Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl And Frederick Douglass

The issue of Slavery in the South was an unresolved issue in the United States during the seventeenth and eighteenth century. During these years, the south kept having slavery, even though most states had slavery abolished. Due to the fact that slaves were treated as inferior, they did not have the same rights and their chances of becoming an educated person were almost impossible. However, some information about slavery, from the slaves’ point of view, has been saved. In this essay, we are comparing two different books that show us what being a slave actually was. This will be seen with the help of two different characters: Linda Brent in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and Frederick Douglass in The Narrative of the life of Frederick

The main issues found in the books are the difference in the roles of women and men slaves, the access to education, and the search for freedom.

The first topic found in these books is the difference in the roles of women and men slaves. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl gives us the women 's point of view, their lifestyle and their slave duties and roles. On the other hand, The Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass shows us the male side of slavery; the duties and role of men slaves and their way of living their situation. Both books state clearly the roles of both men and women slaves. We can easily observe the fact that slaves’ roles were based on their gender, and the different duties they had based on these roles. This gender role idea was based on American society’s idea of assigning roles based only on gender. Slave men’s role was most of the time simple. Their purpose was mainly physical work. In

In both books, we can see how both characters, Frederick Douglass (The Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass) and Linda Brent (Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl) have a contact with the concept of education. The slaves knew that learning things could be useful for them. If some day they become free and had the possibility of obtaining a job, they knew that what they had learned was going be both useful and necessary. They also realized that an educated slave was not well seen. Perceiving this, slaves normally decided to act as if they were uneducated and knew nothing at all. This way the owner will not know that they were actually uneducated or that they were willing to learn. The owners saw slave education as something wrong and it was strictly prohibited. In some cases, owners, mainly wives, will teach slave children how to read or write. This can be seen in the book Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, where we see that Linda’s mother’s mistress treated Linda well and taught her how to read. However, in most cases husbands will realize this and prohibit their wife from educating slaves. This concept is easily observed in The Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass, where we see that Hugh Auld’s wife, Sophia, starts to teach Frederick how to read. When Hugh discovers this, he forces her to stop this; as he thinks that educating slaves will make them more difficult to