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The Harsh Lives Of Frederick Douglass And Harriet Jacobs

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In today’s world, we learn about the harsh lives that slaves had to endure and how mistreated they were their entire lives. It’s often hard to imagine what it would have been like and how they coped with their terrible lives. Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs discuss how they were able to find hope and comfort through the toughest of times. Through the harsh reality of slavery, slaves had the comfort of family, friends, and God to give them hope to one day have freedom. Family was a large comfort and a little bit of an incentive for slaves who were fortunate enough to have their family near them. Jacobs was able to have her family near her for much of her life in slavery, particularly her grandmother. Jacobs writes,”To this grandmother I was indebted for many comforts.” (806). Jacobs also later mentions, “I was indebted to her for all my comforts, spiritual or temporal” (2). Jacobs felt that her grandmother helped her so much through these times that she would never be able to repay the comfort she received from her grandmother and all the good deeds she did for her. Jacobs also discussed how her grandmother was a “sweet balsam for our troubles.” (5). Her grandmother lived a life that they all longed for …show more content…

“I do not recollect of ever seeing my mother by the light of day. She was with me in the night. She would lie down with me, and get me to sleep, but long before waked she was gone.” (932). Though Douglass does not know his mother for long, the reader can infer that his mother comes to him for comfort, not only to attempt to comfort her son, but to comfort herself and the separation she had from her beloved child. Slaves had hard trials and struggles through wanting freedom and being separated, but looked to the family they had around them to console them and give them comfort for their pains and

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The Brutal Taking of One's Peace Fredrick Douglas stated in his narrative, “No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end around his own neck”. This darkening illustration of the taking of not only taking the slaves freedom, but taking their “masters” freedom in the process shows just how sick, and twisted slavery had to be to change everyone involved. Harriet Jacobs, a former slave, had similar views to the horrendous changing of each individual. Stating “Yet few slaveholders seem to be aware of the widespread moral ruin occasioned by this wicked system. Their talk is of blighted cotton crops--not of the blight on their children's souls.”

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Many minority groups were vulnerable to enslavement placed upon them by white Americans throughout the 19th century. In the episodic autobiographies Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass, An American Slave written by Fredrick Douglass and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl written by Harriet Jacobs, both authors present the physiological manipulations associated with slavery. Douglass's and Jacob’s experiences suggest that slaves endured a continuous treatment of brutality, loneliness, and sexual abuse. Slave-owners deprived slaves of positive human qualities because they (slave-owners) became divested from their sense of identity. The dehumanizing institution of slavery caused slave-owners to conform to social roles instituted by society and forced slaves to suffer from learned hopelessness.

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After the first slaves were brought in by the British more and more Africans were sought out. They became like a commodity for those that could afford to purchase them. Regardless, of their sex in the eyes of the law they were viewed and treated as property. Unfortunately, all black men, women and children equally shared devastating experiences during their time as a slave. On one side they were all separated form both their families and their homeland.

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This exposure to oppression shaped her to be the person she is today. As her “Incidents” show, she was not afraid to use her past as a stepping stone for future success. Truth and Jacobs’ sacrifices demonstrate the evolution one might call rags to riches. In this case, however, the riches displays a sense of impact that both women achieve. They fought until their dying breaths and their legacy still holds strong

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After having read both Frederick Douglass’s Narrative and Harriet Jacobs’s Incident 1. How were Douglass and Jacobs similar and different in their complaints against slavery? What accounts for these differences? In both the inspiring narratives of Narrative in the Life of Fredrick Douglass by Frederick Douglass’s and in Incidents in the life of a slave girl by Harriet Jacobs the respective authors demonstrate the horrors and disparity of slavery in there own ways.

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Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs shared the same points in their work but they have different ways of expressing what they feel about their lives. Douglass and Jacobs were treated differently by their masters, had different daily lives, and they faced different challenges. Although they were different they also had some similarities such as the fact that they were born into slavery and that they both escaped it. Most slaves were generally treated badly by their masters.

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In the narratives of Fredrick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs we see a point of view of two slaves in the 1800s, one being a man and the other being a woman. In Fredrick’s narrative we see that he was a born slave. As he grew up he desired to learn how to read, believing that this was the key to him being a free man. He became a leader for many other slaves and quarreled with his masters. He bought his time and eventually fled to the north where he ended up working with wages.

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In addition to limited clothing, their repeated separation also forces numerous hardships on slaves. Douglass himself describes two types of separation slaves can possibly undergo during their enslaved life. First type would be familial, and although Douglass conveys little emotional response to his early familial separation, he does mention how for others who experience the separation at a latter age are accosted with more grief. One subtle example he provides of this agonizing is his mom, as he illustrates how her death had “ended…her hardships and suffering.”

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In Frederick Douglass’s book, he writes accounts of his time in slavery and beyond. Throughout the book, Douglass writes about not only the physical hardships slaves endured, but the mental and emotional hardships as well. In Chapter X, Douglass describes a battle he had with a temporary slave owner named Mr. Covey. After the fight concludes, Douglass writes, “This battle with Mr. 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.

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Douglass tells about his own childhood and how his father might have been a slaveholder. He explains

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The emotional and sexual abuse was awful for Jacobs. In her narrative she talks about how horrible it really was for women "My master began to whisper foul words in my ear." Her master told her she was property "He told me I was his property; that I must be subject to his will in all things." She says how she had to give up their children "The children were sold to a slave-trader,

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Douglass managed to overcome the maltreatment of his wretched slave owners through the eventual attainment of freedom. The injustice imposed upon the African-American slaves by their owners was the crux of Douglass’s motivation to escape this inhumane life. Adolescents in today’s society could use Frederick’s determination as an example of moving forward to better oneself or one’s situation regardless of

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At the age of six, her mother died and she was forced to live with Margaret Horniblow, the mother’s owner. The mistress took a good care of Jacobs and taught her how to read, write and sew. Her father was always telling her to feel free and do not feel someones property. While her grandmother was always teaching Jacobs respect and manners. She was always telling her about principles and ethnics.

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Douglass was born into a life of slavery that was cruel and unforgiving. He was born with nothing and in a situation where it seemed like things could not get any worse, they did. Douglass’s father was his master so he had no father figure in his life and his mother was sold soon after he was born. Unfortunately, slave children being separated from their mothers was not uncommon and “Frequently, before the child has reached its twelfth month, its mother is taken from it, and hired out on some farm a considerable distance away” (Douglass 13). While Douglass was never able to experience the value of family, Hewes was able to know the importance of his.

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Looking back upon his mothers passing when he was around the age of seven, Douglass “received the tidings of her death with much the same emotions [he would] have probably felt at the death of a stranger”. This was because of the unfair separation brought to the family since Douglass was born of a slave mother and a white father who was supposedly his master. Mistresses could be the most unanticipatedly barbarous. Being a woman, a gentle and motherly disposition would be expected but usually they could be the cruelest if they assumed that slaves obtained favor from their master. The constant torment done to women throughout the account of Douglass’ life not only traumatized them but Douglass as well.

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