Katy Hamm

Morris
ENGL 4450
6 March 2015
Midterm Essay
A common theme that runs through the majority of the works we have studied this
semester is the use of pathetic language and rhetorical devices to enact moral suasion and evoke
empathy in a typically white audience. In works such as Narrative of the Life of Frederick
Douglass and Twelve Years a Slave there are intense passages detailing the emotional and
spiritual hardships of slavery. The texts of Harriet Jacobs and Phillis Wheatley often use direct
address, and Wheatley additionally slips in her knowledge of classical literature, an inclusion
which would have impressed white audiences and emphasized that black people were capable of
learning. Victor Sejour engages similar ideas in his short story The Mulatto. Although it
seems like it would have been much more appealing to act out violently in the face of slavery (as
many did), from an abolitionist standpoint there would have been many more advantages in
engaging the guilt of a white audience. This involved some pandering and cooperation with
white abolitionists, but the evangelical revival taking place in the northern part of the country
during this time presented a unique opportunity to appeal to the renewed morality of white
audiences, rather than fighting against the idea that Christianity endorsed slavery.
Some of the first literature ever created in this mode was the poetry of Phillis Wheatley.
While Wheatley relied more on flaunting her education as an authenticating strategy for her
intelligence and capabilities as a black woman, her knowledge would have also been the first
indication that she possessed the same mental capacity as any white person, and allowed a white
audience to connect with her. Wheatley was also a big proponent of moral suasion. Almost all
of her works engage religious in some form, such as her poem To S.M. A Young African
Painter, On Seeing His Works: And may the charms of each seraphic theme/ Conduct thy

footsteps to immortal fame! This work is especially important because she is applying this
bounteous spiritual and ethereal imagery to a black artist, forcing her audience to consider
blackness in the context of spiritual excellence. As previously stated another tactic she uses is
direct address, most notably, Remember Christians, Negros, black as Cain,/ May be refind, and
join th angelic train. By directly addressing the white audiences who want to be considered
good Christians, Wheatley is forcing them to consider the meaning of her words in the context of
their own lives, and the idea that anyone should be able to be saved.
Although he uses similar ideas as Wheatley in his works, Victor Sejour is much more
straightforward in his portrayal of black intelligence. One element that sets his work apart from
other abolitionist authors is the way in which his characters speak; the dialect is not written as
affected as in the style of many other authors, but in the way that white people would have
spoken. Furthermore, his black characters in The Mulatto are aware of themselves and their
condition as enslaved people, which he places in juxtaposition with the attitudes of his white
characters, who represent the typical belief that black people are of lesser intelligence. These
elements are aptly portrayed in the early exchange between Lasa and the auctioneer: This man
is your master, he said, pointing toward Alfred. I know it, the negress answered coldly. In
this way Sejour not only presents the slave as an intelligent, sentient being is his work, but also
presents the idea that thinking otherwise is nave and foolish. This is certainly not the most
flattering depiction of white audiences seen in abolitionist literature, but it would have
encouraged them to examine and question their own justifications of slavery.
The next prominent work of literature to emerge in abolitionist circles was Frederick
Douglasss Narrative. This account (and later Northups Twelve Years a Slave), like The
Mulatto, emphasizes black intelligence, but more so through Douglasss intellectual abilities
and pursuits rather than such a bleak portrait of slavery as Sejour presents. Douglass brings

more attention to his spiritual and intellectual journey and triumphs in the face of slavery, giving
his text a transcendental essence and circling back to themes of moral suasion and emotional
engagement. Many of the struggles Douglass details, although specific to slavery, can also be
seen as more widely relatable; for example, his iconic fight scene with Mr. Covey:
This battle with Mr. Covey was the turning-point in my career as a slave. It rekindled
the few expiring embers of freedom, and revived within me a sense of my own manhood.
It recalled the departed self-confidence, and inspired me again with a determination to be
free . . . I now resolved that, however long I might remain a slave in form, the day had
passed forever when I could be a slave in fact.
While on the surface this scene is about a fistfight between a slave and his master, Douglass then
inflates the meaning of the experience to encompass feelings of agency, liberation, and even
brings into play the becoming-a-man trope. In this way Douglass uses slavery as a metaphor for
obstacles that are common to the human experience. Although white audiences had obviously
not experienced slavery, most people can probably relate to a feeling of oppression and the
satisfaction that comes from liberating oneself.
Outside of describing his emotional experience, Douglass spends a lot of time describing
the process by which he learned to read; this serves two purposes for his text. In terms of selfactualization, this is a pivotal time for Douglass; literacy becomes another metaphor for freedom
and it is through literacy that he is able to fully realize his condition and his desire to break out of
it. In terms of audience, learning to read would not only have been a common experience but a
validating one. Although this is still a very important part of Douglasss narrative, describing it
in such specific detail is also a way of proving to the audience that it was part of an authentic
experience he had a slave. This is an authenticating device both for the legitimacy of Douglasss
experience and for his intellectual capacity.

Like Douglass, Solomon Northup places significant emphasis on his emotions in his own
narrative, Twelve Years a Slave. Although Northup participated in the abolitionist circuit, his
narrative was not written with the purpose of being an abolitionist text as Douglasss Narrative
was; rather, Northup aimed with his work to create an authentic portrait of slavery in the
American South. While this is of course equally as horrific as any of the other abolitionist
authors asserted, Northup is more concerned with simply communicating the physical and
emotional hardships of slavery than creating a platform out of them. He meditates extensively
on his own feelings of defeat and hopelessness and how this is connected to his physical abuse,
as well as drawing in the experiences of other slaves such as Patsey to provide insight into a
diverse set of experiences. While the best result of this text would have been to engage the
sympathies of white audiences during this time, because it lacks specifically abolitionist
discourse there is also the danger that it would have been read as slavery porn.
Finally, perhaps the most progressive of the abolitionist authors, is Harriet Jacobs with
her narrative Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. In her narrative Jacobs manages to incorporate
many if not all of the devices used by her predecessors: direct address; emphasis on spiritual
morality; emphasis on black intelligence; emphasis on emotional and spiritual struggles. What
makes Incidents stand out among other abolitionist texts is that it takes these ideas and puts them
in the context of a narrative that is specifically addressed to white women. Whereas the other
texts are addressed, if not to white men, to a general white audience, Jacobs uses her narrative to
appeal specifically to white women from the northern part of the country. This decision moves
beyond simply engaging white sympathies for the abolitionist movement and into early
feminism. In focusing on the female slave experience Jacobs is also able to address common
female experiences such as sexual objectification and demonstrate how those are modified by

slavery. This bond in combination with her abundant use of direct address effectively creates an
entirely new platform for the abolitionist movement.