Narrative Contrast of the Male and Female

Narrative Contrast of the Male and Female Enslaved Experience in America:

Comparison and Contrast of the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs

Female and male autobiographical narratives invariably take different forms because of the different, albeit culturally constructed, nature of male and female experience. This is true of narratives of free people even today, but even more so of the enslaved African-Americans of the 19th century. Thus, not only does Frederick Douglass' Narrative contrast in its 'plot' or true-life story structure and interest in comparison to Harriet Jacob's tale of her escape from bondage. Both tales are significantly impacted by the gender of the authors as well as the author's intent in writing and intended audience. Douglass tells the tale of a young man, whom escaped ignorance and violence through movement. Jacobs tells the tale of herself as a young woman and mother seeking escape from sexual exploitation not through movement, but through hiding.

Both authors wrote against the institution of slavery, and used their own, personal experiences of slavery in the South to generate support for the national abolition of the institution. At the time, the abolitionist movement was mainly grounded in the Northern states of America. However, Douglass wrote, and also spoke as a gifted orator, mainly to Northern Whites. Thus his autobiography uses elements of how slavery it detrimental to the 'souls of White folk' (to turn a phrase of W.E.B. Dubois on its head) as well as those of the enslaved, to generate support for the anti-slavery cause. An example of this can be found in his description of a White woman whom is one of the first mistresses of the young, enslaved Douglass. "But, alas! this kind heart had but a short time to remain such. The fatal poison of irresponsible power was already in her hands, and soon commenced its infernal work. That cheerful 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 a demon." (Douglass, Chapter VI, Retrieved on April 12, 2004 at (http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Literature/Douglass/Autobiography/06.html)

Jacobs wrote not as a polemicist but under a pen name. The phrases of her autobiography indicate that she was less intent than her male counterpart to use every incident of her life as proof of the wrongs of slavery. She even says as a young girl she did not know she was a slave, and her first mistress was kind. (All this changed, of course, upon the death of this elderly woman, highlighting the capricious life and fate of an enslaved person.) Moreover, the tenor of Jacob's experiences was not merely of work-related violence, but more of the sexual exploitation she experienced in her vulnerable position as an enslaved Black woman.

Jacob's personal experiences thus highlight the discomforting sexual side of female Black exploitation, as her master Dr. Flint's desire and willingness to take advantage of his physical ownership of her, makes her the target of hatred of her mistress, despite the fact that Jacobs herself finds the situation miserable and intolerable. Shame, as well as the subjugating nature of bondage, thus is particularly intrinsic to the female slave experience. In contrast, Douglass experiences much physical pain of punishment as a slave, but at the hands of overseers rather than in terms of sexual exploitation.

Douglass states, however that the greatest suffering experienced by himself as a slave was the enforced ignorance and illiteracy of slavery. For a man of the abilities of Douglass, this must indeed have been galling. But the reader must also put forth the notion that the enforced illiteracy of slavery may have been in part to horrify his readers, largely educated White people of the North. In his narrative, Douglass constantly addresses the reader as if the reader is in the room with him, as if using his life's incidents as documentary evidence against the institution of slavery.

Jacob's style is both more personal in that she tells, rather than talks to the reader, but also places less stress upon education. Perhaps this reflects a covert agenda -- because Jacobs was female, her enforced ignorance would not have arisen the same sense of horror in her reader's hearts, nor would an argumentative style been as effective in raising their ire. Rather, it is the rape and subjugation of the female body rather than the male mind that becomes the focus of her narrative. No physical respite from the terrors suffered by other slaves on plantations at the hands of overseers could be worse. "When my master said he was going to build a house for me, and that he could do it with little trouble and expense, I was in hopes something would happen to frustrate his scheme; but I soon heard that the house was actually begun. I vowed before my Maker that I would never enter it. I had rather toil on the plantation from dawn till dark; I had rather live and die in jail, than drag on, from day-to-day, through such a living death. I was determined that the master, whom I so hated and loathed, who had blighted the prospects of my youth, and made my life a desert, should not, after my long struggle with him, succeed at last in trampling his victim under his feet. I would do any thing, every thing, for the sake of defeating him." (Jacobs, Chapter 10, Retrieved on April 12, 2004 at (http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/JACOBS/hjch10.htm)

Jacobs' apparently ingenuous sense of sexual honor, as opposed to her horror of illiteracy is the focus of her narrative -- and perhaps more likely to draw the 19th century reader's sympathy.