Differences and a New Perspective

After finishing the Harriet Jacobs book and now beginning the Frederick Douglass book, I can't help but compare the two narratives. Both books show a different type of environment growing up and living in slavery. This is interesting to me because while I realize that each slave (and human in general, for that matter) has their own experience, these two seem to have differences in their

Harriet Jacobs grew up in a home with many of her immediate family members around her who were also enslaved. At the end of the day, she was still able to talk with them and share her despair with others. She also still had people to take care of her and for the most part, was able to eat and sleep regularly. Frederick Douglass on the other hand describes a completely hostile environment and talks about how he does not even know how old he is. He can only guess his age based on the little information given to him. He has a mother who passes away when he is young and he is unaffected, which is different from Jacobs' reaction to her parents deaths.

Another difference is the way they are treated. While I believe this greatly has to do with their gender, it seems as though Douglass is less noticed by his master than Jacobs. This can probably be attributed to Dr. Flint's strange attraction for her and the fact that Douglass is a male and is able to avoid these situations. However, he does say that he is treated somewhat differently because he is a mixed-race slave, rather than fully black. Douglass seems to go through a series of different masters, or overseers whereas Jacobs basically lives under one master/mistress her whole life, until she is older. Douglass mentions religion a lot less than Jacobs but discusses the songs the slaves used to sing, even saying how he did not even see their value until he was older.

Something that was strange for me to think about was that he grew up in Maryland. Although I know Maryland is considered a Southern state, usually when thinking of slavery, states like Georgia and the Carolinas come to mind. Hearing about him being enslaved in Maryland really brought things more into reality for me. I think this is mostly because two of my siblings currently live in Maryland and I go there very often, and to think all of this was going on there is just very real to me after reading this. Since I'm from the North, I generally feel off the hook about slavery and do not feel responsible, but this really gave a new perspective. Now I feel like everyone was responsible because this behavior wasn't taking place as far away as it had previously seemed to me.