Contrast of the Experience of Slavery as Represented by Douglass and Jacobs - Essay Example

?In Narrative on the Life of Frederick Douglass and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, respectively, present their biographical accounts of life lived under a system of slavery in which they had to answer daily to their masters and endure the worst forms of human abuse. The accounts each gives of life lived as a slave is colored by a variety of factors, not the least of which is the status of their individual gender identities. Douglass’ views of himself as a man, and Jacobs’ assessment of herself and her role in the world as a woman can be said to display definite gender-specific takes on the difficulties of growing up in a system in which one has very little control over one’s life. The reactions they exhibit to the terrible difficulties they face are driven in large part by their gendered notions of what is expected of them from their masters, what they are capable of given their own physical capacities, and how their emotional, intellectual and spiritual lives are structured by the experiences they undergo as a result of their gender. In this brief paper, the gendered perspectives displayed by Douglass and Jacobs will be reviewed in order to determine what their views were on lives lived as a man and woman robbed of freedom but not of other crucial aspects of personal identity. Douglass gives an account of his life as a slave in and around Baltimore during the mid-1800s. In childhood he was taken away from his mother in order to ensure that the emotional ties between them would be severed, resulting in his growing up unmoored in the world to the love and affection of other slaves. He never knew his father, but suspected that his father was the white owner of his mother at the time of his birth. These facts are relayed by Douglass with a sorrow that reflects his inability to relate to anyone he might call family. Having been deprived of such, he grew up confused and fearful, worrying that he would be beaten and punished for any infractions against his masters. He attempted to learn basic survival skills from whoever showed him any affection. Since, even in the absence of a natural mother, primary care was given by other female slaves, he learned from the women he called “aunts” how to get along in the world. Most of his interaction with men revolved around dealings with slave owners and their overseers, who were cruel and inhumane. He relays stories of having watched the women he came to appreciate for their dignity and poise being beaten by the men he learned to fear. This way of interacting with men and women certainly colored his view of his own role in the world as a man as he grew in stature. In Chapter 5 of his account he relays the one positive early interaction he had with another male, the son of his master, who became his protector of sorts. He relied on this boy to keep him safe from harassment by older boys. It seems significant that it was a white child who played this role for him. Having been born of mixed race and having had his family taken from him, he came to relate to the world in a very isolated fashion. He describes the mealtimes and relays how he learned that the strongest males who ate the fastest were the ones who came to have the most respect among the other slaves, largely because they came to grow in stature and strength. Therefore, as a young child he was taught that males are supposed to be as close to savage as possible, while women and those males who submit to the protection of their white owners are allowed to grow up with some amount of dignity. He was drawn to that notion, and describes the way he prepared his body by scrubbing dead skin off his feet so that he would have a better chance of being sold to an owner in the city, where he might expect to have a more comfortable life. Jacobs, on the other hand describe her early childhood in almost bucolic terms, describing a happy life interacting with her grandmother, her mother, and even her mistress/owner. She learned to bake and do domestic chores and lived a life that was generally so happy that she didn’t even realize she was a slave. However, even in that memorable period, she recalls events which showed her that her place was one of ultimate insecurity. For example, she relays how her grandmother had been able to save some money aside and hoped to purchase the freedom of some of the children, only to have the mistress borrow the money and never repay it – all without any recourse to the law since slaves had no rights. Her childhood was spent in a domestic indoor situation, an existence which straddled what might be called a free existence and the more brutal lives lived by adult slaves in the field. Therefore she learned as a child to relate to the world as most women of the time might, but also came to understand that due to her position as a slave she had no real control over her life but lived at the whim of her owners. In one early chapter in her account Jacobs relays the story of a male slave who she claims dared to live his life in such a way that he “felt like a man.” What she meant by this was that the male slave suffered injustice at the hands of his owner and rather than endure beatings which he believed were not warranted, he attempted escape. She tells how she tried to convince him not to go, since they both knew that if he was caught and returned he would face even worse punishment. However, the man decided that he would rather face the consequences of his actions trying to escape than to go on living in a way that stripped him of all dignity. Jacobs’ interactions with the man displays a kind of admiration for his courage and bravery, but also a basic fear that was driven by her own perceived weakness in herself as a woman, a fear that led her to accept what was thrown at her and deal with it in an accommodating fashion rather than attempt to change it. This view of herself as weak was certainly due in part to her gendered self-view, as she spent much of her early life trying to screw up her courage to face injustice in the way that, were she a man, she would likely have been taught from an early age. The fact that Douglass had to work through many of the same issues was due in no small part to the fact that he was raised among women and did not accept the socialization of the male as strong and independent until later in life. Both Douglass and Jacobs in childhood were, therefore, brought up in such a way that they learned to view themselves as women might, insecure in the world, dependent upon others for protection, and accommodating rather than rebelling as a means of survival. If Douglass spent his early life viewing the world through eyes which were more effeminate, he came in later life to have a strong masculine presence. He relays the ways in which he interacted with his city owners –again especially the women – and how he had even learned to read. As he learned more about the world he became despondent because he despaired he would ever escape slavery. This caused him to be viewed as a difficult case by his owner, who then loaned him to another man who was known as a particularly mean-spirited master, in order to attempt to change his attitude. In Chapter 10 of his account, he relays the story of how he first came to accept the blows of this man, a Mr. Covey, and how it broke his spirit. He decides to go to his master to file a complaint and seek protection, only to suffer even harsher punishment. Eventually, he resolves to fight back. It was at this point that Douglass seems to struggle most with his own gendered identity. He had been accustomed, his whole life, to finding the softest and least confrontational way possible, of getting along with his masters. He related to the slave system much as a woman might, accepting and accommodating rather than fighting back. But in this moment he stood up to his master and fought back. They engaged in a two hour battle. Douglass writes: This battle with Mr. Covey was the turning-point in my career as a slave. It rekindled the few expiring embers of freedom, and revived within me a sense of my own manhood. It recalled the departed self-confidence, and inspired me again with a determination to be free. By finally standing up to his master’s cruelty and refusing to take the punishment and injustice doled out to him, Douglass claims he was finally being a man. Therefore his gendered identity in this moment changed. In becoming what he had secretly considered to be the ideal of a man, by expressing his strength rather than an accommodating (effeminate) weakness, Douglass resolved to escape, which he was then able to accomplish afterward. If Douglass came to accept his gendered identity as a way of gaining the self-respect needed to escape, Jacobs learned to use her identity as a woman to maintain survival. Her story as an adult revolves around her attempts to put off the sexual advances of her owner. She comes to offer sex to a white neighbor as a way of getting out from under the constant harassment of the man, only to then be separated from her children. This causes her to go into hiding and formulate a plan to escape and take her children with her. Her adult life is lived incognito, as she has to operate just under society’s radar, in constant fear of being captured and returned. She learns to use cunning, which she calls “the only weapon of the weak and oppressed,” in order to skirt her way around the slave society while she looked for ways to escape. It was in this recognition that she betrayed her own notions of her gendered identity. Whereas Douglass finally came to use the masculine strength he had as a man to rebel against his owners, Jacobs viewed her own position as a woman, with little physical strength, and decided that using her wits was the only way to survive. While many of her actions echoed the man from earlier in her story, refusing the accept injustice but willing to suffer the consequence for attempting to live free, the ways she maintained that freedom came to rely on her feminine characteristics. In coming to finally use what tools they felt they had at their disposal as man and woman, by accepting their own ideals of what it mean to be a man and a woman, Douglass and Jacobs therefore found ways to escape the slavery that had ruled their lives. While both occasionally displayed traits of the other gender – Douglass was often accommodating and gentle, while Jacobs was often daring and risk-taking – both ultimately found their salvation by taking on the traits that society told them were necessary to operate in the world as man and woman. Therefore, even as they came to relate to the world as slaves first and then as free persons, it was in the way that they related to the world as gendered man and woman that was perhaps their most important characteristics. Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave. 5 May 2011. Retrieved from http://www.online-literature.com/frederick_douglass/frederick_douglass_narrative/10/. Jacobs, Harriet. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. 5 May 2011. Retrieved from http://www.pagebypagebooks.com/Harriet_Jacobs/Incidents_in_the_Life_of_a_Slave_Girl/index.html. Read More