LITR 4332: American Minority Literature

Sample Student Final Exam Answers 2005

Research Report

Women and Slavery

Most nineteenth century women writers, black or white, in slavery or not, composed to create a better cause for women all around the world.  Free women wrote to expose the brutality of slavery while enslaved women desired to share their experiences and opposition towards it.  All in all, these compositions revealed the horrifying elements of slavery and helped pave the way for woman writers to fight for what they believed in.  Four major writers of these times who made a significant stance were Harriet Jacobs, Mary Ann Clad, Mary Bibb, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Frances Ellen Watkins.

            Of these four writers, Harriet Jacobs was the only woman born into slavery and forced to live the American Nightmare.  Throughout her slavery, she endured repeated sexual advances from her master and received few privileges of a human being.  Being the strong woman that she is, Harriet Jacobs never obstructed her moral code for her master or anyone else.  After several years of tedious slavery, she decided to fight back and escape from the perils of slavery.  Though frequent moves proved to be tough, Harriet Jacobs would have done anything to have herself and children to be free.  She also endured many years in a tiny unventilated crawlspace of an attic.  After the seven miserable years in the attic, Harriet Jacobs made the frightening escape to freedom.  This is when she decided to write on the accounts she experienced as a slave, which opened the eyes of many abolitionists and spread the word of sexual misconduct between owners and their slaves.  Sharing her experiences in her book Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, was a brave and honorable action taken by Jacobs to help lighten the load for other women slaves.  Before the launch of the Civil War, she became very active in the abolition movement and spent much time speaking out against slavery.  During the war, she actively raised money for African American refuges and worked to improve the poor conditions of recently freed slaves.  Because she was free, Jacobs could have chosen to live the rest of her life out peacefully and at ease, but instead she showed the world she was a fighter, for herself and for others like her.

            Two other African American women, Mary Ann Shad and Mary Bibb, though free, also spoke out against slavery.  Mary Ann Shad was the first black woman to publish a newspaper, The Provincial Freeman, to voice her disagreement with slavery.  Her ancestors fled to Canada to escape the wrath of slavery and her father operated an underground railroad and encouraged African Americans to better themselves.  Mary Ann showed her strengths as a black woman early on when she began teaching in black schools at the age of sixteen.  She also composed articles on how African Americans could improve their lives and prosper as free peoples.  These articles gave other African Americans the hope for more prosperous futures, and the desire to keep on living.  For a woman to make such a difference in the nineteenth century, especially being black, proves to be an extraordinary accomplishment.  After the Proclamation of Emancipation was passed, Mary Ann returned to the United States and attended Harvard University, where she became the first woman to graduate from law school.  Mary Ann’s sister-in-law, Mary Bibb also proved herself as a strong and proud African American woman.  Though born in Rhode Island, she was born into a predominantly free family.  She was educated by her uncle and eventually traveled around the North-East teaching.  With her teaching salary, she was able to independently support herself and travel giving anti-slavery speeches to many.  Through her travels of protesting slavery, Mary Bibb became one of the most well known and established female abolitionists of her time.  Like Mary Ann Shad, she also published a newspaper to speak out against slavery, called Voice of Fugitive, which she founded with her husband.  Both of these females proved to be strong African American women who did not allow mainstream America to divert them of their moral goals.  Their influential voices were heard from anyone who would listen or pick up their newspaper, thru striking hope for all African Americans, in slavery or not.

            Though Harriet Beecher Stowe was not an African American woman, she is known for her travels from the United States to Europe verbalizing her discrepancy with slavery.  Though she wrote many poems, travel books, biological sketches, and religious periodicals, she is most known for her first novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, written in 1853.  When writing this book, she drew upon her own personal experience because she was very familiar with slavery, the anti-slavery movement, and the Underground Railroad because she lived in a slave state.  After her book was published, Stowe became quite famous for speaking out against slavery.  She rallied against the destructions of human ownerships to all who would listen; and she mostly drew in large crowds in favor of her campaign.  She also published another anti-slavery book entitled Dred in 1856.  For a northern white woman to speak out for those African Americans who could not, required great courage and love for humanity.  Though she never personally suffered the evils of slavery, Stowe felt obliged to stand up for what she viewed as morally correct.  She could have lived out a simple northern existence without harsh ridicule from critics, but chose to help better civilization for others less fortunate.

            These four females chose to make a difference with their campaigns, speeches, and most of all, because they cared.  Through each one’s different encounters with slavery, we begin to understand the damaging effects of it through the victims’ eyes.

These brave souls exposed the negativity of slavery and shoved it down the public’s throat, just to widen their perspectives on what was really going on.  They stood up for the voiceless and choiceless, those stuck in a terrible situation in no control of their own destinies.  These women went against the odds and prevailed over mainstream society’s conceptions of the extraordinary female.

                  One of the major reasons I chose to write about women’s actions against slavery is because many times female activists are overlooked and over-shadowed by their male counterparts; and their courageous actions encouraged me to take a stand for what I believe in, regardless of popular belief.  It makes me very proud, being a woman myself, to read and hear of these nineteenth century women writers and activists speaking out for the better good of people, despite any negative results or repercussions.  They willingly altered their own lives dramatically to fit the behavior of a writer and/or activist just to accommodate the travel arrangements that needed to be made.  Even if speaking out would have never changed their lives for the better financially or by popular demand, they would have done it just because their hearts told them to.  Going against governing rule of the white male supremacists, allowed every other woman, child, and slave to strive for a better future, a goal I try to achieve every day.  They helped me to understand that it is worth all the time, trouble and risk to stand up for what I believe in.  This is a tactic in which we should all live our lives, despite popular conviction.

                  My starting points for the research included researching women writers in the nineteenth century and the accomplishments they made in their lives.  I honestly did not know that Harriet Jacobs or Harriet Beecher Stowe were such great activists, I just thought they both published great compositions.  That was unexpected, but not thought impossible.  I would love to further my research on these woman’s speeches and topics for discussion, which would be rather interesting to me.

Resources

Harriet Jacobs, 1813-1897. Africans in America Resource Bank. 

            http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2923.html

“Mary Ann Shadd & Mary Bibb-Teachers”.

            http://coolwomen.org/coolwomen/cwsite.nsf

“Mary Ann Shad Cary”. Women in History.

            http://www.lkwdpl.org//wihihio/cary-mar.htm

Ockerbloom, Mary. “Harriet Beecher Stowe: 1811-1896”.

            http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/stpwe/StoweHB.html

 [KG]