Ruth Hall and Feminist Agency

Fanny Fern's Ruth Hall: A Domestic Tale of the Present Time (1855) focuses exclusively on the sufferings and eventual triumph of the eponymous heroine. In what ways does the novel create a feminist hero for the 1850s, and in what ways does the novel fall short of this goal? To answer this question, you might Fanny Fern compare to the other female characters we have seen through this course.

(Just as a side note, Ruth Hall sold 50,000 copies in the first eight months of publication, and by 1856, Fanny Fern was the nation's highest paid author, earning $100 per column for the serialization of her next novel Rose Clark. Although it is difficult to create an equivalence of the purchasing power of one dollar in the 1850s to dollars today, we can estimate that 1$ in the 1850s would equal between 15$ and 25$ today. On the high that would be $2,500 per column. She is an author with an incredibly wide appeal).

Redemption and Justice in Uncle Tom's Cabin: Ideas on an Ending

Building from the comparative discussion of Harriet Beecher Stowe and Frederick Douglass,
perhaps, we can turn our attention to the question of Christian redemption and salvation in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852). How does Stowe view redemption and salvation both for individual characters and for the nation as a whole?

To answer this, we may also want to consider the question of justice. How does Stowe conceive of justice? Is justice a temporal concept--that is, an idea relating to earthly time and based in views of morality that are non-religious--or does it also have an eternal, divine component that unfolds both in life and the afterlife? Does the novel present us with the realization of justice for its principal protagonists: Cassy, Emmeline, Eliza Harris, George Harris, Eva, and Uncle Tom? What does justice look like for Stowe? Again, think of justice as being both in the "here and now" and in terms of eternity.

Of course, from these questions we can return to Douglass and his views on the same questions. These are the questions of the 1850s, which we see Stowe and Douglass confronting directly.

Harriet Beecher Stowe and Frederick Douglass, Part I

At the beginning of Frederick Douglass's My Bondage and My Freedom (1855), the editor, Frederick Douglass himself, states in the "Editor's Preface" that "If the volume now presented to the public were a mere work of ART, the history of its misfortune might written in two very simple words--TOO LATE" (5). Douglass here refers primarily to Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, Or Life Among the Lowly (1852), published three years earlier. Douglass is clearly conscious of the power of Stowe's work.

For this prompt, please contrast Stowe's representation of slavery in her novel, through the first seven chapters, to Douglass's representation of slavery in his non-fiction autobiography. What are some of the differences in these two representations? Does Stowe's novel afford her opportunities of depiction not available to Douglass? Likewise, what advantages does Douglass's own account enable? Remember that both writers have a strong anti-slavery agenda despite differences in their outlooks, which we will discuss as we move further into the novel.

Frederick Douglass and the Romantic Ideal

In class today, we discussed whether Frederick Douglass presents himself as a romantic hero. Following the thread on Natty Bumppo on this blog, we drew a comparison with James Fenimore Cooper's fictional Natty Bumppo in the Leatherstocking Tales. However, we could have examined other heroes and anti-heroes from the course, including Gabriel Lajeunesse, John Alden, Arthur Gordon Pym, Israel Potter (and Melville's construction of Revolutionary War figures like Benjamin Franklin, John Paul Jones, and Ethan Allan), and Holgrave.

Does Frederick Douglass as an autobiographer present himself as a hero in this same tradition of male American heroism? Does he share characteristics with this type?

Postscript: In class, I drew a very tenuous connection between Cooper and Douglass by way of each man's recognition of Sir Walter Scott. Cooper models his own historical romances on Sir Walter Scott's works. Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey adopts the last name Douglass out of his appreciation for Sir Walter Scott's poem "Lady of the Lake" (1809) and his identification with the character James of Douglass.

One significant difference between Natty Bumppo and Frederick Douglass--among many, many differences, I should add--is that Natty Bumppo believes in racial and ethnic separation, a view hinted at in the Pioneers and expressed directly in the other Leatherstocking novels, particularly Last of the Mohicans (1826) and The Prairie (1827). In contrast, Douglass believed in an integrated, multi-racial democracy and full gender equality. He fought literally until the day he died for a society in which men and women, regardless of color, would enjoy all the civil rights and protections of full citizenship. On Feb. 20, 1895, Douglass was present at a meeting for the National Council of Women in Washington; later, that same day, he died in his Cedar Hill home in Anacostia, Washinton, DC.

Frederick Douglass's Visions of Religion and Morality

In an Appendix to his 1845 Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Douglass includes an eight to nine page account (roughly 1,800 words) of his views on religion. He begins with this statement:

I find, since reading over the foregoing Narrative, that I have, in several instances, spoken in such a tone and manner, respecting religion, as may possibly lead those unacquainted with my religious views to suppose me an opponent of all religion. To remove the liability of such misapprehension, I deem it proper to append the following brief explanation. What I have said respecting and against religion, I mean strictly to apply to the _slaveholding religion_ of this land, and with no possible reference to Christianity proper; for, between the Christianity of this land, and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference--so wide, that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy, is of necessity to reject the
other as bad, corrupt, and wicked.

In My Bondage and My Freedom, published ten years later in 1855, Douglass addresses this topic in such a way that he no longer feels the need to include a similar explanatory appendix. We might assume that Douglass's refashioning of his biography gives him a chance to include this discussion directly in the text properHow does Douglass, then, balance Christian theology with his views on morality in general and of the immorality of the South and slavery? There are many ways to address this question. It is complicated question. We might consider Douglass's occasional calls for revolutionary action in My Bondage and My Freedom, like the one below:

The slaveholder, kind or cruel, is a slaveholder still--the every hour violator of the just and inalienable rights of man; and he is, therefore, every hour silently whetting the knife of vengeance for his own throat. He never lisps a syllable in commendation of the fathers of this republic, nor denounces any attempted oppression of himself,
without inviting the knife to his own throat, and asserting the rights of rebellion for his own slaves. (197)

This worldview, at least on the surface, does not appear to be the position of Uncle Lawson, whom Douglass describes as "my chief instructor, in matters of religion" and "my spiritual father" (124).

There are other ways to consider this as well. Discussions of God and Christianity appear throughout My Bondage and My Freedom in nearly every chapter.