American History I: Slavery Essay
...f Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass, Frederick has an Aunt Hester who disobeyed her master’s rules of going out at night and by being found while in the company of a male slave. After being caught, her master ripped her clothes off, tied her hands to a large hook, and continued to whip until her blood was dripping onto the floor from the heavy cow skin whip (Douglass 29). Prior to this incident, Aunt Hester’s master forbade her from going out and told her he never wanted her to be found in the company of another man. Aunt Hester clearly disobeyed her master’s orders for the sake of love. In Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs, Harriet has found herself in a similar situation as Aunt Hester, also for the sake of love. Harriet wished to marry a free man who she knew when she was younger. When her master became aware of this situation, he told her bluntly, “If you must have a husband, you may take up with one of my slaves” (Jacobs 40). By the reactions of the slave-owners in these two passages, one may draw the conclusion that these two masters are very protective over their slaves. This type of protection is not the kind you would see in a relationship between a mother and her children; instead this is a very selfish type of protection. Slave-owners have slaves to make their lives easier and prosperous, once one of their slaves decides go against their orders; they feel that their cycle of being is threatened. To solve these problems and to make sure their slaves won’t do this again, slave-owners tend to use corporal punishment. Corporal punishment is also used in different type of relationship; this one between overseers and male slaves. There was not much of an interaction between overseers and male slaves in both books but what can be concluded by the relationship is that the overseers did most of the beatings to all slaves including the males. In both books, the general portrayal of an overseer was cruel, merciless, unkind and so on, but this was already well known. In Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, by Frederick Douglass, Frederick makes one point about on particular overseer of his who, “was less cruel, less profane, and made less noise than Mr. Severe…he whipped but seemed to take no pleasure in it. He was called by the slaves a good overseer” (Douglass 35). It is sad to see that a good overseer in a slave’s eyes is not one that does not beat another slave, or one who is nice to them in general, but a person who does not take pleasure in the whippings. In Incidences of the Life of a Slave Girl, by Harriet Jacobs, the overseer was always used, in Harriet’s case, to beat the other slaves for the master. “Therefore he decided, after the overseer should have whipped him to his satisfaction…” (Jacobs 51). Even though a true relationship between male slaves and overseer’s was never formally introduced, it was the overseers who the male slaves feared the most because they were the ones who would do most of the cruel punishing. In the past two relationships that were analyzed, there seemed to be one common thread that sewed these relationships and the two books together. The relationship between mistresses and children slaves is no di...