Who is Under Bondage? :: The Mission A Respectable Trade Slavery Essays

Who is Under Bondage? In analyzing two films, A Respectable Trade and The Mission, the oppression of the slaves and the indigenous people of the Guarani is strikingly blatant. The cruelty of the slave owners in A Respectable Trade and the Spanish and Portuguese who killed the Gauarani tribe in The Mission probably provokes disgust in the emotions of the viewer. Yet perhaps sympathy could also arise for a less obvious third party. Though the lives of the slaves were not their own, Francis Scott, their manager, was under bondage as well, in her own marriage. Though the Guarani were subject to either slavery or the converting of their lives to Christianity, the Jesuits, those that were responsible for converting them, were also bound to the decisions of another, in this case the church as an institution. The difference in the bondage of these two parties is that the slaves and Gauarani did not have a choice, whereas Francis and the Jesuits did. Despite their decisions to bind themselves to another entity, th ough, Francis and the Jesuits faced their own oppression. Yet, Francis and the Jesuits managed to exert their own control over the slaves and the Guarani while still being ultimately subjected to the contracts they voluntarily agreed to. They acted against their oppressors. Francis Scott in A Respectable Trade puts herself under bondage from the very moment she decided to get married. Francis asked for a job as an instructor and ended up with a slave-trading husband. Josiah was interested in her higher social status so as to boost his trade and wealth and perhaps move â€Å"across the river† with the wealthier class people. Little did Francis know she would be instructing slaves. This social process leads to the fact that, when analyzing their marriage in a class perspective, the relationship is feudal. Francis had a contract to serve Josiah in a specific way, and as her uncle warned her, she became Josiah’s property. As a feudal relationship, Josiah controlled the surplus from the profit of the slaves, and Francis received an allowance for managing them. Though Francis had a higher social status and education, ran the household, and even supposedly co-partnered with her husband, Josiah still had the ultimate control. This is illustrated f rom the very beginning of their marriage when Josiah and a fellow merchant raped one of the slaves, despite Francis’s plead. His control in this feudal class process is further exemplified through the fact that Josiah ultimately made all the economic decisions despite Francis’s influence.