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Slavery was seen all around in the southern part of the United States in the 19th century. Many African Americans were slaves. Slaves had to do as their slave owner desired but most of the time the slave owners took advantage of their authority. In the personal slave narratives of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, slavery is in fact bad for men but far more terrible for women as Jacobs stated. African American men were abused mentally and physically while being slaves. In Douglass' narrative, his slave owner had treated him so brutally that Douglass was mentally ill and wanted to kill himself "I was broken in body, soul, and spirit- I was prompted to take my life". Douglass would also be fiercely attacked by his slave owner, that he would leave marks and be covered in blood, Douglas says "from the crown of my head to my feet, I was covered in blood". The personal narratives show how miserable slavery was for men. …show more content…
Slavery for women also consisted of physical and mental abuse.
Fredrick describes the horrendous physical abuse of his aunt, that many other women had to go through when he states "whip upon her naked back-covered with blood". Fredericks aunt would scream loud, the louder she screamed the harder she got whipped and would bleed, it was torture at its best. On the other hand, mental abuse was at times different for women. Harriet Jacobs makes the reader aware that women would "tremble when she hears her masters footfall" and be frighten of her slave owner. Then again women would be told "foul words" to fill their "minds with unclean images". This would make them feel uncomfortable and
harassed. Overall women faced harder situations in slavery. They were used as "breeders" to make more slaves as Fredrick informs in his narratives. In addition, Jacobs witnesses the occurrence of children being "torn from her (mother) the next morning" and the women would be filled with sorrow. The women were so devastated, they would ask God to kill themselves, "why don't God kill me?". Female slaves encountered much more agonies than men as shown, proving slavery is far more terrible for women. Slavery was indeed terrible for both men and women. The personal slave narratives of Frederick Douglas and Harriet Jacobs reveal how both men and women were abused physically and mentally in slavery. Men and women would be whipped until covered in blood and in return they would be traumatized and would lose the willingness to live. However women were abused more, by being "breeders" to make children that would be taken away as soon as the next day. The children would be sold as slaves and the mothers would never get to see their children again. The mothers would suffer an excruciating pain as their children would be torn away from their lives. Slavery was bad for men but far more terrible for women.
In the autobiographical writings Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs’ reflects on the times that her master Dr. Flint consistently tried to molest her sexually. In spite of her fears of horrible repercussions such as beatings or torture if she refuses to submit to him, Harriet always manages to evade his proposals to become his mistress by out-smarting him. She defends herself from his numerous attempts to seduce her, by the power of her mental strength and intelligence, and her Christian morality. While she fears him each time he secretly approaches her with his sexual propositions when he caught her alone, she could always think of ways to protect herself. For example she protects herself from the dangers of his sexual advances by removing herself from the master’s presence any opportunity she gets. She sometimes stays with her grandmother or aunt at night to protect herself from him. They are both Dr. Flint’s former slaves too who live on the plantation where she lives. Even though he threatens to kill her if she tells anyone, she tells his wife about his sexual advances, and Mrs. Flint invites Harriet to sl...
Let us begin with what is, perhaps, the most famous Douglass quotation: "You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man" (64). This sentence serves as the turning point, the climax, of both Douglass' narrative and his life. Up until that point, throughout his entire life, the world had been busy making him a slave. From the moment he was born to a slave mother (even though his father was white), the forces of slavery had been suffocating his humanity. When he was forcibly separated from his mother, he lost the human closeness of family. When he helplessly witnessed his aunt being brutally beaten and was subjected to repeated beatings himself, he lost the human sense of pride. And, when he was denied education and literacy, he lost the human ability to obtain knowledge. In all of these ways, society turned Frederick Douglass, a man, int...
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...
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
“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”.
Along with family and religion, education is one of the most important aspects in society. Fredrick Douglass realized the importance of a good education by learning to read and later becoming a writer, author and advocate of African Americans, women, and many others. In the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, we learn the significance and importance of Douglass learning to read, the affect the institution of slavery had on both whites and blacks, and why learning to read threatened the institution of slavery in general.
The narrative of Douglass quotes "Mr. Covey gave me a very severe whipping, cutting my back causing blood to run, and raising ridges on my flesh as large as my little finger". This quote also shows how horrible the men were abused and beaten too. Although, they had more of a chance to fight back against their masters, which is proven in this quote "This gave me assurance, and I held him uneasy, causing the blood to run where I touched him with the ends of my fingers". The quote explains how Douglass finally fought back against his master, after being beaten several times by him. The mental abuse is shown in the quote from Douglass's narrative that states" Mr.Covey succeeded in breaking me. I was broken in body, soul, and spirit.". This shows that the masters would mentally break the men, so they would behave and listen to them better. Most masters would drain all the spirit out of the men to make the threat of the slaves fighting back very rare. Those were the horrible struggles the men had to deal with in
Douglass' enslaved life was not an accurate representation of the common and assumed life of a slave. He, actually, often wished that he was not so different and had the same painful, but simpler ignorance that the other slaves had. It was his difference, his striving to learn and be free that made his life so complicated and made him struggle so indefinitely. Douglass expresses this in writing, "I envied my fellow-slaves for their stupidity. I have often wished myself a beast It was this everlasting thinking of my condition that tormented me" (Douglass, 53). In his narrative, Douglass does generalize to relate his experience to that of other slaves, creating a parallel between his life and the life of any other slave. He writes about the brutality, physi...
He described his kind treatment of his mistress after suffering a brutal beating from white men. He explains the emotions and actions of his mistress, as she, "...again melted into pity. My puffed out eye and blood-covered face moved her to tears. She took the chair by me, washed the blood from my face, and, with the mothers tenderness, bound up my head, covering the wounded eye with a lean piece of fresh beef" (Pg. 122). His description of the beating is used to show readers the gross mistreatment he had to forgo due to the color of his skin. The beating wasn 't doled out by his master, but instead by other white men who had no regards to his life. Douglass includes this excerpt to not only bring attention to the abuse of slave owners, but also the abuse slaves had to endure by white men. By bringing attention to the abuse he had to suffer, Douglass highlights to the readers the injustice of slavery, and how it changed the moralities of those not even holding a slave. Douglass includes this description to intend to show readers why there needed to be an end to slavery- to save the moralities of those who had not yet been plagued by the institution of
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, brings to light many of the social injustices that colored men, women, and children all were forced to endure throughout the nineteenth century under Southern slavery laws. Douglass's life-story is presented in a way that creates a compelling argument against the justification of slavery. His argument is reinforced though a variety of anecdotes, many of which detailed strikingly bloody, horrific scenes and inhumane cruelty on the part of the slaveholders. Yet, while Douglas’s narrative describes in vivid detail his experiences of life as a slave, what Douglass intends for his readers to grasp after reading his narrative is something much more profound. Aside from all the physical burdens of slavery that he faced on a daily basis, it was the psychological effects that caused him the greatest amount of detriment during his twenty-year enslavement. In the same regard, Douglass is able to profess that it was not only the slaves who incurred the damaging effects of slavery, but also the slaveholders. Slavery, in essence, is a destructive force that collectively corrupts the minds of slaveholders and weakens slaves’ intellects.
In Harriet Jacobs Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, the author subjects the reader to a dystopian slave narrative based on a true story of a woman’s struggle for self-identity, self-preservation and freedom. This non-fictional personal account chronicles the journey of Harriet Jacobs (1813-1897) life of servitude and degradation in the state of North Carolina to the shackle-free promise land of liberty in the North. The reoccurring theme throughout that I strive to exploit is how the women’s sphere, known as the Cult of True Womanhood (Domesticity), is a corrupt concept that is full of white bias and privilege that has been compromised by the harsh oppression of slavery’s racial barrier. Women and the female race are falling for man’s
The Narrative of The Life of Frederick Douglass, An American slave takes a look at how it really feels like to be a slave. There is only so much you can learn about slavery in the textbooks. Oftentimes we know what slavery is, but never really understand how brutal it was for the slaves. Within the autobiography, chapter one lets you learn about who Frederick Douglass is and you learn about his childhood. You learn about his family, and the life he lived as a slave. Douglass shares his experiences to help us learn how exactly slaves were treated. Douglass emphasizes his writing in a unique style to capture the audience, while also reeling in their emotions to embrace the experience of being a slave, and uses an effective tone to illustrate
The way of slavery was cruel and bad. Slavery gave good people away, it caused People To Do Bad Things. Slave owners gave horrific conditions. Throughout, Frederick Douglass narrative story express his true experiences, as they really happened. His arguments against slavery are embedded in the telling of what he really went through . Douglass was only able to see his mother only a few times before she passed away when he was a very young age. The rest of his family was either dead or was moved away from him. He had no way of ever coming eye to eye with them again. He was forced to see the whipping of his own Aunt Hester. Aunt Hester "was brought into the kitchen, she was stripped from her neck to her waist, leaving her neck shoulders
All three of his accounts are very violent. In his narrative the female slave becomes a symbol of suffering. As a young child his mother was sold to a different master. His father was a white slave owner. Everything that happened to his mother was out of her control. Douglass’s birth was a result of rape and her death was a result of the suffering that she went through. This example of a life long misfortune was followed by the account of the brutal beating that his Aunt endured. Douglass describes the inhumane actions of his master and how he only stopped the whipping when he got tired ignoring his screams, “the louder she screamed, the harder he whipped (Douglass 354).” Douglass witnessed these horrible sights at a very age. This shaped this perception of the black female in a negative light. From a child he was thought that a female slave knows nothing in her life but suffering. Another horrifying account that Douglass gives in his narrative is the story of Mary and Henrietta. It seems that each story is more gruesome that the last. Douglass writes about the horrible situation in great detail explaining how “of all the mangled and emaciated creatures [he] ever looked, these two were the most so (371).” This example showed how dehumanized female slaves were. They were though as commodities not humans. This situation also shows how harmful slavery was for white women as well because it was the master’s wife whipping these two
According to Collins English Dictionary, slavery is “the state or condition of being a slave; a civil relationship whereby one person has absolute power over another and controls his life, liberty, and fortune” (“Slavery”). Frederick Douglass, former slave and abolitionist, boldly told the story of his time in slavery and the journey trekked to freedom. Some would argue that Douglass did not have a family due to the afflictions of slavery, however, the story he shares in Narrative of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave debunks that notion. As the Douglass’s narrative unfolds, the reader is revealed to the true meaning of what family was to the American slave. His story shows that even as his blood-related family began to thin and diminish