During the era of American Slavery, most slaves were illiterate, and therefore couldn’t capture their wrenching experiences down on paper. The ones who did created emotional slave narratives, autobiographies detailing their lives as slaves, and how they escaped to freedom. Two of the most famous slave narratives, Frederick Douglass’s Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglass, and Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl represent different styles of writing that were used to write these narratives. Douglass’s narrative was brief, and detailed the events leading up to his successful escape to the North. Jacobs was able to go into much more detail about her ordeals during her enslavement and even her after her initial escape. The …show more content…
Throughout her story, it becomes clear how important Jacobs Christian faith was to her, and how it maintained her moral strength. Even though it was the religion of their oppressors, many slaves embrace Christianity, using it as a source of strength and hope to persevere through their hardships. Stories like the Jewish slaves’ Exodus to freedom spoke to the African slaves on a deep level. Jacobs uses that faith to not only survive the abuse of Dr. Flint, but fight back against it. When Flint tries to guilt her into revealing information about her potential lover, even though Harriet was already heavily demoralized, she still found the willpower to say “‘I have sinned against God and myself’ I replied; ‘but not against you’” (Jacobs, 56). In one of her lowest moments, she uses her service to a power Flint also serves to prevent him from beating her into submission. By telling Flint that her duty to God and herself is more important to her duty to him, not only was she showing him that she is not broken, but she was defiantly resisting to play his game. Douglass did not turn to faith to drive his resistance. He instead was driven by his quest to become literate. Literacy gives slaves freedom, as not only did illiteracy make escaping the South near impossible, but it also was one of the biggest examples of the racial inequality in that time. …show more content…
Almost every slave narrative details the ways the institution of slavery is detrimental to the black slaves, because those were the issues the writers experienced first hand. But a common goal of both writers was to expose to Northern Whites the damaging effects slavery had on all it touched. There was only so much sympathy the Whites could have for this foreign group, so the danger of slavery had to affect people the readers could better connect with. Douglass did this by saying that slavery and the power of slaves turned the slave owners morally corrupt, telling stories of slave owners committing adultery and rape with their slaves, ruining their white marriages from the biracial children their slave women birthed. Now Jacobs discussed this moral bankruptcy, but since she had personally suffered from these sexual abuses, the contempt she gave didn’t help achieve this goal. Probably the best example Douglass used concerning this issue didn’t have to due with sexual abuses. His childhood mistress Sophia Auld started off as a moral, idealistic women, who had never owned slaves before Douglass arrived, therefore had also always had to work herself to maintain the domestic sphere. But as Douglass explained, she soon became corrupted by power. “That cheerful eye, under the
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, depicts a vivid reality of the hardships endured by the African American culture in the period of slavery. One of the many things shown in Frederick's narrative is how slaves, in their own personal way, resisted their masters authority. Another is how slaves were able to create their own autonomous culture within the brutal system in which they were bound. There are many examples in the narrative where Frederick tries to show the resistance of the slaves. The resistors did not go unpunished though, they were punished to the severity of death. Fredrick tells of these instances with a startling sense of casualness, which seems rather odd when comprehending the content of them. He does this though, not out of desensitization, but to show that these were very commonplace things that happened all over the South at the time.
The book The Classic Slave Narratives is a collection of narratives that includes the historical enslavement experiences in the lives of the former slaves Harriet Jacobs, Frederick Douglass, and Olaudah Equiano. They all find ways to advocate for themselves to protect them from some of the horrors of slavery, such as sexual abuse, verbal abuse, imprisonment, beatings, torturing, killings and the nonexistence of civil rights as Americans or rights as human beings. Also, their keen wit and intelligence leads them to their freedom from slavery, and their fight for freedom and justice for all oppressed people.
“The law on the side of freedom is of great advantage only when there is power to make that law respected”. This quote comes from Fredrick Douglas’ book, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, written in 1845. Fredrick Douglas who was born into slavery in 1818 had no understanding of freedom. However, his words shed light on the state of our country from the time he made this statement, but can be traced back fifty-eight years earlier to when the Constitution was drafted and debated over by fifty-five delegates in an attempt to create a document to found the laws of a new country upon. However, to eradicate the antiquated and barbaric system of slaver would be a bold step to set the nation apart, but it would take a strong argument and a courageous move by someone or a group to abolish what had enslaved thousands of innocent people within the borders of America for centuries. There was an opportunity for the law to be written within the Constitution, which would support this freedom Fredrick Douglas alluded to. However, the power, which controlled this law, would as Douglas stated, “make that law respected”.
A staunch abolitionist, Douglass would take the country by storm through the power of his words and writings. His narrative was unique in regards to how it was written and the content it holds. Unlike most biographies of freed slaves, Douglass would write his own story and with his own words. His narrative would attempt to understand the effects slavery was having on not just the slaves, but the slaveholders as well. The success of his biography, however, did not rest on the amount of horror in it but from the unmistakable authenticity it provided. His narrative would compel his readers to take action with graphic accounts of the lashes slaves would receive as punishment, “the loude...
After reading Frederick Douglass’s narrative of slavery, I couldn’t help but stop and try to gather my thoughts in any way possible. It was not the first time I had read the narrative, but this time around Douglass’s words hit me much harder. Perhaps, it was that I read the narrative in a more critical lens, or possibly it was just that I am older and more mature now from the last time I read it, but whatever the reason, I can confidently say reading the narrative has changed my heart and opened my eyes in many ways. I have always been aware of the injustices that slavery encompassed and of course like many other people, I have been taught about slavery in a historical narrative my entire life. But, Frederick Douglass’s narrative does more than just provide a historical perspective in seeing the injustices in slavery. His narrative asks the reader to look directly into the eyes of actual slaves and realize their very heart beat and existence as humans. Douglass humanizes the people of whom the terrible acts we acted upon that we learn about as early as elementary school. It is because of this that I decided to write this poem. Reading the narrative made me really think about Douglass’s journey and the story he tells on his road to freedom. I felt as if he was really speaking to me and, and in turn I wanted to give Douglass a voice in my own writing.
Frederick Douglass's Narrative, first published in 1845, is an enlightening and incendiary text. Born into slavery, Douglass became the preeminent spokesman for his people during his life; his narrative is an unparalleled account of the inhumane effects of slavery and Douglass's own triumph over it. His use of vivid language depicts violence against slaves, his personal insights into the dynamics between slaves and slaveholders, and his naming of specific persons and places made his book an indictment against a society that continued to accept slavery as a social and economic institution. Like Douglass, Harriet Jacobs was born into slavery, and in 1853 she published Letter from a Fugitive Slave, now recognized as one of the most comprehensive antebellum slave narratives written by an African-American woman. Jacobs's account broke the silence on the exploitation of African American female slaves.
The tone established in the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is unusual in that from the beginning to the end the focus has been shifted. In the beginning of the narrative Douglass seems to fulfill every stereotypical slavery theme. He is a young black slave who at first cannot read and is very naïve in understanding his situation. As a child put into slavery Douglass does not have the knowledge to know about his surroundings and the world outside of slavery. In Douglass’ narrative the tone is first set as that of an observer, however finishing with his own personal accounts.
The novel Letter From a Slave Girl by Mary E. Lyons, is based on a slave named Harriet Ann Jacobs. Harriet Jacobs created a autobiography through letters in the time period to 1825, at age 12, to 1842. Her letters were about the tragedies and struggles slaves faced. Through her letters, Harriet, usually writes to someone who she misses or recently passed away. Such as wen the novel begins and she is writing to her mother about where all the slaves were going to go since Margret !!!.Many more people she loves are inside the novel such as her father who passed from the hard work of slavery and her old boyfriend R. pours out her story as letters to dear ones she has lost. She writes to her dead mother about the her master, Margret !!, dying.
Two slave narratives that are noticed today are “ The Narrative Of Frederick Douglass” written by Douglass himself, and “ The Incidents in the life of a Slave Girl” written by Harriet Jacobs. Both of these works contain the authors own personal accounts of slavery and how they were successfully able to escape. Although their stories end with both Douglass and Jacobs being freed, they share a similar narrative of the horrifying experience of a slave.
Slavery is a term that can create a whirlwind of emotions for everyone. During the hardships faced by the African Americans, hundreds of accounts were documented. Harriet Jacobs, Charles Ball and Kate Drumgoold each shared their perspectives of being caught up in the world of slavery. There were reoccurring themes throughout the books as well as varying angles that each author either left out or never experienced. Taking two women’s views as well as a man’s, we can begin to delve deeper into what their everyday lives would have been like. Charles Ball’s Fifty Years in Chains and Harriet Jacobs Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl were both published in the early 1860’s while Kate Drumgoold’s A Slave Girl’s Story came almost forty years later
Frederick Douglass, the author of the book “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”, said “I saw more clearly than ever the brutalizing effects of slavery upon both slave and slaveholder” (Douglass, p.71). Modern people can fairly and easily understand the negative effects of slavery upon slave. People have the idea of slaves that they are not allow to learn which makes them unable to read and write and also they don’t have enough time to take a rest and recover their injuries. However, the negative effects upon slaveholder are less obvious to modern people. People usually think about the positive effects of slavery upon slaveholder, such as getting inexpensive labor. In the book “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”, Douglass also shows modern readers some brutalizing impact upon the owner of the slaves. He talks about Thomas Auld and Edward Covey who are his masters and also talks about Sophia Auld who is his mistress. We will talk about those three characters in the book which will help us to find out if there were the negative influences upon the owner of the slaves or not. Also, we will talk about the power that the slaveholders got from controlling their slaves and the fear that the slaveholders maybe had to understand how they were changed.
In The Narrative of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass, an African American male describes his day as a slave and what he has become from the experience. Douglass writes this story to make readers understand that slavery is brutalizing and dehumanizing, that a slave is able to become a man, and that he still has intellectual ability even though he is a slave. In the story, these messages are shown frequently through the diction of Frederick Douglass.
As female slaves such as Harriet Jacob continually were fighting to protect their self respect, and purity. Harriet Jacob in her narrative, the readers get an understanding of she was trying to rebel against her aggressive master, who sexually harassed her at young age. She wasn’t protected by the law, and the slaveholders did as they pleased and were left unpunished. Jacobs knew that the social group,who were“the white women”, would see her not as a virtuous woman but hypersexual. She states “I wanted to keep myself pure, - and I tried hard to preserve my self-respect, but I was struggling alone in the grasp of the demon slavery.” (Harriet 290)The majority of the white women seemed to criticize her, but failed to understand her conditions and she did not have the free will. She simply did not have that freedom of choice. It was the institution of slavery that failed to recognize her and give her the basic freedoms of individual rights and basic protection. Harriet Jacobs was determined to reveal to the white Americans the sexual exploitations that female slaves constantly fa...
Frederick Douglass’s and Harriet Jacobs’s narratives both focused on self-made individuals who experienced upward mobility through their own efforts and hard work, therefore partaking in the positive redefining of African Americans. The writing methods of each differed in the style in which they presented their narratives where Douglass took on a sermonic style and Jacobs employed the “sentimental novel” (Alonzo 119) formula. While Douglass presented the sufferings of slaves in the fields, he attempted to describe the toils of women through his aunt’s afflictions but “failed...to accurately address and interpret” (Hunter-Willis 2) her experience as a slave. In this lack of representation of female slaves, Jacobs was bestowed with the opportunity to give voice to female slaves and to redefine their womanhood through her narrative. Jacobs’s “purpose and intended audience” (Wolfe 518) remained constant in arousing “the women of the North...of the condition of two millions of women at the South” (...
The Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass can be referred to as a memoir and writing about the abolitionist movement of the life of a former slave, Fredrick Douglass. It is a highly regarded as the most famous piece of writing done by a former slave. Fredrick Douglass (1818-1895) was a social reformer, statesman, orator and writer in the United States. Douglass believed in the equality of every individual of different races, gender or immigrants.