The Usage of Humanization in Up From Slavery and Incidents In the Life of a Slave Girl
Compare and contrast one element of Black autobiography between Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and Washington's Up from Slavery.
In Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs vividly recapitulates the story of her life, starting when she was born into slavery, and continuing into her journey to freedom. Throughout her story, Jacobs goes into great detail concerning lots of gruesome and horrible events that happened to her. She describes experiences like sexual assault, abuse, and loss of family. She tells these traumatic anecdotes through a first-person perspective which uniquely touches with the reader in a way that humanizes herself and helps the reader understand what she personally went through first hand. Humanization is an important aspect that Jacobs makes sure to prioritize within Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, and this is evident from the very beginning, where Jacobs starts chapter 1 with the sentence “I was born a slave; but I never knew it till six years of happy childhood had passed away.” I believe this sentence is particularly important to begin with due to the introduction of the reader to her life. This sentence needs to be intriguing to pull the reader in, while also making the reader believe that Jacobs is a real person with real emotions and a real past. I personally think that this sentence does just the job, initiating the childhood section properly and thoughtfully.
Booker T Washington, a primary leader in African American reformation, wrote Up From Slavery in 1901: a book that not only summarized his life being born as a slave, but also transmitted his ideas to African Americans across the United States. His ideas were important to get across because they were the leading foundations for the reconstructionist era. It was of the utmost importance for Booker T Washington to express his ideals with methods of persuasion in order to lure readers to his side of support. Similar to Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Booker T Washington humanizes himself in efforts to appeal to the reader. This may be for a different authorial purpose, but nevertheless, his usage of first person narrative and confession of personal anecdotes in the early chapters of his writings make him seem like a real person instead of a distant trivial person. This humanization allowed other African Americans to connect to his ideas and clearly worked, as it drew many citizens to support him.
Up From Slavery’s first chapter is named “A Slave Among Slaves” which only suggests that Booker T Washington is just like all of the African Americans reading in this historical context. He talks about being born a slave, and in Chapter 2, “Boyhood Days”, he states “After the coming of freedom there were two points upon which practically all the people on our place were agreed, and I found that this was generally true throughout the South: that they must change their names, and that they must leave the old plantation for at least a few days or weeks in order that they might really feel sure that they were free.” This sentence actually includes not only what he thought during the time, but how he felt the same things that others did around him. I believe that this sentence and utilization of these connective tactics throughout his book humanizes himself and makes his book and ideals more appealing to readers.
Although Washington and Jacobs use these pieces of literature and their humanizing writing in conjunction for different purposes, they ultimately utilize the same methods the same ways, connecting to the reader personally. Washington pushes his philosophy of “casting your bucket where you are” while Jacobs gives readers an authentic idea of what it was like to be a girl born into slavery. While they both push their messages across by humanizing themselves, they also give real, personal, original stories of their personal lives and entrust these stories with the public, opening themselves up as legitimate people in contrast to celebrities or unknown figures. It’s notable that both these authors begin their stories not with their main points, but with these discussed anecdotes which gives even stronger concrete evidence that the humanization of authors is the most important in generally telling a story, getting a point across, or persuading someone to support you in any way.
-Tristen
Hey Tristen, great blog. Both Jacobs and Washington were definitely trying to humanize themselves to make their narrative more credible or just overall more appealing to the audience. They were able to use their struggles and hardship to build on their argument and get the audience to support the message they were trying to push.
ReplyDeleteThe theme of humanization across both authors' narratives is a very interesting one to consider. Both Jacobs and Washington use humanizing themselves as a way to get their readers interested in their story for differing reasons, but the two of them use the same way to do it: offering anecdotes of their own life to relate them to their reader. The contrast of the narrative topics with the similarities of the way of humanizing themselves is really striking to read.
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree that both authors are attempting to make themselves relatable in order to further persuade others. Their different ways of humanizing themselves can also play into how white people view these narratives. Jacob's introduction of not knowing she was a slave until 6 can be interpreted as her attempting to show the lack of differences between black and white people, further criticizing slavery, while Washington seems to refer to both black and white people as slaves, shining a more positive light on slavery as he attempts to humanize slave owners too.
ReplyDeleteYour idea on how humanization greatly affects the feelings that you feel when you read these stories is very unique. I feel that Harriet Jacobs was more humanized and emotional than Booker T. Washington, especially after all that BTW said about "casting your bucket where you are." But they still both deal with hardship, and are pretty emotional and troubling. This is a good blog post.
ReplyDeleteI agree. Humanization is the basis for both Jacobs' and Washington's stories and making the reader understand their experiences. However, its the way that both writers portray their sense of humanization that sets them apart from each other. Jacobs shows how she was humanized by her experiences, while Washington humanizes the people who contributed to his experiences. One feels more personal, the other more removed.
ReplyDeleteI think your highlighting of the phrase "a slave among slaves" is notable in that Booker T. Washington is attempting to speak of formerly enslaved people as a larger political unit. In contrast, Harriet Jacobs writes her narrative as a subject with distinct emotional experiences and in particular a unique experience as a woman. Thus, Jacobs expresses her agency as a supplicant while Booker T. Washington, in some sense, assumes leadership of the Black community.
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