Commentary of The Narrative of Frederick Douglass

            Within the context of the reading the topic and interpretation of sexual overtones cannot be missed. On page 49, “…administer their own lusts, and make a gratification of their wicked desires profitable as well as pleasurable.” The idea of these slave owners gaining a sense of sexual satisfaction as they deliver punishment to the slaves in question is something that Douglass witnesses and can comment on. The act itself seems to be some kind of sexual release for the owners and the only way to gain this is to in fact punish the slaves. The act of whipping is indeed something that we can view as horror but to Douglass it seems that he recognizes the slave owners’ true intentions behind it. Whether or not being able to look back and analyze the situation gave Douglass the gift of hindsight is unsaid, yet looking through some kind of Freudian lens before the id even was clearly described, he could see the true meaning behind these kinds of beatings.

            During discussion last week the topic was brought up that the inevitability of owning a slave was going to be cruelty. Within the Narrative, the readers do have examples of this but I wasn’t completely sold on taking the idea as all or nothing. There has to be some kind of grey when it comes to the topic of the treatment of a slave. The reader is given examples of two women in a few rapid pages (78-81). Within the text itself Mrs. Auld may represent the good and the bad represented by Mrs. Hamilton. Now if the evolution of a slave owner were to hold true, Auld would indeed become Hamilton at some point of ownership of a slave. Now, it could be my tendency to look at a glass as half full, but I believe that humans themselves have the capacity to be the better person in any situation and not fall into the “normality” of the time. Not every person who owned a slave would eventually become violent towards him or her. I understand that this is a topic that is full of cultural influence and also geographical location, but the decent treatment of one human to another is something I still hold on to. This is not to say or be blind to that owning a slave could be justified, because the very definition of slavery is something that sickens me. However, what is the true difference between a butler in this day and age versus a slave. It is still establishing a hierarchy within a house where one person is clearly identified as being “better” than another. Although someone could easily argue that pay is the difference, the morality of each scenario is the point I would attempt to argue.

            At the end of class last week, Professor Oster recommended that we do a Google search for the “Cult of True Womanhood.” The idea of the cult was a simple one, that a woman should possess four cardinal virtues; piety, purity, domesticity and submissiveness. The problem with this idea of womanhood is that it only applied to women in a certain class and location, a woman would normally have to be white, Protestant and live in the New England area. My confusion of the topic came about how we were applying these to slavery in general or was it just to the idea of womanhood? If indeed we were applying the Cult to women in general, then the amount of females that would not be considered is a staggering amount. Working class, immigrant women and black women all would fall outside the category of true womanhood. If a majority of women were also to invest into this kind of cult, it would cripple women’s ability to find or even look for work thus preventing a footing in any kind of labor industry. I’m sure that the Cult of True Womanhood saw themselves as ways to identify what it means to be a real woman, yet in fact all the group accomplished was to hold the female gender back.