Frederick Douglass And Harriet Jacobs : Two Humans Born Into Slavery

In this paper I will compare the writings of Harriet Jacobs and Frederick Douglass. I will touch on their genre, purpose, content, and style. Both authors were born into slavery. Both escaped to freedom and fought to bring an end to slavery, each in their own way. Both Jacobs and Douglass have a different purpose for their writings.

Imagine being stuck in chains for six months in your own filth and waste. For some slaves on the middle passage it was exactly like that. This, however, was different than slaves born into slavery, for they didn’t have to go through that harsh journey. Both were common to try and escape, few making it. Making the outcomes of Frederick Douglass, who wrote an autobiography, and Kunta Kinte, from the movie “Roots,” different. While “Roots” and the narrative of the “Life of Frederick Douglass” have some similarities, the differences of their origins and outcomes are more significant because that’s what shaped them who they are.

In a Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave written by himself, the author argues that no one can be enslaved if he or she has the ability to read, write, and think. Douglass supports his claim by first providing details of his attempts to earn an education, and secondly by explaining the conversion of a single slaveholder. The author’s purpose is to reveal the evils of slavery to the wider public in order to gain support for the abolition of his terrifying practice. Based on the purpose of writing the book and the graphic detail of his stories, Douglass is writing to influence people of higher power, such as abolitionists, to abolish the appalling reality of slavery; developing a sympathetic relationship with the

Since the beginning of writing, literature has played a pivotal role in shaping the history of the world. The same holds true when referring to the early American history topic of slavery. Many abolitionists wrote in hopes that their views will persuade people in America to take a stand against slavery. While there were many authors that led the anti-slavery movement, the most successful writers were the slaves that lived through this atrocious time period and were able to recall their experiences. Two prominent authors during this time period were Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs. While the two writers shared many common experiences due to their time being a slave, they also had had a variety of differences. Harriet Jacobs wrote mostly wrote in a way that appealed to people’s emotions and focused on what a woman goes through as a slave; whereas Douglass focused on freedom and manhood.

Slavery was something cruel and unhuman that many of our brothers and sisters endured. For many years colored men, woman, and children did not have much to live with. The description of the two different narratives of Frederick Douglass and Harriot Jacobs are quite distinct, yet so alike in through their experiences as slaves.

In their narratives Frederick Douglass’ and Harriet Jacobs’ recount the agony they have gone through in a slaveholding society, where gender played a deceiving role during the captiva-tion. For slaves it was impossible to achieve designated stereotypical roles of the sexes, respec-tively for male and female, as the only officially recognized gender at that time. While Harriet Jacobs was restricted in her aspire for freedom due to her role conflict as mother and slave, Fred-erick Douglass seems distant to family matters and focused on getting his independence and pride back with education and resistance. Both were constrained to follow the general pictures default to fit the American culture and the norms set by society towards gender throughout their captivation as slaves. Yet, these specific examples of their life are despite their differences, very similar in their desires.

In these two tales of brutal bondage, Harriet Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and Frederick Douglass' Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, the modern reader can decipher two vastly different experiences from circumstances that were not altogether that dissimilar. Both narratives tell the story of a slave gaining his or her freedom from cruel masters, yes, but that is where the most prominent similarities end. Not only are they factually different, these stories are entirely distinct in their themes.

Both Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs had similar experiences in regards to their owners getting more involved with religion resulting in a change in the treatment of their slaves. Frederick Douglass’ slave-owner in 1832 was a man called “Captain Auld” by his slaves. Douglass describes him as a “slaveholder without the ability to hold slaves”. However, after attending a Methodist camp-meeting and experiencing religion, Auld becomes crueler. Douglass had the slightest hope that Auld’s involvement with religion would incline him to emancipate his slaves or—at the very least—be more humane and kind. Douglass was disappointed. “Prior to his conversion, he relied upon his own depravity to shield and sustain him in his savage barbarity; but after his conversion, he found religious sanction and support for his slaveholding cruelty.” The man became more involved in religious activity; it became a part of his everyday life. Douglass provides an example of his master’s usage of religious sanction for cruelty and brutality. Douglass witnesses Auld tie up and whip a young woman while justifying his actions with a passage of Scripture— “He that knoweth his master’s will, and doeth it not, shall be beaten with many stripes.” Harriet Jacobs had a comparable experience. “When I was told that Dr. Flint had joined the Episcopal church, I was much surprised. I supposed that religion had a purifying effect on the character of men; but the worst persecutions I endured from him were after he

In Douglass’s book he goes into detail on some horrific events, he explained how life was living under the order of someone, wondering when you will be whipped again, and sometimes wondering if your even going to live another day. He was a witness to many acts of torture, in the early part of his life he witnessed his aunt Hester getting caught by the master for seeing a man. The master stripped of all her cloths, tired her hands together, he then lead her too a stool with a hook above it made her stand on this stool and tired her hands to this hook. He then whipped her with cowskin till blood was dripping all over the floor. Douglass feared he was next. (4-5).

Men and Women’s treatment has been different as long as the two have been around to notice the difference. Even in the realm of slavery women and men were not treated the same although both were treated in horrible ways. Harriet Jacobs and Fredrick Douglass’ story is very similar both were born into slavery and later rose above the oppression to become molders of minds. In time of subjugation to African Americans these two writers rose up and did great things especially with their writing. Both Douglass and Jacobs’ experienced different types of slavery, it shaped their perspective on everything and it also shows the importance of their freedom.

Douglass’s life as slave was subjected to more cruel punishments than an indentured servant would have recieved.When Douglass described the severe punishment of his aunt Hester given by Colonel Lloyd as

The book The Classic Slave Narratives is a collection of narratives that includes the historical enslavement experiences in the lives of the former slaves Harriet Jacobs, Frederick Douglass, and Olaudah Equiano. They all find ways to advocate for themselves to protect them from some of the horrors of slavery, such as sexual abuse, verbal abuse, imprisonment, beatings, torturing, killings and the nonexistence of civil rights as Americans or rights as human beings. Also, their keen wit and intelligence leads them to their freedom from slavery, and their fight for freedom and justice for all oppressed people.

During the final years of legal slave ownership in the United States, the slave narrative became a popular way for literate enslaved people to express their anti-slavery stance through their own testimony. Two of the most influential writers on the slave narrative topic were the autobiographical authors Fredrick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs. Since Douglas and Jacobs were both born in a similar time period, there are many similarities found in their works. Douglass’s Narrative of the life of Fredrick Douglass, an American Slave is closely comparable to Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl when analyzing how they represented their enslavement in their autobiographies. The two authors have similar ideas when portraying their struggles with forced ignorance. Their writing also contains parallels with the corrupting power of slavery for the slave owners, as well as the parallels in pointing out the hypocrisies of using the bible to defend slavery. These similarities can be explained in part due to Douglass and Jacobs following the same basic slave narrative outline to maintain the shared goal of abolishing slavery in the United States.

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

write. Douglass uses irony and a sense of unawareness in his narrative to describe "the toils of women through his aunt’s afflictions but failed...to accurately address and interpret," (James 34) these strategies attempt to validate his role as a "fugitive American slave narrator, seeking a written document to prove that"(James 27) he has obviously suggested through language the free territory he claims. The connection for Douglass between the wanting of literacy and personal worth is what he focuses on primarily throughout the narrative. Douglass establishes himself as a man who is deserving of freedom, and that itself is a major significance to other slave narratives. This generalization doesn't extend to the slave narrative written by Harriet Jacobs who focuses on the brutality that women slaves face compared to men slaves. She states many times the fact that women slaves are degraded and treated "less than there worth." (Jacobs 29)