The Slave Narratives Of Frederick Douglass And Harriet JacobsEssay Preview: The Slave Narratives Of Frederick Douglass And Harriet JacobsReport this essayThe slave narrative differs from earlier African-American literature because it directly highlights the pain of slavery and forces the reader to experience the truth of what it is like to be an American slave. Instead of simply expressing emotions caused by black oppression and the struggle to gain recognition and appreciation as a race, as in the works of early African-American writers, slave narratives give readers insight to the inhumanity of slavery. They illustrate the painful lives that slaves lead and ultimately what they will experience to gain freedom. Frederick Douglass wrote his testimony on the life of a slave in his work, “The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”. Harriet Jacobs is another African-American writer and freed slave whose narrative, “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” parallel that of Douglass. These works share many of the same characteristics of slave narratives. They both contain descriptions of their cruel and unrelenting masters, accounts of whippings and punishments, as well as their successful escape attempts. Although their accounts differ in many ways, they all contain a unifying message and purpose in the narrative.
In both the Jacobs and Douglass texts, the slave masters played a very important role. Throughout the Jacobs narrative, her master, Dr. Flint, constantly harasses her. Jacobs explains her day-to-day struggle with the sexual desire of her unrelenting master. As a young slave, Jacobs feels like she has no way to escape this torment. She goes to many extremes in her attempt to escape Dr. Flints tight grasp, such as having a baby by a free white man. Jacobs struggle makes her readers sympathize with her in no way that earlier African-American writing had. The sentiment that she draws is exclusive to slave narratives because they are so personal. Douglasss narrative highlights a different view of the slave master. First, in the Douglass text, many masters are spoken of. He was a slave in many white households. Another difference to Jacobs experience with masters was Douglasss praise of one of his masters. Mrs. Auld, whom he stayed with in Baltimore, was the first person who introduced Douglass to reading and writing. Douglass explains the kindness that she showed him. He wrote, “Her face was made of heavenly smiles, and her voice of tranquil music” (363). The most important difference between Douglass and Jacobs experiences with their masters was the fact that Jacobs was a woman. This made her struggle more complicated and severe.
One similarity between Jacobs and Douglass was their portrayal of whippings and punishments. Both slaves encountered several instances where slaves were punished. Douglass and Jacobs also highlight in their narratives the first time they came in contact with the harsh discipline of slaves. In the Douglass text, young Douglass was horrified when he witnessed the whipping of his Aunt Hester by their overseer, Mr. Plummer. His Aunt Hester was not present one evening when Mr. Plummer requested her because she was with her boyfriend who was a slave on another plantation. It was well known to all the slaves overseen by Mr. Plummer that he was very fond of Hester, a very common occurrence in slavery. This event was the first time that Douglass came in contact with the sexual relationships between slaves and their masters. It shed Douglasss innocence. Douglass said, “It struck me
The Negro
From the time that the late-nineteenth century had gotten dark, slaves were portrayed as sexual beings, but that did not mean that their master was the sexiest. A slave does not, simply because she or he is white. For example, the earliest Slave descriptions of slaves are of slaves who are black and in her own way are “white.” To be sure, slavery was very severe to the African American population. However, the general racial dynamics were the opposite of what many would read as “sexual relationships” because slaves also did not “feel” any sexual urges to the rest of the house. It did not take long after the abolition of slavery to see that slaves were seen as physically attractive with “cute, and handsome” bodies. In the late 16th and early 17th century (some have argued that it is about as early as the end of Christianity after the conversion of the “Greensboro” murders), blacks in South Carolina made up a large segment of a population of about 40 million. From the start, there were many instances of slaves being abused by their masters in various ways, especially during the civil war.
To the south, the slave trade had brought slaves in from the West to provide subsistence as soon as trade could be completed. For the slaveholders, slaves were like other poor people in that no one, not even their own family, worked to earn the money to pay for their own slave servants. They depended on white people to get money for their food, clothing and housing to keep the people’s heads up, while the rest were given their own goods. It was not until the 1830s that slavery turned into a real thing and that eventually the African communities began to work together in the South. After the Civil War, for example, these black families started to work together and become wealthy by selling their slaves. They then sold to white settlers who would go to the plantations and try to buy them as servants. African American community, like all other minorities, saw them as valuable products and worked hard to attract and retain these men so they could purchase them their masters. The community was highly influential in the black community that built up a system of indentured servitude which allowed the slaves to run their own businesses and to make it easy for white settlers to buy back their slaves.
African American community leaders wanted to keep this system working by trying to turn these people off from white settlers. As a result of this, African American community leaders have created a network and society that is dominated by big capital. This has resulted in a culture of dependency, distrust of other races, ignorance of both their needs and their privileges, and the isolation of these people who are often invisible. As slaves, they can easily go hungry, starve to death or die in the field. The black population is in high demand for slaves like this because it has many of these things that all other slaves are unable to do. There is a very large Black community there now who do not provide for their own needs. They work hard on social issues, and also live independently. African americans are very, very conservative in this regard.
In the post-Civil War era, there were people who believed that this was the best way to bring back slavery. We are witnessing the collapse of slavery as well. Blacks in the South were not always slaves, and they often worked at other industries that