Douglass And Jacobs As Heroic Slaves

7 Pages 1787 Words

Douglass and Jacobs as Heroic Slaves

The autobiographical stories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs tell the stories of two strong willed characters who fight for their God-given right for freedom. “The man who would one day be known to the world as Frederick Douglass transcended the oppression of his childhood to become one of the most forward-thinking social reforms of his age. An intellectual and political leader, Douglass harnessed an ever-increasing public profile to promote and defend the causes of full civil rights for all men and women, be they black or white” (Kester-Shelton). In Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and Douglass’ The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas, an American Slave, they fight through the sexual, physical and mental harassment brought forth by slavery to dehumanize them and make them think and feel they were not equals to the white race. These heroic and courageous characters show that even when confronted with great adversity the human spirit can overcome.
Harriet Jacobs and Frederick Douglass took many risks in writing their stories with the hope that it would help other slaves in similar situations. The horrid things that the characters had to witness and experience would hopefully disgust and anger the reader, causing them to want to take action. Despite the potential trouble it could bring upon them, Douglass and Jacobs included the names of their masters and mistresses in their stories. Douglass also used his own name, though Jacobs used the name Linda Brent, not so much to cloak her name for being a woman speaking publicly, but because of the “disclosure of her history of sexual harassment, seduction, and unwed motherhood” (Castronovo). At fifteen she was doing all she could to resist the persistent sexual advances of her master, Dr. Flint. “I wanted to keep myself pure… but I was struggling alone in the powerful grasp of the demon Slavery; and ...