LITR 5535: American Romanticism

Sample Student Research Project 2006

GEORGE OTIS.

TOPIC: ‘“DREAM METAMORPHOSIS’: HARRIET JACOBS AND

FREDERICK DOUGLASS IN PERSPECTIVE.”

The term “dream” in the context of Black America immediately abandons the idea of a sequence of thoughts and fancies during sleep or a state of abstraction. In this Negro context, it immediately denotes an impulse or vision to be hopeful, an intuition to transcend human conditions and to objectively correlate deep desires with physical conditions. It is a personal vision of what should be or what the critic Althusser calls an ideological “representation of the imaginary relationship of the individual to the real conditions of existence” (in Leitch 1498). In the slave narratives of Jacobs and Douglass, the conditions of existence depicted are grossly inhumane. The dream of the narrators therefore is to overthrow such conditions of slavery so that freedom and equality would reign. The real conditions of Jacobs and Douglass which shapes their dreams have peculiarities. For Jacobs, it is basically the protection of her womanhood from the incursion of her avaricious “owner” and for Douglass, it is the defense of his personal dignity as a man from his inhuman slave masters. The journey from bondage to freedom has other dreams at their interval.

For both writers the journey or metamorphosis manifests in the assertion of the individual “will or spirit” with regard to love, personal dignity, literacy, religious counter myth and egalitarianism, all of which will be assessed in this essay. The extent to which the narrators of both Jacobs and Douglass achieves their vision or dream will be scrutinized at the end.  Also, Jacobs and Douglass show some glaring differences and similarities in the unfolding of their narratives. This will be pointed out in the course of the discussion with moderating voices such as Martin Luther king, Langston Hughes, Emerson, Thoreau, Booker T, Washington, and Dubois proffering clarity to the vision or dream concept.

Harriet Jacobs’s “Incidents of the Life of a Slave Girl” has much focus on the assertion of the human will amid the inhumanities of slavery. Dr Flint symbolizes this inhumanity. He makes the life of the heroine –Linda- a living hell, for the law gives slave masters elaborate capacities to treat their “property” as rudely as they please “and you dare not speak” (821). The driving objective of Dr

Flint is to dominate Linda sexually, and it is in this that their interpersonal conflict begins. Linda was determined also never to give in to his lustful tendency but to protect her womanhood from this cruel slave owner. In a master stroke of self assertion, she picks her own lover in disregard to Dr Flint’s directive to choose a lover within his slave haven. Linda in protest blurts out “don’t you suppose, sir that a slave can have some prefences about marrying? Do you suppose that all men are alike to her?” (817). In line with Martin Luther King’s statement that he who is not ready to die for  a conviction is not fit to live  (King 9) she endures hellish conditions in a bid to  assert her will and fend off her masters indignifying objectives. She soliloquizes, “I had rather live and die in jail, than drag on from day to day through a living death. I was determined that the master whom I so hated and loathed... should not after my long struggle with him succeed at last in trampling his victim under his feet. I would do anything, everything for the sake of defeating him” (820).  Linda’s strategy becomes to pick a man of her choice and to get pregnant and have a baby. This is a tough choice made as an affront to the inhuman laws that govern her helpless conditions. Undoubtedly, this action eventually yields a dividend of initiating her metamorphosis from bondage to freedom.

In Frederick Douglass’s “Narrative of the Life,” the parallel that exists with that of Jacobs in terms of “assertiveness” is in the experience of Aunt Hester, who rebels against the notion that she cannot love  someone of her choice. Her slave owner has warned her that she must not let him catch her in company with a young man who belongs to another slave owner. Aunt Heister defies her master in this regard and receives a grim consequence. She is whipped with a heavy cowskin, and “soon the warm red blood…came dripping to the floor” (945).This strategy hardly fails to break the spirit and this is where the comparison with Linda in the Jacobs’s narrative becomes significant, for in Linda’s case, she refuses to be broken, instead, she chooses to strategize to transcend her condition.

The narrator in Douglass’ story does the same as Linda, with the difference that, being a man, he fights back with his strength to the amazement of his owner Mr. Covey-a notorious “negro breaker.” The narrator confesses, “Mr. Covey succeeded in breaking me. I was broken in body, soul and spirit. My natural elasticity was crushed, my intellects languished …the dark night of slavery closed in upon me, and behold a man transformed into a brute” (956).The interesting aspect is that the narrator having been shoved into such rock- bottom state of psychological humiliation, still fights his way back to assert his human respect and dignity. He narrates, “I resolved to fight, and suiting my action to the resolution, I seized Covey hard by the throat and as I did so, I rose. He held on to me and I unto him. My resistance was so entirely unexpected that Covey seemed taken all aback. He trembled like a leaf” (960). Note, especially, the self assertor’s vocabulary such as “fight,” “action,” “resolution,” “seized,” “resistance,” as opposed to the former lexicons that expresses his “crushed spirit”: “broken,” “crushed,” languished,” “dark night” and “brute.” This latter inventory is undoubtedly pessimistic, all crumbling under the present self- assertive status of the hero.  He defeats his previous humiliation with the evidence of his present reality, as his almighty master “tremble[s] like leaf” (960).Thenceforth, Douglass’s narrator enjoys a break from being treated like a brute.

The experience reinforces his conviction that freedom from slavery is a right. This feeling is more succinctly expressed in the words of  Langston Hughes in his poem “Democracy:”

Freedom

Is a strong seed

Planted

In a great need

I live here too

I want freedom

Just as you. (2231, 15-21).

Self-assertion is the first seed of freedom for both narrators. From this point a restlessness of the spirit to abandon the bondage of slavery becomes glaring.

            A second aspect of the metamorphoses to be discussed is literacy. Jacobs’s  Narrative, unlike Douglass’s, emphasizes on this phenomenon, though she considers it a relevant fulcrum in her attainment of her vision or dream. Her mention of it first manifests as a gratitude for having been endowed literacy skills by her deceased mistress: “While I was with her, she taught me to read and spell and for this privilege, which so rarely falls to the lot of a slave, I bless her memory” (815). The benefit of literacy shows during Linda’s fugitive sojourn at the house of Mrs. Bruce in New York. At that time Dr. Flint has passed and Mrs. Flint has taken charge. Linda had been sold to a Mr. Dodge who sends out a word for her to be captured and returned to him. Mr. and Mrs. Dodge arrive New York apparently in search of Linda. Keeping a close eye on the daily papers, Linda learns about their arrival and takes precaution. Linda’s literacy becomes her saving grace. This incidence in no small measure helps to keep her dream of liberation from the bondage of slavery on course, for the Dodges eventually succumbs to selling Linda to a new owner who  guarantees her freedom .

            As for Douglass’s narrator, he is almost obsessed with the enlightenment and freedom that education  brings. He learns how to read through his master’s wife. He then builds on the rudiments by selling bread in the street in exchange for literacy. As his skills improve, so his dream of emancipation increases and so his vision expands. He begins to see the ethical aspect of his condition as his thoughts get deepened by his enlightenment: “this everlasting thinking of my condition torment me. There was no getting rid of it. It was pressed upon me by every object within sight or hearing, animate or inanimate. The silver trump of freedom now appeared to disappear no more forever” (949). By this mental level, the narrator’s real condition of existence is guided by a fresh impulse where he sees the universe as a property of every individual willing to assume progressive thoughts and objective dreams (Emerson 538; Thoreau 920). Education gives a sense of direction to individual dreams. Douglass’s narrator due to this literacy asset tower above  his colleagues. Hence he organized them and strove to teach them to be literate so that they could experience “change of attitude”and“internal feelings’ (king 25);  that they might abandon the feeling of “victimhood” and assume victory (McWhorter viii).

            One aspect that the enlightenment above manifests a dividend is in the attitude of religious slave owners. Both narratives note that Christian white slave owners were worse slave holders than the non Christians. Jacobs for instance saw the clergy as accessories to the crime of cruelty perpetrated against slaves. She reasons: “will the preachers take for their text ‘proclaim liberty to the captive and the opening of prison doors to them that are bound? Or will they preach from the text “do unto others as ye would they should do unto you?” (831). Neither Christian slave owners nor the clergy meet the standard but are all hypocritical. The more the narrators metamorphosed in their journey to freedom, the more sensitive they became to such hypocrisy, and the more they noted the undeserved condition and subjection of slaves to the wanton cruelty of slave masters. To Douglass’s narrator, the religion of the south is a mere covering for the most horrid crimes, “… justifier of the most appalling barbarity…and a dark shelter under which the darkest, foulest, grossest, and the most infernal deeds of slaveholders find the strongest protection”( 963). Douglass’s narrator observes about his Christian white master:“I have seen him tie up a lame young woman and whip her with a heavy cow skin upon her naked shoulders, causing the warm red blood to drip, and in justification of the deed he would quote the passage of scripture ‘he that knoweth his master’s will and doeth it not shall be beaten with many strips’”( 953).What cruelty beats this gothic experience and what hypocrisy is more abhorrent than this! Our narrators imply that closeness to God is by the knowledge of neither the Bible nor color of skin, but the practice of the scripture and the virtue of compassion. By this unworthiness in scriptural action, they prove equally unworthy before the eyes of the enlightened slaves thereby elevating the resolve to enact their dreams and seek freedom by any means. After all, all men are equal before God and face judgment accordingly. It is this reasoning that made Linda to wonder if her deceased master made peace with God before he died (Baym 829).

The “equality before God” phenomenon empowers our two narrators differently. For Jacobs, it is protest at being considered as a sheer article to be bought and sold. For Douglass it is a renewed dream for economic freedom and an egalitarian society. To begin with Jacobs, she was to be bought over from Mr. Dodge by the kind and compassionate Mrs. Bruce and Linda ruminates: “the more my mind become enlightened, the more difficult it was for me to consider myself as an article of property; and to pay money to those who had so grievously oppressed me seemed like taking from my sufferings the glory of triumph.”(832). How could one bribe the devil to give one what rightfully belongs to one? When the transaction ultimately went through, she expressed her gratitude to her friends who negotiated her freedom but denounced the “miscreants” who “ demanded payment for what never rightfully belong to them”(832). As far as Linda is concerned we are all “particles of God” (Emerson 491), hence “all men are created equal” (King 83).

Douglass’s reaction to that Emersonian conception is that his freedom is inadequate without expanding his dream to encompass other brothers in bondage. His dream therefore entails a collectivist vocabulary: “back in the dim distance under the flicker light of the North Star some craggy hill or snow covered mountains stood … beckoning us to come and share its hospitality” (966). This collective spirit is driven by a deeper emotion on the part of Douglass, who feels a very strong sense of camaraderie towards his fellow slaves. According to him “we are linked and “interlinked together with each other…by mutual hardships to which we were necessarily subjected by our condition as slaves”(965). This “interlink” though mentioned in the light of Negro brotherhood, seems to me to have a wider egalitarian scope.  . The collective vision of Douglass’s narrator makes him to first of all, gathers his colleagues to coach them on literacy. Later, he spurs them on a plan of escape which though botched, certainly planted the seed of freedom in the minds of individuals, who hitherto thought the idea of freedom was a sheer farce; since many of the slaves were led to think that “there was little to choose between liberty and slavery” (962).

Douglass’s narrator also realizes that the vision of economic freedom is  complementary to an ultimate almighty objective. Having metamorphosed to this present condition of awareness, the narrator under his liberal master Mr. Hugh sought a calking skill in a shipyard. After learning the trade he sought his own employment, made his own contracts and collected the money which he earned. But he remains a slave under Mr. Hugh, and was therefore a mere property and sub human being. He narrates:

“I was now getting …one dollar and fifty cents per day. I contracted for it..., it was rightfully my own; yet,upon each returning Saturday night, I was compelled to deliver every cent of that money to master Hugh and why? Not because he earned it…, but solely because he had the power to compel me to give it up. The right of the grim-visage pirate upon the high seas is exactly the same”(972-973). This sounds more or less like a dream botched, but the attitude of the narrator here indicates that his dream is merely scorched and not completely obliterated. The symbolism of the “pirate” shows a consciousness of natural fundamental human rights amid despicable, immoral laws that keep fellow men in chains. The symbol exhibits a moral potentiality to defy and possibly overthrow the evil system of things and attain the dream of absolute freedom.

Finally, the parallelism in the narratives of Jacobs and Douglass is in the desire or dream to take control of their symbolic  “selfhoods”-womanhood for Jacobs, and manhood for Douglass- and in these, the narrators score a huge success. On the other hand, the difference in the narrative of Jacobs and Douglass at the end is that Jacobs narrator, Linda, feels contented to remain under her generous mistress and serve her voluntarily as a free slave. As for Douglass’s, being a man, instills in him, sense restlessness. He questions the quasi economic freedom or any kind of freedom attained which would not place the seeker at the driver’s seat of his destiny. Therefore, a complete dream metamorphosis for Douglass’s narrator is in the dissolution of human barriers and the acceptance that we are all “alike in soul and in possibility of infinite development” (Dubois). It seems that Jacobs’s narrator at the end merely sighted the door of this egalitarian ideology. But Douglass’s narrator got to the doorstep but was unfortunately sent away, in an atmosphere of a dream deferred, but not seared and warped. Therefore, for Douglass’s, the dream metamorphoses remains continuous, while for Jacobs’s it is “spring time”, winter has gone, that’s all that matters for now.

WORKS CITED

Althusser, Louis. “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses.” The Norton Anthology Theory and Criticism. Ed. Vincent Leitch. New York: Norton, 2001.1476-1509.

Baym, Nina.Ed.The Norton and Anthology of American literature. New York: Norton 2003.

Douglass, Fredrick. “Narrative of the Life.”Baym, Norton 939-973

Du Bois, W.E.B. “For the souls of Black Folk.”Baym, Norton 1702-1719.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “The Divinity School Address.”Baym Norton 523-539.

Hughes, Langston. “Democracy.” Norton 2225-2232.

King,Coretta Scott. The Words of Martin Luther King Jr. New York: Newmarket Press, 1987.

MacWhorter, John. Authentically Black. New York: Gotham Books, 2003.

Thoreau, Henry David. Baym Norton 834-938.

Washington, Booker T. “Up From Slavery.”---.1621-1630.