Reaction To The Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglass An American Slave, Written By Himself

Reaction to the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass an American Slave, Written by Himself

My first reaction to this text was "Oh My God!" This reaction was caused from all of the slave master's cruelty towards their slaves especially the women slaves. This was also the reaction of the Douglass's audience which consisted of northerners, abolitionists, Christians, and the well-educated. Douglass's readers had a very high view of women even slave women. In this text the stories of the slave women being beaten angered many of the readers. Douglass uses three women to show how the female body is used as a symbol of slave brutality. He uses this to invoke emotion from his audience and get a positive response in the fight against slavery.

The first case of this slave brutality is with Aunt Hester. Although Aunt Hester disobeyed her master's orders by going out at night with Lloyd Ned, this is no excuse for such cruelty. Her punishment for this doesn't seem to sit the crime. She is taken into the kitchen, stripped to her waist, and then tied up with her arms on top of her head. Then the master hangs her from a hook and beats her with heavy cow skin. After I read that, I had the same reaction as Douglass who was so, "...terrified and horror-stricken at the sight, that [he] hid himself in the closet, and dared not venture out till long after the bloody transaction was over" (2042). Hester's master dehumanized her with this unnecessary beating.

In the second case a slave woman is beaten and killed by her slave master, Mrs. Hicks. The slave and Mrs. Hicks both slept in the same room as the baby in case the baby should wake. The slave did not hear the baby crying at first. Mrs. Hicks "...jumped from her bed..." not to attend to her child but to beat the slave (2050). She cruely beat the slave with an oak stick and "...with it broke the girl's nose and breastbone, and thus ended her life"