LITR 4328:
American Renaissance
        

Model Assignments
Final Exam Essays 2017
(final exam assignment)

Sample answers for
C3. Literature and History

 

Kristin Mizell

The Importance of Historical Context

          Literature is an integral part of history. Literature from a specific time period is a snapshot of what people of that time were thinking, feeling, and experiencing. With slave narratives from Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, and Sojourner Truth we are given an insight into the truth of slavery from those who lived it. Not only can literature give insight into history, but also history can give us insight into literature. Works like Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s The Declaration of Sentiments is not half as powerful if one has no historical knowledge of The Declaration of Independence. Knowing the timeline of events around Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin gives new importance to the work. History and Literature are capable of enhancing the understanding and importance of one another.

          Unfortunately, many people think of slavery as a problem from so long ago it is irrelevant. Many people do not realize that slavery only ended around one hundred and fifty years ago. Not only do people think of slavery as a bygone problem, many people have trouble even conceptualizing slavery. This is not to say that is always the learner’s fault. It is an unfortunate truth that slavery can be glossed over in the public school system. However, because of the works of people like Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, and Harriet Jacobs, we have first hand accounts of the reality of slavery. These works are invaluable in that they give a name and a face to a concept that many people have a hard time wrapping their head around. We have to learn from our past, and glossing over it does not help us do that. Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl not only allows people like us to look back and learn, but it also served to enlighten people of the time of what it truly meant to be a slave. Not every Northerner was an Abolitionist. It is not hard to believe that many people in the North could explain away slavery because they did not see it. Jacobs’ work was published in 1861 when slavery was still legal, and though she was free she wanted to get the word out about what was really happening. She states in her introduction,

I do earnestly desire to arouse the women of the North to a realizing sense of the           condition of two millions of women at the South, still in bondage, suffering what I         suffered, and most of them far worse. I want to add my testimony to that of abler pens to convince the people of the Free States what Slavery really is. Only by           experience can any one realize how deep, and dark, and foul is that pit of           abominations (P3).

This call to action is an example of how literature can impact history, by recruiting people to become abolitionists, and how historical knowledge can be expanded by history with the recollections of slavery by a woman who was once a slave.

          Frederick Douglass was also a slave who published work during the time of slavery. He was born into slavery but was able to escape to the North and wrote about his life. His work is a brutal one that leaves no question about the vicious nature of slavery. He details a woman being whipped:

upon her naked back till she was literally covered with blood. No words, no           tears, no prayers, from his gory victim, seemed to move his iron heart from its           bloody purpose. The louder she screamed, the harder he whipped; and where the    blood ran fastest, there he whipped longest. He would whip her to make her           scream, and whip her to make her hush; and not until overcome by fatigue, would he cease to swing the blood-clotted cowskin (1.10).

Reading accounts like this leave no room for doubt. As someone reading this as a historical work it describes the abusive nature of slavery as best as words can describe something so evil, and as a slave narrative of the time it allowed people to see the unjust nature of something that was happening all around them. Because of this, the slave narrative is an important part of both history and literature.

          History and Literature also intersect in that knowing the historical context for a specific work can give the reader a new understanding of the work. For example, I had read excerpts from Uncle Tom’s Cabin before but I did not realize it was written just two years after the passing of the Fugitive Slave Act. Of course the work was important before I learned this fact, but now Eliza’s plight is more contextualized. Harriet Beecher Stowe was inspired by the passing of the act to write the story of a mother fleeing slavery to bring home the awful nature of slavery and the Fugitive Slave Act for readers.

Another work that was motivated by historical events is Henry David Thoreau’s “Resistance to Civil Government.” Thoreau wrote this one year after the Mexican-American War. These events may not seem connected, but Thoreau being an abolitionist meant that the American victory in that war was not one to be celebrated. With the end of the Mexican-American War, the United States gained quite a bit of land. Part of that land was Texas, which would join as a slave state. Slavery had been on the decline, and with the addition of a new slave state it would be on the rise again. Knowing this event happened before Thoreau’s work gives it new meaning. Of course it was a call for civil disobedience and that can be seen without the extra context, but knowing it was a call for civil disobedience during this time gives it more importance. These literary works help illustrate how abolitionists were able to use literature as a means to fight slavery. Literature is a key way to spread ideas, and historically the spreading of ideas has led to change.

          Other examples of spreading ideas and hoping for change are the works of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Sojourner Truth. These women laid the foundation for the suffragette movement and also spoke as abolitionists. They sought freedom for women and slaves and used their work to illustrate that. Stanton’s The Declaration of Sentiments was given at the Seneca Falls Women’s Convention. We learn about this convention in history class and having this work illustrate the goal of this convention is invaluable. Not only does it have historical and literary merit on it’s own, it draws from another historical document to make its point. The work is important on it’s own, but when compared to The Declaration of Independence the work has even more to offer. It cleverly uses terms and phrases recognizable from the original document such as “We hold these truths to be self evident” in order to drive the point home (2). Sojourner Truth also spoke at a Women’s Convention in Akron, Ohio. While there, Truth makes a powerful statement about black women in the women’s rights movement. Unfortunately this movement tends to be white washed so having Sojourner Truth’s work shows how powerful black women also contributed.

          History and Literature are not completely independent from each other. They intersect in many ways and help give meaning to each other. Both subjects can be learned separately, but taught together they can strengthen understanding. Slave narratives give a name and face to an abstract subject in history. Historical contexts give new meaning and a better understanding of the motives behind literary works.