Fredrick Douglas and Harriet Jacobs

Fredrick Douglas and Harriet Jacobs

Fredrick Douglas’s Narrative, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an         American slave, is by far the most critical one since he wants his audiences to think about more than just legal, political, and historical issues of freedom and slavery. Frederick Douglass, in his narrative, writes to prove his identity and to bring into attention his eloquent indictment of slavery to a broader audience.  On the same note, Harriet Ann Jacobs, in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, narratives about autobiography, where she writes about her life as a slave as well as how she got freedom together with her children. Jacobs has contributed significantly to the slave’s narrative genre by application of techniques of emotional novels in efforts to address gender and race issues. The author tries to explore the sexual abuse and struggles that female slaves experienced during the plantations and their efforts to exercise motherhood as well as protecting their children from being sold away. Both Jacobs and Douglas offer to give their autobiography where they narrate out of their own experience with slavery, where they accuse slavery due to the associated struggles and sexual abuse during the civil war in America. They later, in their narratives, offer practicing motherhood and stopping young human trafficking as a solution to slavery.

The Douglas’ narrative is fundamentally correct in almost statements since there is nothing that has been set down in malice or exaggerated.  In Colonel Edward Lloyd plantation, the child, Douglass is eye-witness of brutal whipping of several slaves, female and male, young and old. Douglas says, “his treatment. . . was very similar to that of the other slave children” (Douglas 26). Further in the early chapters of his narrative, he seriously put more emphasis on nature and status of slavery according to his personal experience by writing, “I had no bed, I would sleep on the cold, damp, clay floor, with my head in [a sack for carrying corn] and feet out” (Douglas 27). This explanation explicitly connects Douglass’ experience to that of the other slaves they were sailing the same bout, both “old and young, male and female, drop-down side by side, married and single, on one common bed, the cold, damp floor, each covering himself or herself with their miserable blankets” (Douglas 11). The description of the adverse conditions experienced by the slaves is a vivid illustration of why slavery, by all means, should be abolished.

Jacobs narrates about her life where she was born a slave, “I was born a slave, but I never knew it till six years of happy childhood had passed away…” Jacobs writes (Jacobs 2). The author further clarifies her idea of how she was introduced to slavery when she writes, “On condition of paying his mistress two hundred dollars a year and supporting himself, he was allowed to work at his trade, and manage his affairs. His strongest wish was to purchase his children; but, though he several times offered his hard earnings for that purpose, he never succeeded….and, though we were all slaves, I was so fondly shielded that I never dreamed I was a piece of merchandise, trusted to them for safekeeping, and liable to be demanded of them at any moment” (Jacobs 12). The narrator demonstrates how she was exposed to slavery at a very tender age, where she was accompanying her parents to work for the mistress who was supposed to be paid some amount that was too high for them to meet the target. Failure to pay the amount parents were to give out their children free for slavery.

Further, Jacobs is forced to love even out of her will when she writes, “Not my will, but thine be done, O Lord?” (Jacobs 24). But when the ruthless hand of man strikes the blow, regardless of the misery he causes, it is hard to be submissive. I did not see reason, thus, when I was a young girl. Youth will be youth. I forgot that in the land of my birth, the shadows are too dense for light to penetrate. The narrator is forced to adjust to fit in the world of slavery and as an orphan after her mother dies since life the same in both the home and the plantations. Jacobs narrates that “It has been painful to me, in many ways, to recall the dreary years I passed in bondage” (Jacobs 32). Here, the narrator attempts to reflect on how life as a slave was too hard for her together with her children. She also describes the idea of separation from motherland and relatives, where she has been longing to see her grandmother.

Jacobs and Douglas’ autobiographies depicts an accurate picture of what entails a slave. Both narrators agree on brutal violence in plantations during the civil war in America. Although both authors’ slavery comes to an end in one way or the other, they both agree that slavery should be abolished by first practicing motherhood and eliminating human trafficking.