Journal of Women's History

Abstract:

When her enslaver, the father of her children, died, a Virginian woman named Maria Griffin was set to inherit, along with her children, a significant fortune. Framed around the story of the legal battle that ensued between Griffin and the deceased's white family, who sought to prevent Griffin and her children from inheriting the estate, this article probes slavery's intimate world. Situated within a robust and growing literature on intimacy and slavery, the article deploys the concept of intimacy to grasp the complexity of Maria Griffin's myriad affective ties within the world of slavery. Ultimately, this work asks both what is gained and what violence is done in an accounting of the intimate.