Frederick Douglass was an African-American former slave who wrote My Bondage and My Freedom (My Bondage and My Freedom) in 1855. He did so sixty-three year after Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication on Women’s Rights, published in 1792. John Stuart Mill, the Englishman, published his treatise The Subjection of Women fourteen years later. Douglass’s book describes the horrors experienced by African slaves in America, and asks readers to reflect on whether chattel-slavery still exists today. Can subordination based on gender be compared to chattel slaves? What is the extent of this? Why is it so offensive that marriage has a similar legal status to slavery, and what makes this objectionable? Looking at marriage as it appears in the above works, one can interpret subordination of women on the basis gender as being analogous with slavery. This is because the modern view is that a married woman cannot have property or be her own person. This comparison allows us to see that marriage is inherently bad because it limits the potential of women. This paper does not focus on the fact that limiting women’s potential also eliminates an important workforce demographic.
This paper will examine several aspects of Frederick Douglass’s slavery descriptions to better define an individual’s development. In particular, the way he describes female slaves as being oppressed by their masters not only because of their race, but due to gender is of interest. They lacked the physical autonomy, emotional maturity, intellectual engagement and aspirations of these women. These three categories, though clearly distinct and separate, can be considered together as internal functions or desires. This paper explores these four categories using American chattel slaving as a lens. These concepts may not be quantifiable but they can still be measured by using causal mechanisms. How does patriarchy exert control like a slave-master over emotional or physical autonomy? How can marriage, which is legally binding, stifle the intellectual pursuit and aspirations for women? Force is the cause of physical autonomy, whereas education is the cause for the other three.
Slave women and married woman share the same lack of freedom in terms of their physical state. Physical freedom is important, but also physical well-being. Chattel slavery reduces the slave to a property item, similar to an object. As a result, the slave is treated according to his or her master’s wishes. Chattel slaves, such as those in the American South were able to be treated according to their master’s wishes. As the slave was a household object, it was possible to punish him or her without reason. Nelly, an African woman, was accused by her master of “one of most common and vague offenses against slaves – impudence. It could mean anything …” or even nothing. Nelly was whipped in front her children on an unclear offense. The harsh punishments that slaves received and the flogging of American slaves are not the same as the treatment given to most married women, but the system behind it is. Wives are also considered property under a binding legal agreement with their husband. She is legally and socially a part her husband. A wife can be subjected to physical abuse by her husband because she is considered property. This physical relationship does not involve “force” but is based on a primal level. Mill ridicules those who argue that men’s rule over women is not one of force but rather voluntary. The use of physical violence can strengthen a marriage even when it is a patriarchal system. It can also discourage women from leaving a bad relationship. Mill recognizes also that “a number of women refuse it” (484). She goes on to say that “wives do not dare use the law to protect themselves, even if the abuse is extreme or prolonged.” Fear is what energizes marriage bonds. Mary Wollstonecraft is a leading feminist who argues that Milton was trying to deny women their souls by implying they are only meant to satisfy man’s desire to contemplate. She does not agree that women have to be or act weaker in the physical realm than men. Instead, she believes that the best way to educate a woman is to use her intellect to form and strengthen their body. Wollstonecraft wrote at a time when women lacked the formal or moral education to form fully formed desires or physically strong bodies.
What about these inner desires? How does a woman develop emotionally? Women were portrayed in literature as being emotionally unstable, and making rash, poor decisions. Men, however, were praised as superiors who are rational, disciplined, and have a good sense of logic. James Joyce, the twentieth century novelist who wrote “Men are governed only by lines of intelligence–women by curves emotion” reflected a popular conception in his day and before. As compared to the treatment of an slave’s emotional growth, the situation is a bit different. A slave’s emotional development was ignored, or at least largely. Owners, traders, and others would break up families (Douglass; Chapter 1; 67 et al.). The emotional baggage and burdens were not considered. Slavery is a property that should be treated less than humans. Slave emotions were also shaped in a way that was pleasing to their masters. If a master finds that a slave’s mood or behavior is bothersome, he can punish him arbitrarily. Wollstonecraft furthers this emotional onesidedness by examining a fictional character in which she tells the female protagonist that “a woman must never feel free, should always be under fear, should exercise her natural cunning. She should also be made a coquettish, submissive slave, so as to make her more attractive, to make a man’s life easier, to have a companion when he relaxes” (Wollstonecraft). Women who are always trying to please men, and focusing their emotions on pleasing them, will not be able to fully express themselves. In the unofficial (or “moral”) sense of the word, “all the moralities tell [women] they are to be devoted to others and abnegation is in their nature. The only affections they’re allowed to have are those to men or children with whom they share a strong bond (Mill 487). Mill explains that a wife’s affections, and the “natural attraction of opposite genders”, are her primary motivation to satisfy all of her husbands’ emotional needs. When she becomes a mother, it is her desire to care for her child and her nurturing qualities. This phenomenon is so widespread, that “it’d be a miracle (Mill) if being attractive and forming a woman’s character did not take on the importance it does” (Mill 487). She is not allowed to express any emotions that aren’t directly connected with meeting the needs of another.
Douglass’s narrative makes clear the fact that both women and chattel slavery were stunted in their intellectual development. The education of slaves in the United States, and indeed throughout history was not based on knowledge. Literate slavery posed a direct threat to ruling classes as knowledge was a prerequisite for power. Likewise, not only were women denied the “emotional”, moral education mentioned above, they also weren’t allowed to receive a good education on worldly and knowledge-based subjects. The reason for this was the desire to “have complete dependence on the man” (Mill 487). It is impossible to explore the intellectual capabilities of slaves in American plantations if they remain on plantations. Women’s potential is also overlooked when married, as their thoughts and work are dedicated towards their husbands and households.
Wollstonecraft questions herself, her readers, and all of womankind, asking whether “women have so little ambition as to be satisfied with such a condition? She asks if women have enough ambition to accept such a situation. They can’t just sit back and dream away their lives in a state of bliss or drowsiness. Can they not assert that they deserve to enjoy reasonable pleasures, and make themselves visible by practicing virtues that elevate mankind? It is impossible that she can spend her entire life adorning the person of another. (Wollstonecraft). Slavery is a form of forced personal achievement, which slaves often have to abandon, even as children, when they are assigned to do housework or pick cotton. Douglass states that slaveholders have a relationship that is detrimental to developing a good character. Slaveholders slowly lose their humanity by stripping slaves from their humanity. While women do not enter this slave-like state until they get married, their whole lives are spent in a constant education and training to create a character that is selfless, docile, and self-denying.
Wollstonecraft encourages woman to practice virtue, learn and continuously seek it. Virtue and its possession was deeply associated with male behavior. It was believed to be a defining line between “manly” and un-manly. Wollstonecraft claims that women are part of “mankind”, and therefore entitled to the same “virtues” as men. By forcing women to be subordinates in the eyes of law to their husbands, and to remain at home, she is effectively pushed to one side. When it comes to work, both women and slaves share a common discomfort. While women are expected to do absolutely nothing in order to fulfill their husbands’ physical, sensual, and emotional needs, chattel slave men are forced to sacrifice their own physicality as well their intellectual, emotional, or personal development. The one who does not work, pays a terrible price. The development of one’s individual self is sacrificed to something greater. It was certainly not God or woman.
Works Cited
Douglass, Frederick. Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglass An American Slave My Bondage And My Freedom Literary Classics of the United States was published in New York in 1994. Print.
Mill, John Stuart, Alan Ryan. On Liberty, and the Subjection Of Women. London: Penguin, 2006. Print.
Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Defense of Women’s Rights. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1989. Print.