If I once became a writer I would write about what I know most of all, I would write about myself and events that happened to me. I suppose that a writer will succeed more in what he or she is familiar with: the themes will be covered more proficiently in this case. My point is that writers who themselves were in the shoes of their characters are more likely to reveal the themes they raise. The current paper is concerned with analyzing the thematic importance of slavery and freedom to two African American authors, Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs. Their autobiographical works Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself (first published in 1845) and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) are taken as the basis for investigation of the problem under consideration.
I would like to start my analysis with quoting W.E.B. DuBois, the author of The Souls of Black folks. This black civil rights activist admitted the feeling that every black person and black writer, in particular, has as far as his or her identity is concerned:
“It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness, an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.” (“Ain’t I a Woman?” Slavery and Freedom Literature Part A).
This feeling is rendered throughout the Douglass’s and Jacobs’s works who were born into slavery and had first-hand knowledge of this social institution.
The leading theme in Douglass’s Narrative is destroying effects of slavery in the southern United States. At the age of twenty the author managed to escape slavery and became involved in the abolitionist movement. Several years later he published his Narrative where he told about his experiences as a slave. The author’s work was not intended to arouse sympathy with the readers, but to help people who were at the same position that he was.
Throughout the work Douglass gives a lot of examples of how slaves are brutalized, and admits such drastic effects of slavery as separation of family and physical abuse of women. He highlights that slavery is harmful not to slaves only, but to slaveholders as well: people who own slaves are more likely to lose their human qualities and to turn into heartless creatures that care only of satisfaction of their own needs. By example of Sophia Auld he illustrates the dehumanizing effects of slavery.
Along with bright attacks on slavery Douglass suggests how freedom can be achieved. Literacy is singled out as the shortest way to become free. His literacy skills were the first step to his freedom. Reading books on political problems he began to wonder why he did not possess the rights as his white master did. Reading encouraged his abilities to air his thoughts and to formulate his argument against slavery.
Thus, by his personal example of how a slave can become a free person through becoming literate Douglass did not only state that one can emancipate from slavery but showed how it could be done.
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is also a memoir of a person who was born into slavery. The work is centered on the same theme that the Narrative – the author tells the reader of her experiences as a slave and the way she managed to escape from it. Jacobs’ narrative also reveals the dehumanizing nature of slavery. But the author sees slavery through other perspectives as well.
Though Jacobs provides the reader with numerous examples of how starved, overworked, and subservient to masters’ power the slaves are, she insists that improving their conditions will not change the evil and oppressive nature of slavery.
What makes Jacobs’ works peculiar is her depiction of slavery as a worse for women that it is for men. According to the author, slavery is harmful for all people but it brings women even more sufferings. While “slavery is terrible for men” the author contends that “it is far more terrible for women. Superadded to the burden common to all, they have wrongs, and sufferings, and mortifications peculiarly their own” (Jacobs 77).
Female slaves often experience sexual harassment from their male masters. The latter have absolute power over the slaves. Moreover, masters’ wives are bitter and jealous, their sons follow their footsteps and the slaves cannot do anything about it. The position of female slaves worsens by the fact that notwithstanding their sufferings they have to be burdened with responsibilities toward their family.
Again, as well as in the Douglass’s narrative the author does not aim to attract the reader’s attention to her grievances. She claims that
… on the contrary, it would have been more pleasant to me to have been silent about my own history. Neither do I care to excite sympathy for my own sufferings. But I do earnestly desire to arouse the women of the North to a realizing sense of the condition of two millions of women at the South, still in bondage, suffering what I suffered, and most of them far worse….May the blessing of God rest on this imperfect effort in behalf of my persecuted people! (Jacobs 1).
I may conclude that the importance of the themes of slavery and freedom that the two authors focused on is not simply rooted in the fact that the works might serve as a documentary source of the slavery institution, but in the depicting of various issues that went along with it. The ruining power of slavery and the vital human strivings for freedom will never stop capturing the reader’s attention, therefore these themes make the Narrative and the Incidents immortal and their authors’ fame unfading.
Works Cited
“ ‘Ain’t I a Woman?’Slavery and Freedom Literature.” 2003. Pittsburg State University. Web.
Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself. Pocket, 2004.
Jacobs, Harriet. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Dover Publications, 2001.