Masaryk University Faculty of Arts Department of English and American Studies English Language and Literature Teaching English Language and Literature for Secondary Schools Jakub Štěrba The Slave Narrative and its Crucial Features Master’s Diploma Thesis Supervisor: Jeffrey Alan Vanderziel, B. A . 2011 1 I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography. …………………………………………… Author‘s signature 2 I would like to thank to the supervisor of my Master‘s Diploma Thesis Jeffrey Alan Vanderziel, B.A. for the help, support and guidance of my work. 3 Table of Contents 1. Introduction.…………………………………………………………………….. 5 2. The Slave Narrative Genre……………………………………………………… 9 Literacy and Authorship .…………………………………………………… 14 3. Childhood and Disruption of Families in The Slave Narrative…………………. 25 4. Abuse in The Slave Narrative………………………………………………….... 38 Physical Abuse.…………………………………………………………….... 38 Sexual Abuse………………………………………………………………… 49 Social Abuse…………………………………………………………………. 61 5. The Forms of Resistance in The Slave Narrative………………………………... 75 6. Conclusion....……………………………………………………………………. 107 7. Bibliography.……………………………………………………………………. 115 4 Chapter 1 Introduction The major goal of this thesis is to compare and contrast the early slave narratives written in United States of America by former slaves themselves. Slave narratives were written for and served many purposes in the 19th century. Both antebellum and postbellum narratives offered accounts of slaves‘ lives and the workings of slavery as an institution. The writings also revealed characters of slave owners, plantation overseers, clergy, and, often, the impact slavery had on both slaves and white people, rich as well as poor. As far as the authors of slave narratives are concerned, their writings were usually straightforward and strived towards the most sincere portrayal of their lives and struggles as possible. Serving as means of persuading the American public of the perversion slavery brought about and inherently embodied, the texts also enabled the slaves not only to demonstrate their literacy, but their intellect as well. Often, slave narratives displayed powerful rhetorical and logical stances and raised arguments and questions against slavery, and again its mechanisms, such as the incorporation of Christian faith into the fabric of slavery. The slave narratives told stories of life on plantations, of people, and of escapes. The theme of escape is in fact a recurring one in the writings by slave men – however, this is not so much the case in the writings by female slaves, which constitutes a striking difference between the literary works of the two genders within the same genre. While men ponder the possibility of escaping in most of their slave narratives, theirs are the tales of brave escapes in wooden boxes or physical battles with overseers, women concentrate on utterly disparate issues. They concentrate on slavery as an imminent threat to their families, their bodies, their emotions, and their sexualities. Even though sexual and physical oppression is common for both genders in slave 5 narratives, the mother-children bond is much more visible in the writings of female slaves. Men hardly ever show much concern for leaving their families behind while escaping. Women, on the other hand, usually stay home precisely because they are unwilling and/or unable to leave their families enslaved. The emotional and, at the same time, logical approach by either of the genders, as well as the role assigned to men and women within the institution of slavery, is thus a crucial point of analysis in critical evaluation of slave narratives as literary works. For it is in comparing the writings and issues dealt with in slave narratives by men versus narratives by women that one moves beyond the obvious to reveal the complexity of slaves‘ lives and the multitude of layers in the writings. Slave narratives, as mentioned above, are very real and immediate. This is both due to the sincerity and urgency of the issues discussed and the styles the texts are written in. Typically, they were written from the first person perspective. Moreover, slave narratives are non-fiction, in some cases verging on documentary, factual works. In order to establish an image of the typical slave narrative with its crucial features and to point out the differences between texts written by male and female slaves, the thesis looks at four representative texts of 19th century slave narratives; Frederick Douglass‘s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, written by Himself, Henry ―Box‖ Brown‘s Narrative of the Life of Henry Box Brown, Written by Himself, Harriet Jacob‘s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and Elizabeth Keckley‘s Behind the Scenes or Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House. The analysis of this four texts traces important aspects of these four writings, and thus depicts the crucial features of the slave narrative genre. The thesis is divided into six chapters. The first chapter – Introduction – sets the goals of the thesis and sketch how the argument will be approached and dealt with. The 6 second chapter is devoted to the slave narrative genre and especially to the question of authorship which is very important for the slave narrative. The third chapter demonstrates the depiction of childhood and disruption of families in the four texts. The fourth chapter analyzes the presence of various forms of abuse and shows how they are treated in the slave narrative. The third and fourth chapters trace passive aspects of the slave narrative, since they depict what happen to the slaves, without them being able to engage somehow into the state of affairs that concern them. The fifth chapter of the thesis is quite different as it analyzes the active part of the slave narrative; by performing the acts of resistance the protagonists of the books are acting on their own by standing up to injustices of slavery. This chapter depicts the various forms of resistance that are exercised by the authors. The last chapter, conclusion of the whole thesis, supplements the conclusions presented at the end of each chapter, and summarizes the points that are made in the thesis. The thesis consists of the textual analysis of these four primary sources in question with the aim to avoid any philosophical questioning, discussion of unrelated issues or implementation of any personal or subjective insights. With the help of the secondary sources consisting from the books dealing with the slave narrative genre in general, and books, articles and reviews dealing with the particular primary sources, the thesis progressively focuses on the answering of two research questions; What are the crucial features of the slave narrative genre and how they are depicted in the writings? The second questions relates to the diversity of the genre and to the attitude of these four authors towards the institution of slavery which are displayed in the depictions of the crucial features of the slave narrative in their writings. The early slave narratives, as being written roughly at the same time and basically for the same purpose, bear a lot of resemblance typical for this genre. However, despite all the resemblances there is 7 certain diversity and the goal is to point out these differences which show that this genre is worth exploring. The main argument that is being progressively developed through out the thesis depicts the atrocities of slavery as the crucial feature of the slave narrative genre. Atrocities of slavery are presented in every slave narrative and are very significant for the texts. Thus, the thesis concludes with the depiction of the crucial features of the slave narrative, of which the atrocities of slavery are the most significant, which completes the analysis of the slave narrative genre. 8 Chapter 2 The Slave Narrative Genre The first question to be raised while dealing the slave narrative genre is what is the slave narrative? Charles T. Davis and Henry Louis Gates Jr. offers an answer in their work The Slave’s Narrative. Davis and Gates argue that slave narratives are ―autobiographical narratives written or dictated by ex-slaves of African descent in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries‖ (Davis and Gates v). Such a description of the slave narrative provides the reader with a lot of useful information; it says what a slave narrative is as well as when and by whom the slave narrative was written. Although slave narratives were written over a period of three centuries, this thesis focuses on the narratives written in the nineteenth century, since the nineteenth century slave narrative represents the climax of the development of the slave narrative genre. Another important question that is to be raised is what stands behind the origin as well as the expansion of the slave narrative genre? Jennie Miller gives insight on what is known about the slavery while it still exists and what is the character of the information concerning slavery. ―Much of what was initially known about the condition of slaves came from antebellum travel accounts, such as those of Frederick Law Olmstead, or from the writings of Southern apologists published in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, such as Ulrich B. Phillips‖ (Miller 31). Miller continues on the depiction of slavery in the first writings, which also shows how slavery is presented to the broader community. ―In these early works, slavery, as seen through the eyes of the white community, was characterized as both respectable and necessary. Such accounts often depicted slavery as a benign institution and failed to capture the essence of life for the slave‖ (Miller 31). It is quite understandable that ―essence of life for the slave‖ could not be captured and described by a person who never experienced such a life. As 9 stated in Miller‘s words, the reality of slavery was practically non-existent in literary form prior to the publications of the narratives written by former slaves.