Something that I noticed in Jacobs’s writing was how much women affected her story. She was herself a woman, and in her chapter “Trials of Girlhood,” she talked about how beauty is a great burden on women because it makes their lives more difficult. Jacobs also was protected and guided by her grandmother while she was in slavery. After she ran away, she was taken in by yet another woman who protected her until Jacobs was truly free. While Douglass made some comments about women in his writing, he mostly centered around his own journey and the greater injustice of slavery as a whole. I find that Jacobs’s writing is more compelling because her identity is twice-disadvantaged: she is both black and a woman. In class, Martha mentioned that Jacobs was more popular in England while Douglass was more popular here. We pondered about the causes for that, and it is possible that Jacobs was less popular in America because she was more overt in her writing. Like I mentioned in class on Tuesday, Douglass’s writing could possible be taken out of context of slavery and speak to a greater truth on human existence as a whole. This is more difficult to do with Jacobs’s writing. Professor Rodrigues said that her work would have been seen as explicit in her time, and while she was a part of the growing abolitionist movement in the United States, her writing could have made Americans uncomfortable. It is evident that Jacobs’s gender heavily influenced her writing. Her double-minority identity may have made it easier for her to be overshadowed in the abolitionist movement. Douglass is seen as an American hero today, but Jacobs is hardly known in modern American culture.
I like your interpretation of the gendered dynamics at play in Jacob’s piece. I think that the existence of Jacob’s grandmother as a power-yielding figure, especially seen in Dr. Flint’s interactions with her, is somewhat of a positive transgressive move. So often, depictions of enslaved people, especially enslaved women, strip them of their agency. Obviously, agency-denial was the point of the institution of slavery, but Jacob’s grandmother’s tireless work to free her family members puts her in an active role; Jacob depicts her grandmother as the bedrock of her family and community. Overall, Jacob’s story definitely serves as an alternative to the largely male-dominated archive of slave narratives.
I noticed that although Douglass and Jacobs had many differences in their autobiographies, they also had some very similar perceptions. In Douglass’s description of his path to freeing himself, he mentioned that one of his owners gave him a small share of his own earnings, thinking this was a generous act. Douglass responded by thinking to himself that it was this action that proved something very special. The fact that his owner thought Douglass deserved even a small part of his earnings proved that he deserved the entirety of it. This process of thought it very similar to Jacobs ‘when someone describes her opinion of the possibility of herself buying her freedom. She believes that it is insensible for her to buy her freedom because she should be entitled to it already. Jacobs’ view of her freedom is similarly aligned with Douglass’s. I agree with both these points of view and I understand why both parties would feel that way.
I think that the reason why Douglass might be more popular might also because he is a man. As you say he is an American hero. You rarely hear of American heroines. It might also be based on the fact that he went on to be somewhat of a spokesman for Slave issues in America having had direct relations to the President and being more politically involved.
I think it is interesting to think about how gender roles influenced abolitionist writing and the slave narrative. Intersectionality definitely complicated the way in which black women tell their story. When we think about the different ways in which a story can be told, we have to consider who holds power of who.
I think your quote about beauty being a burden on women is interesting to consider in a larger context of the literature of black women, and how perception is used to discuss power dynamics. I say this because I just started reading Swing Time by Zadie Smith which is about two mixed race girls growing up in London, coming of age and their later experiences as adults, but I’m not that far into it yet. And I see a lot of the same themes repeated, beauty is discussed at length, and one of the girls is identified as much more beautiful than the other, and although the one said to be less beautiful experiences more dangerous situations, (at least at this point in the narrative) more sexual harassment than the one identified as more beautiful, the one identified as more beautiful is seen by others to be destined for a life full of danger and exploitation. I think this shows how the narrative of beauty leading to danger, which may have been more applicable in the slave times, has persisted, almost to cover up some of the actual cause of the danger black women face today.