Frederick Douglass's Narrative: Rhetoric and Slavery's Impact on Women

Introduction: Douglass's Rhetorical Purpose

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave is an autobiography crafted by the famous former slave and abolitionist to illustrate the horror of slavery. Over the course of the narrative, Douglass uses a combination of pathos, logos, and ethos to convince the reader of his or her moral obligation to fight against the enslavement of African Americans. Douglass gives particular attention to the condition of women in relation to slavery — both how slavery deprives Black women of the protections they should have as females and how it corrupts the soul of white women through the exercise of unchecked power.

The Whipping of Aunt Hester: Vulnerability of Enslaved Women

Douglass was born a slave, and he makes clear early on that he was aware of slavery's horrors from a young age. The first incident he details is the following: "I have often been awakened at the dawn of day by the most heart-rending shrieks of an own aunt of mine, whom he [the master] used to tie up to a joist, and whip upon her naked back till she was literally covered with blood" (Douglass 5). On the emotional level of pathos, this illustrates the cruel and capricious nature of slavery. In terms of ethos, the beating is inflicted upon a defenseless woman — something that would have been horrifying to Douglass's nineteenth-century readers, who regarded women as the frailer sex deserving of protection.

The incident also underlines the vulnerability of the enslaved person: even if the slave does nothing wrong, she can be beaten simply for the master's pleasure. The beating is described in terms that evoke rape — the aunt was stripped naked and whipped so severely that the post was bloody afterward. The white master also called her terrible names that Douglass insinuates no woman should know, let alone be called. The young Frederick cowered in fear, certain he would be next. He later learned that his aunt had been sneaking out at night to see someone, but he stresses that the punishment was not meant to preserve her virtue; it was meant to teach her a lesson in obedience. On the logical level of logos, Douglass notes that his aunt was well-respected and loved in the slave community, demonstrating that even a virtuous woman was not safe under slavery. Rather than serving a protective function — as slaveholders sometimes claimed — slavery left women open and vulnerable to violation.

The Murder of the Young Nursemaid: Justice Denied

Douglass also uses an incident of murder to indicate slavery's brutality. Enslaved people could be killed with virtual impunity, once again defying the claim that slaves were content in their condition. Douglass details how he learned that "the wife of Mr. Giles Hicks, living but a short distance from where I used to live, murdered my wife's cousin, a young girl between fifteen and sixteen years of age, mangling her person in the most horrible manner, breaking her nose and breastbone with a stick, so that the poor girl expired in a few hours afterward" (Douglass 26). Using logos, Douglass notes that there was no rational justification for such brutality: the exhausted girl had been so tired that she slept through a baby's crying — the child she had been assigned to watch — and was treated as though she had committed a grave offense.

This incident is particularly significant in terms of ethos because it reveals the corruption slavery can inflict on women as well as men. The mistress acted with a savage brutality more commonly associated, in the gender assumptions of Douglass's era, with men. Douglass does not spare the reader the violent imagery. It is always important to remember that Douglass was writing for a white abolitionist audience, aiming to persuade them of slavery's evils. Because most African Americans were enslaved and could not vote, and because freedmen such as Douglass had only limited political power in the North, change depended on rallying white readers to outrage. Stories like this one highlighted the vulnerable position of womanhood under slavery and the moral degradation it produced. The murder was both sensational and horrific. It also demonstrated how the justice system failed to punish slaveholders who abused their power, as the woman who committed the killing was never brought to trial.

Conclusion: Slavery as an Unnatural Institution

All of these incidents involving women are examples of how Douglass portrays slavery as an unnatural institution. Slavery deprived women of their virtue and their status as protected beings while simultaneously encouraging women to act with violence against those they enslaved. In writing to persuade his nineteenth-century white audience, Douglass deliberately made use of their existing prejudices and sympathies — particularly those surrounding nineteenth-century gender norms — to win support for the abolitionist cause.

Work Cited

Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. Web. 14 Dec. 2014.