Women and Slavery
Fredrick Douglass's narrative of his life examines the relationship between the duality of the slaves and their master counterparts. There is, however, a distinction in the role that gender plays into the identity of each social group. Masters and their wives and/or white women in general versus the differences between slave males and females. From his attitude towards his familial situation and his mother, to Sophia Auld; women play a dynamic role in shaping his early life. Until our reading to chapter 9, does anyone have any thoughts of how Douglass represents women and how their gender effect his overall narrative of slave life?
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ReplyDeleteSteven brings up an interesting social dynamic in discussing the relationship between Fredrick Douglass and women in his narrative. Douglass's portrayal of women in that time paints a particularly vivid and brutal picture of the lives of female slaves. He describes, in great detail, the severe brutality inflicted on his Aunt Hester by Colonel Lloyd, his own early separation from his mother (and the suggestion that he was in fact his master's child) and the poor treatment of female slaves in the hands of their mistresses, for small offenses and especially when the female slaves were thought to be of interest to the master.
ReplyDeleteIn portraying the female slaves in this manner, Douglass makes an emotional argument against slavery. A question that comes up is, based on the first few chapters, it seems that female slaves bore the brunt of the physical abuse and were constantly targeted for whipping incidents. Were female slaves abused much more than their male counterparts in that time and why? The other interpretation is that Douglass, in describing the condition of female slaves was able to better distance himself from the experience, as it had happened to somebody socially different from him.
Douglass also seems more affected by the breakdown of his initially nice relationship with Sophia Auld a lot more than with male masters. And, although his grandmother did not suffer severe brutality, he is very overcome by her ultimate banishment in the hands of the new masters. This could all indicate that women had a special place in Douglass's life. When placed in the larger context of his later life, he eventually supported the women's suffrage movement, an indication of his own need to champion the cause of women in society.