Black Men, By Frederick Douglass And Harriet Jacobs

Racial prejudices plagued the minds of Americans during the 18th and 19th centuries. African Americans were viewed as intellectually and morally inferior to the white race. Black men were viewed as uneducable pack mules given value merely based on their strength and ability to work. Black women were viewed as lustful creatures that served the purpose of fulfilling a slave-owner’s sexual desires and for reproducing new â€Å"property†. A slave’s manhood or womanhood was diminished as neither gender had the ability to create a self-identity outside the gender roles assigned to them by the slavery institution. Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs defy these stereotypes in their noteworthy slave narratives as they recount their struggles for self-discovery and freedom. Douglass proved that black men were capable of intellectual stimulation and self-identification beyond the field. Jacobs showed that black women could maintain moral respect and serve as a devoted mot her simultaneously. Thus, Douglass and Jacobs were able to undermine the dominant racial theories of the 18th and 19th centuries through their powerful slave narratives. Douglass equated the achievement of manhood, self-acquired freedom, and personal voice. Douglass lacked an identity for the first many years of his life, as was the case for most slaves. Henry Louis Gates Jr. points out how â€Å"deprivation of a birth date, a name, a family structure, and of legal rights makes of the deprived a brute, a subhuman†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (6). BlackShow MoreRelatedA Comparison Of Writings By Harriet Jacobs And Frederick Douglass1718 Words   |  7 PagesA Comparison of Writings by Harriet Jacobs and Frederick Douglass In this paper I will compare the writings of Harriet Jacobs and Frederick Douglass. I will touch on their genre, purpose, content, and style. Both authors were born into slavery. Both escaped to freedom and fought to bring an end to slavery, each in their own way. Both Jacobs and Douglass have a different purpose for their writings. Harriet Jacobs and Frederick Douglass were both slaves that wrote about their strugglesRead MoreJacobs Douglass: An Insight Into The Experience of The American Slave1019 Words   |  5 Pagesappealed to the humanity they shared with their readers during these times, men being lynched and marked all over and women being the subject of grueling rapes. The slave narrative of Frederick Douglas and Harriet Jacobs: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl themes come from the existence of the slaves morality that they are forced compromise to live. Both narrators show slave narratives in the point of view of both men and women slaves that had to deal with physical, mental, and moral abuse duringRead MoreEssay about Fredrick Douglas And Harriet Jacobs1717 Words   |  7 Pageswhite men stripped of almost every last bit of humanity in them. African-Americans were constricted to this state of mind by their owners vicious treatment, but also the practice of keeping them uneducated. Keep ing the slaves illiterate hindered them from understanding the world around them. Slave owners knew this. The slaves who were able to read and write always rebelled more against their masters. Frederick Douglass, author of A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, and Harriet JacobsRead MoreAn Analysis Of Harriet Jacobs And Frederick Douglass Essay1294 Words   |  6 PagesHarriet Jacobs and Frederick Douglass both wrote narratives that detailed their lives as slaves in the antebellum era. Both of these former slaves managed to escape to the North and wanted to expose slavery for the evil thing it was. The accounts tell equally of depravity and ugliness though they are different views of the same rotten institution. Like most who managed to escape the shackles of slavery, these two authors share a common bond of tenacity and authenticity. Their voices are different—oneRead MoreEssay on Out of the Silence1445 Words   |  6 Pagesthe past we can better determine the path of the future. The personal stories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs are two excellent examples of the slave narrative genre in American literature. To be sure, bondage and oppression had a lasting and profound effect on both genders; however, men and women experienced slavery in different ways. By comparing and contrasting â€Å"Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave† and â€Å"Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl,† we gain very differentRead MoreEssay on The Cruelty of Slavery and Opression in America1599 Words   |  7 Pagesmany abolitionists who fought for equality in the 19th century, Angelina Grimke, Frederick Douglass, and Harriett Jacobs stand out as some of the most influential writers and orators of that time. Angelina Grimke was a white southern woman, who abandoned the south with her sister to denounce slavery and began to primarily focus on persuading white women to use what rights they had to act against slavery. Fr ederick Douglass was one of the most famous abolitionists in United States history. He used hisRead MoreEthos, Pathos, and Logos: Black Abolitionist Arguments Against Slavery1420 Words   |  6 Pagesinfluential and outspoken abolitionists were actually former slaves. Three such speakers during that time were Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, and Harriet Jacobs. All born into slavery, and having witnessed its horrors first-hand, these three black reformers publicly took a stand against the atrocity of enslaving fellow human beings. They argued for their rights as men and women. However, they each went about their arguments using different modes of persuasion. While the main message of each abolitionistRead MoreLiterary Analysis: Slave Narratives Essay1188 Words   |  5 Pagesresilience and ingenuity. Frederick Douglass’s and Harriet Jacobs’s narratives both focused on self-made individuals who experienced upward mobility through their own efforts and hard work, therefore partaking in the positive redefining of African Americans. The writing methods of each differed in the style in which they presented their narratives where Douglass took on a sermonic style and Jacobs employed the â€Å"sentimental novel† (Alonzo 119) formula. While Douglass presented the sufferings ofRead MoreThe Life Of A Slave Girl, By Harriet Tubman And The Fight For Freedom1394 Words   |  6 Pagesenslaved men, or white women. To black women, the idea of freedom was conceived around the concept of family. For white women, freedom meant achieving equal footing with men, and getting their natural rights. And, for the enslaved black man, the idea that they could grasp their own freedom was first found through the issues of physical violence. In this paper, I will explore the notion of fre edom held by different groups using the following texts: â€Å"Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl†, â€Å"Harriet TubmanRead MoreSlavery in America1124 Words   |  5 Pageswas for the African American female slaves? Harriet Jacobs goes into detail about her life as a slave and gives the female perspective under the alias Linda Brent in the novel Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. She states that everything she says in the book is completely true. There are stereotypes of black women during this time: being looked upon as sexual objects and being promiscuous. Jacobs’s attempts to resist the stereotypical images of black women are unsuccessful, even with the presence