As a result, she became very bitter, angry, and cold-hearted toward him, and did everything she could to keep him from reading. The sentence in Douglass’s autobiography, “She was an apt woman; and a little experience soon demonstrated, to her satisfaction, that education and slavery were incompatible with each other” tells me that she was a likely person to be swayed by her husband’s opinions. Also, she was eager to let it be known that education and slavery just did not “mix”. That brought on her being very harsh with Douglass. In Douglass’s autobiography, he expressed gratitude toward the white boys in the neighborhood.
In his narrative, he writes about his mistress. He writes, “My mistress, who had kindly commenced to instruct me, had, in compliance with the advice and direction of her husband, not only ceased to instruct, but had set her face against my being instructed by any one else” (Douglass, pg. 113). Because of the fact that Douglass was a slave, his mistress stopped teaching him and prevented anyone else from doing so. “When I was sent of errands, I always took my book with me, and by going one part of my errand quickly, I found time to get a lesson before my return” (Douglass, pg 115).
Douglass’s key demonstration of the corruption of slave owners is Sophia Auld, a woman who had never been a slaveholder before her husband attained Douglass. In the book when she first meets Douglass she is kind to him, but she in time becomes cynical and unsympathetic. She was corrupted when her husband said to her, “If you teach that nigger (Frederick Douglass) how to read, there would be no keeping him. It would forever unfit him to be a slave. He would at once become unmanageable, and of no good, but a great deal of harm.
The slave era can be agreed it was a terrible atrocity upon our fellow man, and it cannot be brought into a light of just, but it did give birth to some true characters who we can look up to and live alike. The characters in both Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, and the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass are ideal examples of true characters as they pushed through slavery and gained freedom but did not stop there. Jacobs’ spent her freedom getting her families’ freedom and Douglass went on to help others escape and spread knowledge on the cruelty of slavery. The last thing, and most powerful thing this book left me with is that each slave was an individual unalike any other, and these individuals were in fact an individual, individuals who lived their life for the betterment of others and accomplished an impossible
It was not yet revealed the racial background of each character, although some underlying clues give notion that the young girls have already been exposed to negative racial stereotypes, but as scholar Susanna Morris writes “Women's friendships in "Recitatif" are mitigated and mediated by oppressive power relations that are highly visible and important even when race is radically destabilized.” Twyla recalls a time when her mother stated that ‘they never wash their hair and they smell funny’, which was directed at white people. Twyla’s initial reaction was to follow her mother’s teachings and not befriend a white girl. However, in this instance both Roberta and Twyla were on the same power level and in the same class. Because of this, race did not matter. (Morris,
Among the painful experiences she endures, she also has some hopeful experiences; such as, when she is taken to New York and the British get her to document information about the black people who have been sent away. Her literacy skills are invaluable as they write a book called The Book of Negroes. She then heads to Nova Scotia, and then Sierra Leone where she helps the British establish a colony and finally to London where as an old woman she plays a key role helping the abolitionists campaign to abolish slavery by retelling her story and revealing the brutal and unjust ways the slaves were treated. She becomes the “face” of the campaign. The movie The Color Purple that is based on a book by Alice Walker shares many of the same themes as The Book of Negroes.
One story that goes in depth about these things is about a slave who worked his way up towards a house-slave. These slaves got to stay in the house, and more often than not, these slaves would be REALLY hated by the other slaves. Anyway, this slave, even though a house slave didn't just betray his fellow slaves to the master. This slave self-taught himself to read so that whenever the master and another helper were talking, he could understand them. You see, whenever the master and someone else were speaking, and they didn't want the house slave to know, they would spell out whatever they're trying to say.
Angelina Grimke for instance, encouraged women to be active against slavery and for them to impose their ideals on their husbands and sons as well (Document F). Her appeal touches on the fact that slavery breaks up family institutions which is against the Christian beliefs of many slave owners and women as well. The novel Uncle Toms Cabin (Document J) was written in a then popular women's domestic writing style to appeal and try to touch women to move them to abolitionist works. These written works were greatly used to help strengthen abolitionists works to abolish slavery by using first hand accounts from the life of a slave, thus increasing opposition of slavery. Newspapers and literature in general had a very influential impact on society's view of slavery.
As White talks about in the beginning the male slave has overshadowed the female slave throughout history, which is exactly true with my past learning's of the slave trade. I personally had the Mammy stereotype in my head, and figured that women slaves had it easier than their male counterparts. I figured they got to stay in the kitchen and solely raise children. While reading this book White bombards you with a systematic series of statements and claims, which she then followed by first or second hand accounts supporting the statements. I feel she did about as good of a job as possible realizing the hardships of finding good sources.
Chapter 7 Quote 7: “Slavery soon proved its ability to divest her to these heavenly qualities” (Douglass, Page 43) In this quote its explaining how his mistress was a very good person to the poor and then when slavery started it stopped her from being able to do good deeds. He is explaining how selfish slavery is and how unfair it is that his mistress can’t do good things for un lucky people all because slavery begun. Slavery wasn’t fair to any colored Americans, especially for ones like her. Chapter 8 Quote 8: “We all felt that we might as well be sold at once to the Georgia traders, as to pass into his hands; for we knew that that would be our inevitable condition-a condition held by us all in the utmost horror and dread.” (Douglass, Page