriarchy functions as a system of invisible chains that upholds inequality while hiding its coercive nature behind social and cultural conventions.