Summary Of Harriet Jacobs And Frederick Douglass

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.

In the Narrative of the Life and the Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs both use detailed descriptions to convey the harsh brutalities of slavery and cause a sense of urgency to the problem. In Harriet’s narrative she describes her love for a young, free, black man. She is worried to tell Dr. Flint, her owner, because she knows that he is too wilful and arbitrary to consent to the marriage. Even so, she speaks with Dr. Flint about her proposal and he strongly disapproves. Harriet describes that for the rest of the night Dr. Flint ignored her. He was angry that she thought of marrying a black man instead of being with him. However, “his lips disdained to address me (her), his eyes were very loquacious.

After that Douglass decided to run away back to his old master Mr.Thomas, who then told him to go back that he can not take him back. When he returned to Mr.Covey’s field started working like the rest of the slaves when one day he was ordered to rub and feed the horses. As he was about to leave the horses, Mr.Covey came with a long rope and tried to tie Douglass down to so he could do whatever he wanted to do to Douglass. Douglass knew what he was willing to do to him, so he fought back.

Both Douglass and Jacobs were inspirational icons for the African-Americans in American history. Their contributions to the abolition of slavery and liberalism of the African-American race in the U.S. are very notable and important too; not only for honor but also important to American literature. They both lived during the period of the Antebellum (1820 - 1865) when the abolition of slave trade was a big issue in the country. At this time, most writers were writing on the subject of slavery. The works of Harriet Jacobs and Frederick Douglass, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave respectively, were narratives of

In 1833 Douglass was sent to a “slave breaker” who flagellated him constantly in an effort to physically and mentally break him down. Finally after 6 months of working with covey in all kinds of weather conditions every day except Sunday, Douglass was “broken in body, soul, and spirit.”(Douglass 2064-2128) Douglass lost the will to do anything intellectually he was numbed expressively “my intellect languished, the disposition to read departed, the cheerful spark that lingered about my eye died…” (Douglass 2064-2128). After enduring this treatment he tried to get protection from his former master and absconded to him. After this covey was set on beating Douglass to death and in a stable he tried where Douglass fought back and told covey “that he had used me like a brute for six months, and that I was determined to be used so no longer.”(Douglass 2064-2128) Only until Douglass seized this opportunity was he no longer subject to covey’s yoke of oppression. No longer bound his mind was free to soar and he was able to pen his autobiography in addition he was also an abolitionist who helped end slavery. His path through slavery was harsh and it took great patience to withstand that condition and to rise up. His experience of slavery was no different than any other slave of the time

Throughout the eighteenth century, many fugitive slaves wrote narratives to express their experience as a slave. Fredrick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass, an American Slave and Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl are two famous examples in which the writers demonstrate their perspective as slaves and dangerous, agonizing life. Nevertheless, there are also many dissimilarities between these narratives, including gender based treatments, main character’s first steps towards freedom, and main character’s personality.

The fight with Mr. Covey gave him hope for the future. “This battle with Mr. Covey was the turning point in my career as a slave”(Douglass 43). The fight that they had revived him with the will to live. The turning point revived his determination to be free and returned his self confidence. “It rekindled the few expiring embers of freedom, and revived within me a sense of my own manhood.

The red-hot iron of a brand is pressed against cows to show ownership. Reigns on a horse are used to push the animal to work harder. Humans were once treated the same way. Slaves were bought and sold as property, so the buyers had ownership. Slaves were also whipped and beaten to do more for their master. Sound familiar? These slaves were treated as animals; like cows being branded or a horse being whipped to go faster. Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs are two well-known, successful authors, and both went through this harsh reality of slavery. Douglass, slave narrative author of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself, experiences and witnesses the cruelty of the

Douglass equated the achievement of manhood, self-acquired freedom, and personal voice. Douglass lacked an identity for the first many years of his life, as was the case for most slaves. Henry Louis Gates Jr. points out how “deprivation of a birth date, a name, a family structure, and of legal rights makes of the deprived a brute, a subhuman…” (6). Black

Slavery gave many similar trials to all the African Americans. However, the lives of Fredrick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs were more different than similar when they were slaves. The differences between their lives mostly come from being opposite genders, as the man deals with more physical and mental afflictions, whereas the woman suffers physical and social afflictions.

Slavery, A living condition where one person controls, and elicits labor or favors out of another person. Slavery involves one person or multiple people owning and having complete control over the thoughts and actions of another person or group of people.

Slavery is defined as a person being owned by someone, a state of bondage, servitude, or work performed under harsh conditions for little or no pay. Both continental African slavery and external commercial slavery deprived people of freedom. Continental slavery focused on adding people to a group to be productive members of the society and for other reasons beside monetary

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. The gratification afforded by the triumph was a full compensation for whatever else might follow, even death itself. [...] I felt as I never felt before. It was a glorious resurrection, from the tomb of slavery, to the heaven of freedom. My long-crushed spirit rose, cowardice departed, bold defiance took its place; and I now resolved that, however long I might remain a slave in form, the day had passed forever when I could be a slave in fact. I did not hesitate to let it be known of me, that the white man who expected to succeed in whipping, must also succeed in killing me” (Douglass).

The difference between black men’s writings and black women’s writing is seen in this writing. Men wrote to talk about heroism and the freedom they gained, while women try to show link their writing to family and community (Stover 133-154). The difference between Douglass and Harriet Ann Jacobs can also be seen when Cutter asserted “While Douglass uses gaps in his text to maintain authority over the actual narrative, Jacobs creates gaps or deficiencies in her text to disperse the author's authority, sharing it with her readers” (Cutter 224).

Slavery is defined as the state of being a slave, or the condition of being owned by another person and being forced to work.