Royce 1
Andre Royce
English 11
Ms. Pauly
December 2 2014
Douglass and the Treatment of Women
In his Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass An American Slave, Written by Himself, Douglass explores the juxtaposition of rights between black and white women. Historians note that white women have many domestic demands in the nineteenth century, for it is unfit for a woman to do nothing. The most crucial role of women is to raise children, but it is evident that women need to be respected in order to properly raise the next generation. On the contrary black women are not ensured the same amount of respect as white women, but are still expected to raise children. It is not uncommon for a child of a black women to be separated from birth, and families are constantly torn apart. In these cases the black women would have to raise other slave’s babies
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Douglass can clearly see the injustice of black women’s condition in the plantations, and tells their stories to evoke emotion in the reader, and to make the reader experience the horrors and corruption of slavery in black families. It is the ways that black women are denied rights that breaks families. Douglass starts off by telling his story of how he is ripped from his mother when he is just a baby. He never experiences any love from his mother, but the most horrific part about this is that it is a “common custom” for infants to be taken from their mothers and to be sent off to distant places, and thus destroys the natural affection of mother and child (13). In these cases black women are refused the right to have a family. Upon telling the story of his childhood Douglass is aware that his father is white because Douglass is of lighter skin than his mother. Since interracial relationships are illegal, the only explanation for this is that possibly Captain Anthony raped Douglass’ mother. The justification of rape of black women by slave owners “is done too obviously