Caitlin's Praxis Journal Main Menu Ethnic Studies 250B Praxis Journal Praxis Journal for Ethnic Studies 250B, American Slave Narratives Praxis Journal Entry 1 -- 8/29/16 Analyzing two passages from the Narrative Praxis Journal Entry 2 -- 9/5/16 Frederick Douglass -- Literacy as Rebellion Praxis Journal Entry 3 -- 9/11/16 Praxis Journal Entry 5 -- 9/25/16 Analyzing a passage from the reader and the film Praxis Journal Entry 6 -- 10/9/16 Praxis Journal Entry 7 -- 10/17/16 Praxis Journal Entry 8 -- 10/24/16 Praxis Journal Entry 9 -- 10/31/16 Praxis Journal Entry 11 -- 11/20/16

Praxis Journal Entry 4 -- 9/20/16

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How do the film and Douglass’ Narrative present how women experience slavery? (Think in particular how each depicts women being whipped and bound and a focus of sexualized attention—that’s very subtle in Douglass, but it’s there.)

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The film 12 Years a Slave and Douglass’ Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass present women’s experience of slavery in both a sexual and domestic, familial manner. White masters and overseers in the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and 12 Years a Slave, unable to reconcile with their desire for their “property”, took out their anger and confusion on female slaves in the form of physical and sexual violence. Women in both works worked as field hands but were largely shown as maids, cooks, and caretakers for children. 

Thus far 12 Years a Slave has not shown female slaves being beaten "up close and personal", but one of Douglass’ earliest memories is of his master (Captain Anthony) beating his aunt Hester. Like Patsey in 12 Years a Slave, Hester’s master was sexually attracted to her, and didn’t want her to be with any other men. When Hester was caught with a young male slave, Captain Anthony stripped her to the waist, hung her from the ceiling, and beat her severely, unaware that the young Douglass was hiding in a closet and watching. Captain Anthony apparently whipped Hester regularly with such severity: “the louder she screamed, the harder he whipped; and where the blood ran fastest, there he whipped the 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” (Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, in the Oxford Frederick Douglass Reader, p. 33). Unlike Edwin Epps in 12 Years a Slave, who was open about his near obsession with Patsey, Captain Anthony appears to have hated himself for desiring Hester.

Douglass writes in the beginning of the Narrative that female slaves who attracted the attentions of their masters were almost universally hated by their mistresses, both for the mixed children they produced and because slaves were “things” that god-fearing white people weren’t “supposed” to desire. In the film 12 Years a Slave Eliza, a young slave woman, was captured and sold with her two children while going to Washington to receive her emancipation papers. She and her children were thrown out by their mistress because their master favored her and fathered one of her children. Later in the film Eliza is separated from her children and sold to a different master. Eliza never recovers from this separation. Mrs. Epps, wife of plantation owner Edwin Epps, detests her husband for his attraction to Patsey and treats Patsey with a special disdain. Douglass’ own father was rumored to be a white man, possibly his mother’s master, but he never learned this man’s true identity. 

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