During his life from 1818 to 1895, Fredrick Douglass was an advocate for abolition. His freedom was purchased in 1846 for $711; however, he rose to prominence and was published while still in bondage. Douglass felt that blacks needed to represent themselves in American literature, rather than be represented by white writers. With a belief in the promises of America’s founding principles, Douglass writes in order to exact the change which will enable him and all others burdened by servitude to attain their American Dream.
In his Narrative, Douglass assumes a more confrontational tone than his fellow slave narrative writer Equiano. In comparison to Jacobs, Douglass takes up a masculinist focus, depicting the ways men are unable to be men under slavery. While his main work is a narrative, he does much more than narrate. He is persuasive in his unpacking of popular myths about slavery and uses his variety of living circumstances to add an abundance of contextual information to his writing.
Throughout the text, Douglass examines the dynamic between slave and master and between master and mistress. Masters are given absolute power arbitrarily, which can begin to affect the relationship between husband and wife. When masters choose to exert their power over slaves by having mixed-race children, increasing their personal property, the traditional family model is broken. This, in turn, leads to resentment from the mistress towards the slave women. Additionally, Douglass illuminates the Curse of Ham paradox, often used to justify the institution of slavery. As can be seen in the deterioration of Christian family values, slave owners were obviously cherry picking specific points from the Bible to favor slavery.
Not only were relationships crumbling under slavery, but individuals as well. Another method Douglass employs to subvert oppression is demonstrating the adverse effects such institutions have on slave owners. Douglass describes the effects on his mistress: “Under its influence, the tender heart became stone, and the lamblike disposition gave way to one of tiger-like fierceness” (Douglass 1198). Thus, he demonstrates the detriment slavery poses to all parties involved.
While within the confines of slavery, Douglass continued to exert his own agency in order to better his circumstances. He was desperate to learn, feeding bread to “the hungry little urchins, who, in return, would give [him] that more valuable bread of knowledge” (Douglass 1199). With the growth of his reading and writing abilities, Douglass challenges Jefferson’s assertions, disrupting the white’s ability to think of blacks as an inferior race, making it harder for them to treat slaves inhumanly. Slaves do indeed have the capacity to learn and are cunning in their ways of doing so.
According to Douglass, people who represent freedom, equality, and equal opportunity couldn’t continue to uphold slavery. He leaves behind a legacy of leveraging one’s own personal agency for the betterment of an entire group, in addition to fighting for one’s rights through the use of words.
Works Consulted
Douglass, Fredrick. “Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself.” Ed. Nina Baym, Ed. Robert S. Levine. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Volume B. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2012. 1170-1235. Print.