The horrific accounts of Frederick Douglas in his narrative portray a world quite different than our own. Heavily laden with violence and extreme torture, the slave age is depicted through the eyes of one of its own victims. The intriguing concepts of slavery brought to life by Douglas shined a light on the dark realities of the complete dehumanization of it’s victims, particularly in the violent and immoral treatment of women.
Throughout his novel Douglas continually describes the conditions of the slaves as animalistic, taken down to a mere brute. Separated from the humanistic aspects of the rest of the Southern population. The African slaves transform to property, not people. Animals who must be put in their place and trained to obey, even by violent force. “After crossing her hands, he tied them with a strong rope, and led her to a stool under a large hook in the joist, put in for the purpose. He made her get upon the stool, and tied her hands to the hook”(52). Hung up and tortured like a disobedient animal, she is treated like no better than such by another human being. These days we would consider this inhumane torture and not an acceptable form of punishment for anyone. But because of her social standing as a black slave, she was legally able to be put through whatever treatment her “owner” saw fit. The idea that one can even be owned by another is a completely foreign concept to our world today, but somehow thrived as a normal condition in this time.
Douglas’ audience being mainly white upperclass and those of the emerging middle class, they lived lives with very set and exact gender roles. White women were expected to remain pure, raise children, and keep religion alive within the home. But black women were completely stripped of the ability to perform any of these matronly duties. The unspoken sexual relationships of women and their slave owners becomes of vital importance to understanding the perils of black women. Seen as “breeders” by some, the role of a black women was simply to reproduce more children to be owned without purchase by their masters. Masters were often the father of a majority of their young slaves, as was the case with Douglas himself. In regards to his parentage, he simply regards that “The opinion was also whispered that my master was my father” (48). By performing these sexual acts with women they were not married to, they destroyed their purity. After the birth of a child, more often then not the mother would be sold or traded to a different slaveholder in order to separate mother and child, eliminating any threat of familial relations and affection. “Frequently, before the child has reached it’s twelfth month, the mother is taken from it, and hired out to some farm a considerable distance off...” (48). Because of this there was no home to keep up, no children to raise or family to devote to God. None of the duties of a women were even possible to carry out by black women. By taking away what makes them a women, you strip away their humanity. A woman cannot be expected to perform the duties set to them by society when they are completely denied from them.
In one of Douglas’ most powerful and shocking personal accounts, he speaks of the brutal beating of his Aunt Hester. The gruesome and disgusting treatment of her pulls at the heartstrings of Douglas’s readers because of her shockingly inhumane torture conducted at the hands of a fellow human being. Although considered mere property by society, Hester is described as “having very few equals, and fewer superiors, in personal appearance, among the colored or white women of our neighborhood” (52). Caught in the arms of another slave, Hester is brutally beaten by Douglas’s master. She is severely beaten by her master, in a way described so artfully by Douglas, “The louder she screamed, the harder he whipped; and where the blood ran fastest, there he whipped longest. He would whip to make her scream and whip to make her hush” (51). This mirroring of text creates the effect of the whip itself being pulled back and forth, causing extreme pain and agony with each pull. Creating such violent imagery makes the scene real in the eyes of his white readers. By setting up a personal familial relationship with this women, Douglas makes her come alive. She becomes to the readers someones family and blood, someone they care deeply about, not just a simple piece of property.
Frederick Douglas continually challenged the justification of slavery by proving to the white populations that a black person is just as physically, mentally, and emotionally capable as a black person. That they are not animals to be trained and hands to do the dirty work, but real life beings who think, feel, and wonder. By describing such a gruesome scene being taken out on a mere women in a time when women were seen as so fragile and pure, Douglas puts slavery into perspective. Not only is it inhumane and detrimental to all society, it is morally wrong. Men who are supposed to love and protect women from the evils of this world become that very evil with slavery. The sacred relationship of mother and child is ripped at the seam, the family life demolished. The pure essence of what separates man from animal, destroyed. All of this solely because of the color of your skin.
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