NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE
OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS
Federico Klausing
Marta Llanos Casanova
Literatura de los Estados Unidos de 1850 a 1900
Estudios Ingleses
INDEX………………………………...
1. Thesis Statement. An introduction:
-Who was Frederick Douglass?
-Socio-cultural Context
2. North American Slave Narratives:
Facts, examples and motifs
3. Analysis of the Novel/Different points of view from
several authors.
4. Conclusion/ What can we get from the book?
5. Bibliography
Notes
1. Peter Ripley: “The Autobiographical Writings of Frederick Douglass.
2. Frederick May Holland, Frederick Douglass, the Colored Orator (New
York, 1891), 102. Holland had access to Douglass’s private papers and
interviewed him while writing the biography; Washington, Frederick
Douglass, 99; Charles W. Chestnut, Frederick Douglass (Boston, 1899),
46; Supplement to the [Cork] Southern Reporter, 16 October 1845.
3. Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An
American Slave Written by Himself (Dublin, 1846) xvi, ix.
4. Thompson, A. C. C. “Letter from a Former Slaveholder” (Liberator,
December 12,1845)
5. Douglass, F. “Replay to Thompson’s Letter” (Liberator, February
27,1846). Note also that Frederick Bailey was the slave name of
Frederick Douglass.
6. Elkins, S. Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual
Life (1959)
7. Blassingame, J. The Slave Community. New York: Oxford University
Press (1979)
8. White, D. G. Ar’n’t I a Woman (New York: W. W. Norton, 1985),22
9. hooks, b. Ain’t I a Woman (Boston: South End Press, 1981), 20-21. Note:
Gloria Jean Watkins (born September 25, 1952), better known by her pen
name bell hooks.
10.Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An
American Slave Written by Himself (Boston: Anti-Slavery Office,1845),
i.
Thesis Statement
Our goal is to evaluate the aspects of the life of Frederick Douglass, the
man who got to establish himself as a key figure for black history. We will
be reviewing the conditions that he €had to be overcome and we will
approach his writings, which contain a lifetime of struggles worthy of
going down in history.
1. An introduction: Who was Frederick Douglass?
Frederick Douglass, born in February 1818, was an African-American
social reformer, mostly known under the name of “the father of the civil
rights movement”. He worked for different masters throughout his life
until he took it upon himself to escape to the north where he got to be free.
When he was about eight years old, he began to feel attracted to reading
and wanted to have and education, but black people were not allowed to
learn how to read or write, because highest classes thought that illiteracy
made the difference between them and black people, and that it would be
the trigger to their desire for seeking their own freedom, and though it was
not right for a slave, he found the way to get it. Another big reason for him
to achieve this freedom was the fact that he fell in love with Anna Murray,
who was a free black woman, which encouraged him to become an equal
for her. Eventually, he managed to escape from a life of slavery and settled
down with Anna. This abolitionist man went from being a mere slave to
becoming the most remarkable African-American voice of the nineteenth
century. Through his vision of a diverse and free of discrimination
America, he had the goal of achieving his own freedom and that of all
Americans, especially African-Americans and any other discriminated
social group. He became an influential anti-slavery lecturer, which gave a
great impulse to the cause. He wrote several autobiographies, as a way of
transmitting his experiences as a slave, which happened to be vital in
supporting abolition.
*Socio-Cultural Context
The situation of America was being intense. It was all about wars,
conflicts and confrontations while the land was being settled and shaped to
become an established country.
Some remarkable struggles of the time:
Although the slave system and plantation exploitation were completely
established, there was a strong battle between abolitionist ideas and state
law
The Mexican War
The Civil War: Conflict between Democrats and Republicans. In this
battle, Douglass was a consultant to President Abraham Lincoln, and he
convinced him to let slaves serve in the union forces and in making the
abolition of slavery the goal of the war.
2. North American Slave Narratives: Facts, examples and motifs
Slave Narratives by slaves from North America were first published in
England in the 18th century. The main point of these works was to present
the reality of slavery, in order to do it, a number of former slaves such as
Frederick Douglass published personal accounts of their enslavement. The
common topic among these works was the escape from slavery and the
safety found in the north. They portrayed so clearly every aspect of the
different stages of the evolution from captive to free individual, that they
became an essential part of the anti-slavery movement. These narratives
were full of biblical allusions and imagery, rhetoric of abolitionism, the
traditions of the captivity narrative, and the spiritual autobiography itself.
All of these stories shared basically the same aspects: they wanted to
promote humanitarism and religious ideas, show the ideals of the dominant
white society as well as the cruelty of slave owners.
There were plenty of vivid scenes of horror and violence. They all were
influenced by abolitionist orators, books and sermons.
The same pattern was frequent as well, portrayed by three phases: first
comes the loss of innocence, in which the captives are brought into slavery
without any conscious of what that is, as it represents the first contact with
evil, and so it shows the idea of slavery to them. The second stage is the
realization of all the cruelty and the resolution to quit slavery, the climax
to a late conversion experience. The third phase is the escape itself, the
most important part of the process of overcoming evil and achieving
freedom, which takes us to the final stage, freedom obtained, focused on
the arrival at the city of God.
Although every narrative shared pretty much the same structure, these
could be broadly categorized into three distinct types: tales of religious
redemption (Ex: The Interesting Narrative and the Life of Olaudah
Equiano by Olaudah Equiano), tales to inspire the abolitionist movement
(Ex: The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave by Mary Prince),
and tales of progress (Ex: Thirty Years a Slave: from Bondage to Freedom
by Louis Hughes). The tales written to inspire the abolitionist struggle are
the most famous because they tend to have a strong autobiographical
motif, such as the one we are discussing in this essay.
Just to give a final piece of information regarding this topic, let’s see some
of the common motifs among these narratives:
-They all share physical and emotional abuse
-They all show the hypocrisy and cruelty of white owners
-Relationship between literacy and freedom
-The experience of slavery: portrayed by those who succeed and those who
fail.
3. Analysis of the Novel
Different points of view from several authors.
The powerful antislavery track Narrative of the Life of Frederick
Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself has earned the regard of
critics as it has been considered one of the most remarkable “I” narratives
of all decades of American letters. The text encompasses eleven chapters
that recount the events of the life of this former slave; Douglass’s
transformation from an illiterate, oppressed slave to an educated, liberated
free man not only literally, by escaping slavery, but also figuratively, in
language. Therefore, the work is considered to be a key piece of literature
promoting the abolitionist movement characteristic of the early nineteenth
century in the United States.
After being successful in his ambition to become a free man, he enlisted
the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society as a lecturer because, as Peter
Ripley points out, “he typified the “awful example””, and “he related his
experiences in a clear narrative style and in a manner not yet free of
“plantation dialect.””(1) His oratorical skills improved thanks to these
lectures, in which he soon included interpretation and analysis of slavery,
abolition and other reform movements. According to Ripley, there
happened to be a “public skepticism that kept pace with Douglass’s rising
reputation”. This skepticism was due to the author’s reluctance to disclose
specific information about his slavery past, but pressured by the masses he
decided to give the essential facts, “risking being returned to Eastern Shore
of Maryland in chains.” This is the reason why he chose to write and
publish his slave experience, “giving names…and places and dates.”(2)
In the preface of The Narrative, accompanying Wendell Phillips’s
testimonial on the story’s truthfulness and fairness was Lloyd Garrison’s
assurances that the book was entirely Douglass’s “own production”.
Douglass had “very properly chosen to write his own narrative, in his own
style, and according to his best abilities, rather than to employ someone
else.”(3) However, the debate over his slavery past and his fugitive status
persisted. One of the most active critics was Mr. A. C. C. Thompson, the
neighbor of Douglas’s owner, who challenged the veracity of The
Narrative by writing “Letter from a Former Slaveholder” and publishing it
in a local newspaper. He argued that Douglass was an “unlearned and
rather ordinary negro…not capable of writing The Narrative…”(4) Thus,
what he got with that was to verify, unintentionally, Douglass’s identity
and past. Thompson’s letter proved that Douglass was not an imposter, but
a wit, American genuine fugitive slave, as well as it proved the identity of
Maryland pro-slavery whites. Douglass, thankful for this confirmation,
replayed to Thompson’s letter arguing that “Frederick Douglass the
freeman, is a very different person from Frederick Bailey…”(5)
Consequently, the myth about The Narrative authorship had been
dismantled and, in so doing, suggested the debilitating qualities of slavery
and the rejuvenation that accompanied liberation.
Regarding Elkins’s now-familiar Sambo thesis emphasizing the effects of
black male emasculation in slavery which shows the slave as a “halfman”(6), John Blassingame assumes throughout his study in The Slave
Community(7) that they are actually whole men. He observes that “the
Southern plantation […] permitted the development of a monogamous
slave family”, which was “one of the most important survival mechanisms
for the slave.” However, in their attempt to build a stable family, slave
fathers are overwhelmed and forced to maintain his powerless position
because of his master’s authority. Despite that, the slave system
“recognized the male as the head of the family” because they try to shape
their lives according to “normative” cultural patterns of marriage and
family life.
Deborah White also focuses on the personality of the male slave. She
critiques the emphasis on negating Samboism and argues that “the male
slave’s “masculinity” was restored by putting black women in their proper
“feminine” place”.(8) bell hooks goes even further by suggesting that
“black men were dehumanized solely as a result of not being able to be
patriarchs, what implies that subjugation of black women was essential to
the black male’s development of a positive self-concept, an ideal that only
served to support a sexist social order”.(9) Precisely regarding this issue, it
is important to mention Deborah McDowell, who had reread Douglass's
book in terms of its representations of African-American women. As a
result of a standard convention of the fugitive slave narrative, many of the
women in the Narrative are depicted as sexual victims of white men's
pleasure and have little ability to transcend their circumstances as
Douglass does. By observing the constant repetition of these brutal
whippings of African-American women in the narrative, Douglass
becomes witness and participant of these violent acts, as the same time that
he takes part in the act of objectifying these women. Here there is an
extract of the book in which it is reflected Aunt Hester’s brutal beating by
Mr. Plummer (Captain Anthony’s overseer):
“[Mr. Plummer] stripped her from neck to waist leaving her neck,
shoulders, and back entirely naked […] then said to her, “Now, you d---d
b---h, I’ll learn you how to disobey my orders!” […] and commenced to
lay on the heavy cowskin, and soon the warm, red blood (amid heartrending shrieks from her and horrid oaths from him) came dripping to the
floor.”(10)
Another issue to take into account is the many references done by
Douglass to the techniques used by slaveholders to keep slaves
psychologically on the same level as animals. Throughout the book, the
author suggests many instances of how the slave owners eradicate their
human identity, such as the slave’s ignorance of his own birth date.
Another way to do it is by provoking the breakdown of a family structure,
what destroys the child’s support network and sense of personal history.
This is what Douglass himself experiences when his master separates him
from his mother soon after his birth. Later on, he finds out about his
mother’s death, but he is indifferent due to their detachment:
”Never having enjoyed, to any considerable extent, her soothing presence,
her tender and watchful care, I received the tidings of [my mother’s] death
with much the same emotions I should have probably felt at the death of a
stranger.”
In Chapter X, there is a quotation which describes Douglass’s descent into
the most brutal conditions of slavery and then his reaffirmation of his
desire to be free. The dehumanizing transformation seems to be the mental
and spiritual, rather than physical, consequences of master Covey’s brutal
treatment:
“My natural elasticity was crushed, my intellect languished, the
disposition to read departed, the cheerful spark that lingered about my eye
died; the dark night of slavery closed in upon me; and behold a man
transformed into a brute!”
The final phrase of the sentence, “behold a man transformed into a brute,”
is also striking because it contains a second-person address to the reader,
exhorting him or her to “behold.” It suggests that the reader must
participate in the text somehow, as a witness or a judge.
As the book is a bildungsroman, it is noticeable Douglass’s change to selfemancipation. The transformation takes place from an illiterate, oppressed
slave to an educated, liberated free man not only literally, by escaping
slavery, but also figuratively, in language.
One way Douglass establishes this transformation is by creating a complex
narrative structure with two narrating "I's” within the text. One of the best
examples of how these two narrators engage with each other is when
Douglass combines them in the following quote:
“I did not, when a slave, understand the deep meaning of those rude and
apparently incoherent songs. I was myself within the circle; so that I
neither saw nor heard as those without might see and hear.”
Thus, readers engage with both the past experience of Douglass as a slave
and the narrator who interprets those experiences from his position as a
free man. This passage is part of Douglass’s long discussion at the end of
Chapter II about the songs that slaves sing. Douglass does not understand
the symbolic meaning of the slave songs when he is one of the singers,
only after moving away from his culture can he gain interpretive distance
from it and infer that these songs are an evidence of the slaves’ deep
unhappiness.
The moral growth mentioned above has to do with Douglass realization
that whites hold blacks in their power depriving them of education and
literacy. This happens after Hugh Auld orders Sophia Auld to stop
Douglass’s reading lessons, as it is seen in the following passage which
occurs in Chapter VI:
”Whilst I was saddened by the thought of losing the aid of my kind
mistress, I was gladdened by the invaluable instruction which, by the
merest
accident,
I
had
gained
from
my
master.
From that moment, I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom. It
was just what I wanted, and I got it at a time when I least expected.”
From that day, Douglass makes it his goal to learn as much as he can,
eventually learning how to write, a skill that would provide him with his
passport to freedom.
Another aspect to consider has to do with Patrick Henry’s statement “Give
me liberty or give me death” to which Douglas does a reference in his next
quotation:
”In coming to a fixed determination to run away, we did more than
Patrick Henry, when he resolved upon liberty or death.”
The reference to Henry is used to compare the slaves’ quest for freedom
and rights to the American Revolutionaries’ crusade for rights. Douglass’s
use of Revolutionary references in The Narrative also ironically points to
the hypocrisy of Americans. Americans take great pride in their historical
establishment of a system of rights, yet they still deprive a large section of
the population—slaves—of those very same rights.
The cited passage appears in Chapter X of The Narrative , in which
Douglass relates his plans to escape with several fellow slaves from
William Freeland’s. Several times in the work, Douglass describes in
detail the explicit dangers that slaves face in attempting escape: natural
enemies, such as the weather or dangerous animals, as well as human
enemies in the form of their owners or slave hunters. Slaves are not
assured freedom even if they do escape and survive. Douglass focuses on
the incredible dangers of escape to suggest that Northerners cannot simply
rely on slaves fleeing injustice by themselves. Instead, Northerners must
take political action against the institution of slavery to ensure that further
escapees are not harmed.
4. Conclusion/ What can we get from the book?
Among the issues in which the book centers its attention we have selected
a few remarkable things:
First of all, the idea that education eliminates slavery and that is exactly
the reason why it is not taught to slaves. Education makes you understand
that a person cannot be a property to be owned.
Second, the question of slavery as a practice to be allowed or forbidden.
Third, blacks vs. Constitution; they do love America but not the values its
government promotes.
And finally, the notion of struggling for your rights and the symbolic
representation of Frederick Douglass for the success of a thriving society.
The Narrative provides hope in the form of the courageous, self-made
figure of Frederick Douglass, because this book is the achievement for
either Douglass personally, for black people, for human nature, or for all
three.
A quote to conclude…
"You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave
was made a man"
Frederick Douglass
5. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Andrews, William L., and William S. McFeely. Narrative of the life of
Frederick Douglass, an American slave, written by himself:
authoritative text, contexts, criticism. New York: Norton, 1997.
Print.
Andrews, William L., and Henry Louis Gates. Slave narratives. New
York, N.Y.: Literary Classics of the U.S., 2000. Print.
"Frederick Douglass Biography." Cliffs Notes. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 May
2014. <http://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/n/narrative-of-the-lifeof-frederick-douglass-an-american-slave/book-summary>.
"Who Was Frederick Douglass?." Digital History. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 May
2014.
<http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/exhibits/douglass_exhibit/dougla
ss.html>.
"Sparknote On Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass." SparkNotes.
SparkNotes, n.d. Web. 12 May 2014.
<http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/narrative/>.