Fredrick Douglass And Harriet Jacobs Narrative Analysis

Frederick Douglass’ Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself and Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl discusses how slavery dehumanizes and breaks down an individual to no worth. Douglass’ and Jacobs’ accounts are similar because they lecture against slavery with the work and obstacles they went through. Jacobs says, “For years, my master had done his utmost to pollute my mind with foul images, and to destroy the pure principles inculcated by my grandmother, and the good mistress of my childhood. The influences of slavery had the same effect on me that they had on other young girls; they had made me prematurely knowing, concerning the evil ways of the world.” (827) Jacobs explains that slavery has attempted to take a toll on her life with its physical, emotional, and mental abuse.

Slaves faced extreme brutality and Morrison focuses on rape and sexual assault as the most terrifying form of abuse. It is because of this abuse that Morrison’s characters are trapped in their pasts, unable to move on from the psychological damages that they have endured. “Morrison revises the conventional slave narrative by insisting on the primacy of sexual assault over other experiences of brutality” (Barnett 420). For telling Mrs. Garner what they had done, she was badly beaten by them, leaving a “chokecherry tree” (16) on her back. But that was not the overriding issue.

Furthermore some slaves were killed by hanging and burning to re-affirm the supremacy of the overseer or as a word of warning for other slaves to obey their master. Slaves in St. Domingue like many parts of the world were viewed merely as property that the whites can treat as they desire. Women slaves were required to abide by the sexual actions by their master and if they resisted they were beaten. In addition most of the masters were married which led to resentment among the wives and the slave being sexually abused, especially when the slave was impregnated by the master and had

So, it may be both reasons as to why the woman ran away. Together as a society fears and stereotypes are created by those who feel attacked and terrorized by multiple people try to find a common denominator between all the people who hurt them, then a certain stereotype or fear is created to let everyone know that since three black men raped a girl

The most notable account of this separated was faced by a female slave that Northup encounters by the name of Eliza. Northup writes about the disregarding of the white slave traders towards the suffering of the mother and intense emotion of grief that Eliza displayed at the auction block when she realized that she was being separated from her children. As Northup noted, All the time the trade was going on, Eliza was crying aloud, and wringing her hands. She besought the man not to buy her child, unless he also bought herself and her other small child. She promised, in that case, to be the most faithful slave that ever lived.

The memory of past, takes Sethe to the cruel white man during slavery. “Schoolteacher’s nephews brutally abuse Sethe sexually, sucking milk from her breasts and whipping her back bloody” (Kubitschek, 116). This incident affects Sethe deeply and she always remembers the viciousness of white man and the murder of her own child. She cannot endure to see her daughter nat the hands of this brutality. Therefore, she decides to kill her.

First is the idea of merit, that bad things happen to bad people (1, 1985). The main example for this is sexual assault of a woman wearing a provocative outfit. This notion is full of oughts. Women ought not to wear provocative outfits, because, as we know from porn, a provocative outfit is a communication to men about openness to sex. The raped woman’s gender performance was wrong, it sent the wrong signals.

It also reminds us of Jean Toomer’s Cane which shows us the gray shades of lynching. The nineteenth century Georgia is very cruel to those men who desire or demand equal and adequate space in the social set-up. Just one incident of Celie’s father being lynched, deteriorates both the daughter’s lives. The madwoman (Celie’s mother) in her attic loses her sensibility, her grace and her respect because her husband was lynched. Even in a much modernized society like Georgia, woman is idealized as the mother of the human race yet she is abused, beaten and exploited, threatened and thrown, casted and “outcasted, and later called as disgrace and

Voltaire also attacks politics and the philosophy of optimism in his satire . One of the most important themes in Candide was the inequality between men and women at the 18th century . he talked about the mistreatment of the female race in the 18th century through the female characters from rape and sexual harassements regardless of their wealth or political situations . the female characters exhibit a complexity in Candide and shows the importance of women in the 18th century . it seems like Voltaire finally gave women a voice to be heard and to show everyone how unfair females were treated back then through this

Humiliation can have jarring effects on an individual, but how many would choose to impose pain upon themselves; and what is the difference in the psychological effects? Hester and Dimmesdale committing the sin of adultery created a relationship between them that was both strange and mutual; but both suffered immensely from what they had done. Hester was publically disgraced, whereas Dimmesdale created his own suffering; in which brings up the question, who suffered more? In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, two stories are told about punishment; Hester Prynne who faces public humiliation and Arthur Dimmesdale who inflicts private shame upon himself.

Therefore, slavery did have some different effects towards women and men, but always towards a worse condition. All that being said, both narratives provided great comparisons between gender-specific experiences of slavery. Both women and men suffered terribly from the hands of slavery, yet sometimes in different ways. While men and women suffered the consequences of losing their humanity and being physically abused, women also faced sexual abuses, and men were in quest of the manliness that they lost at birth. After all, even though men and women

Slaveholders feared slaves’ rebellions and attempts of escape. After the master’s “lecture,” Douglass lost his teacher who became coldness like his husband. Douglass was so sad and wrote in his book that “That cheer eye, under the influence of slavery, soon became red with rage; that voice, made all of sweet accord, changed to one of harsh and horrid discord; and that angelic face gave place to that of demon”(Douglass, page 19). Thus, slavery, as the poison, blinded human being’s eyes and made people discard their good qualities which they had initially.

Another element in this novel is Melinda’s inner conflict, man vs. self. What Melinda has been through greatly affected her everyday life. She struggles with depression, dislikes her appearance, and feels ashamed of herself for something that isn 't her fault: “I want to confess everything, hand over the guilt and mistake and anger to someone else...even if I dump the memory, it will stay with me, staining me” (Anderson 51). Andy Evans, the senior who raped her, made her feel worthless. This situation is much like the one in the novel The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins.

Her master and mistress treated her horribly, her mistress was jealous of her and her master would sexually harass her. Once, her mistress made Jacobs go out barefoot in the snow and her master and mistress threatened her with death. She focuses a lot on her sexual abuse throughout the book. She said that slavery is terrible to men, but more terrible for women.

Slavery has been a very big issue since 1700s of inequality among enslaved people; especially, black woman. Starting in the early 1700s, the news that the planter took advantage of their power by raping enslaved women were pervasive(Henretta 95). According to Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacob, she described her hardness in working days and nights, and she was forced to have sexual intercourse with her white owner(Henretta 370). In addition, she pointed out that the sexual abuse of women is a profound moral failing of the slave regime(Henretta 370). After Jacob’s book, in 1831, Maria Stewart gave her speeches to black men and women persuading black women to consider their place in the society(Hartmann 21).