Thoughts on Religion and Motherhood

    One of the most powerful moments, thus far, in Jacobs’s narrative is the end of Chapter 12. She describes she and her fellow slaves standing in their designated corner of the local church, waiting until all the white people — who begrudged them just that small piece of God’s grace — took communion. Only then, under the watchful eyes of their oppressors, could they exercise their faith. Jacobs and her fellow slaves could not even worship God freely. Jacobs points out the irony of the situation, noting that in the very church of the “meek and lowly” man who said “God is your father, and all ye are brethren,” she and her fellow slaves are treated as less than human and virtually denied religion.
    And the religion they were force-fed was a twisted version of the New Testament Christianity Southern whites pretended to practice. God for the African American in Southern religion was the Ultimate Master, whom they were to obey unquestioningly and serve gratefully as they did their white masters. Not even in religion were slaves free of oppressive forced servitude. But if allowed to come to God in their own way, Jacobs said, “many of them are sincere, and nearer to the gate of heaven than sanctimonious Mr. Pike, and other long-faced Christians, who see wounded Samaritans, and pass by on the other side” (Ch. 13). In other words, the slaves achieve a faith truer than that of their hypocritical masters.
    Jacobs also uses religion as a “call to arms,” so to speak, for Northern women. She praises their international missionary efforts, but challenges them to accomplish as much at home:
    “I am glad that missionaries go out to the dark corners of the earth; but I ask them not to overlook the dark corners at home. Talk to American slaveholders as you talk to savages in Africa. Tell them it was wrong to traffic in men. Tell them it is sinful to sell their own children, and atrocious to violate their own daughters. Tell them that all men are brethren, and that man has no right to shut out the light of knowledge from his brother. Tell them they are answerable to God for sealing up the Fountain of Life from souls that are thirsting for it” (Ch. 13).
Jacobs’s call to arms is more than just a challenge to Northern Christian women to champion her cause. She also seems to placing responsibility for the abolishment of slavery squarely in the hands of Northern women. If they will it and work their will on the men in their influence then Northern women can alter the destiny of an entire race and change the future of a nation. That is a powerful message to deliver to women at a time when they had no obvious political will. This idea that a strong “will” can overcome apparently insurmountable odds is crucial to Jacobs’s growth from slave to free woman.
    One of the other exceptionally powerful aspects of Jacobs’s work is the intimate view of a mother’s agony that she paints. Each stroke of her pen must have caused her such anguish to relive — describing the jailing of her children, their sale, her suffering as she caught glimpses of them through the crack in her dark hole of a hiding space. And out of this darkness arose prose that’s almost poetry:
    “I had a woman's pride, and a mother's love for my children; and I resolved that out of the darkness of this hour a brighter dawn should rise for them. My master had power and law on his side; I had a determined will. There is might in each” (Ch. 16).
    And this will in Jacobs is born of her motherhood. At this point there are some interesting comparisons we can make about Douglass’s and Jacobs’s fight for freedom. Douglass’s growing masculinity and sense of his own manhood prompted him to seek his freedom in the North. Jacobs’s responsibilities as a mother drive her take desperate action. And while Douglass metaphorically (and literally) wrested his freedom from his oppressors, Jacobs had to “will” herself free.

Emotion in Jacobs narrative

    There are some interesting similarities, and one striking contrast, between Harriet Jacobs’s narrative “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” and Frederick Douglass’s “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.” In particular, Douglass and Jacobs use emotion, but in different ways and both paint similar pictures of slavery.
    Douglass’s narrative was an intellectual exercise that demonstrated his right to be accorded the rights and responsibilities of a man. Jacobs’s narrative is the emotional appeal of a woman to other women to end slavery.
    The focus of the narrative is women’s issues: domesticity, children and family, marriage, infidelity, and rape. If Jacobs is appealing to women it makes perfect sense to appeal to them as wives and mothers. Thus, like Douglass, her intellect and reasoning powers are evident in this emotional appeal.
    Also, like Douglass, she presents the incidents of her story extremely factual-like, almost journalistic before breaking into a passionate apostrophe, trying to emotionally connect to others who have known the pain of childbirth, who have experienced the grief of losing a child, and suffered the pangs of marital betrayal.
    And like Douglass Jacobs also sees slavery as degrading to humans, but emphasizes a slave’s humanity: “She may be an ignorant creature, degraded by the system that has brutalized her from childhood; but she has a mother’s instincts, and is capable of feeling a mother’s agonies” (Ch. 3).
    Jacobs also points out the hypocrisy of the system she and Douglass lived under — the ambiguous morality and the blending of right and wrong into something else, some other breed of judgment. “There may be sophistry in all this; but the condition of a slave confuses all principles of morality, and, in fact, renders the practice of them impossible,” Jacobs wrote in chapter 10 of her narrative. Like Douglass she too sees how the term “good master” is an oxymoron and how under slavery none are virtuous.
    Early in the narrative, during her sheltered and peaceful years, Jacobs presents the bright side of slavery (if there is one) — noble people who do what is right even when they hold all the power and don’t have to. A good example is the sister of her grandmother’s mistress who bought the betrayed woman and set her free. It is interesting that Jacobs opted to first present her readers with the better side of slavery, pointing out the few semi-upstanding citizens and the system’s “moral code” and methods of impinging its will upon “code breakers” before revealing slavery’s seedy underbelly. She shows us the meager bright side before shining a spotlight on the rapes and murders, destruction of families, spoiling of the innocent, and the betrayals committed by even the most upstanding of slave owners.

Douglass Chapter 11 to end

One of the most striking things about Douglass' memoir is the ambiguous morality practiced by Southern slaveholders. Douglass spends a lot of time in the final chapters pointing out the hypocrisy of Southern Christianity. He tackles this hot-button issue head on and with no fear, knocking the religious "crutch" out of slaveholders' hands. His critiques are scathing while at the same time fair. Every sinner in Douglass' narrative has a little of the saint in them and every saint has a little bit of the sinner. He doesn't paint a stark black and white picture of slavery, but rather one with varying shades of gray.
There was a process by which Douglass was reduced from man to slave and to gain his freedom the process is reversed. One of the most important steps in this process is to first recognize freedom as a desired thing. The most cruel trickery committed by slaveholders in Douglass' eyes is the transformation of the freedom into a vile thing.
To escape slavery one must value his/her freedom and deem it a necessary component of a happy life. Then a slave must learn to overcome his/her bondage and form loving attachments to fellow slaves. The next step is to fight for one's freedom; to assert one's rights and challenge the authority of slavery. Douglass suggests that to rise up is to claim one's "manhood." And the final step in transforming from slave to free man is to share one's story with the world. By regaining one's voice the slave conquers his/her fears and is able to rejoin society, forming loving bonds as free men do.

Douglas Chapters 3-8

These chapters go through the early life of Douglas from when he was a kid to the time he moved off the farm to the city. Douglas life on the farm was not an easy one, well maybe for him it was seeing as how he was just a boy, but the master and the overseer are described in these chapters. I was astonished by the brutality that the overseer was using and even more astonished that the master allowed such brutality. the master and overseer ruled over the slaves with fear, and when fear didn't work it meant big trouble. I specifically remember the story about how a slaves head was blown off, just because he refused to be whipped and when the overseer had to explain his actions there was no qualm what so ever. It saddened me to think that the life of a slave was worth so little to people that slaves could be killed without any repercussions, except for maybe paying for the lost property. When douglas became a little older he was sold to a family in the city, this marks the end to his farm work for a while. I thought it was interesting to note how within the slave population there were rankings, for instance a city slave had it much easier, in some cases, than  the slaves on the farm. The city slaves were better clothed, better fed and better treated. It’s almost as though in the city a slave became a status symbol, like my slave is dressed better than yours and my slave is fatter and better fed than yours. It’s the first time I ever thought that having a slave could be a status symbol. It is in this time of his life that Douglas also learns to read and write, which I believe is the turning point in his life. He now knows how to read and write, and his on his way to becoming an educated man. I believe that an education is key for a slave to realize that he is under serious oppression, and that is why it was illegal to teach a slave and educate them.

Blog post 2

One of the essential components of becoming a slave is the brutal beatings delivered to ensure the authority of the slave owners over the slave. The elimination of essential familial ties is also part of the process of creating a slave. The elimination of public and private life, and the formation of a secretive existence are also part of the slave-making process.  Douglass describes this process because he  wants to emphisize the fact that he was born a human being like every other man, but because of the instution of slavery he is made into something "less than" a human being. Furthermore, Douglass wants his readers to understand that any person in similar circumstances would experience a similar outcome.

Blog Post 1 kg

My name is kelly i am a male student at the university of redlands, i have recently started my junior year and am striving for a degree in environmental science. i am from salt lake city utah and i LOVE to ski, bike, hike and camp. The purpose of this blog is to provide a service for the students to write and post our feelings and thoughts about our book readings. and as a way to share with the class how we feel. this blog is for my english 233 class, which is an afro-american literature class. this also happens to be the first blog that i have set up and will keep updated, i guess you learn something new everyday.

Introduction

The purpose of this blog is to improve our analysis of, and response to, the readings in ENG 233: African American Literature. Communication, in all its forms, is central to the human experience. Blogging should provide the class with opportunities to practice and improve their ability to communicate clearly and concisely about complicated and sensitive topics prior to in-class discussions. My personal goals regarding this blog are to improve and extend my online writing abilities.
I am a senior at the University of Redlands, majoring in English and minoring in mathematics. I grew up on the Chumash Reservation near Cal Lu, though my family is actually from the Rosebud Reservation on Pine Ridge in South Dakota. I have spent the last seven years working as a professional journalist, (mostly in the arena of sports) though I am currently pursuing a dual teaching credential with the intention of switching careers.