AngloAmerican Literature

Graphic portrayal of violence

At the beginning we find a name for the victim, later on we will have a sequence of female bodies that became nameless, the emphasis is on the victimisation of women and in these stories we find white men, who are always the sexual villains and black men who are impotent onlookers, forced to watch the abuse.

Can the portrayal of violence ever be progressive? What are the effects of this portrayal? In this narrative we have a number of whippings which are very graphically described.

"[Captain Anthony] was not considered a rich slaveholder. He owned two or three farms, and about thirty slaves. His farms and slaves were under the care of an overseer. The overseer's name was Plummer. Mr. Plummer was a miserable drunkard, a profane swearer, and a savage monster. He always went armed with a cowskin and a heavy cudgel. I have known him to cut and slash the women's heads so horribly, that even master would be enraged at his cruelty, and would threaten"

Born but he soon realised that his owners, both the wife and the master, were well matched: equally mean and cruel and they starved their slave. This was a shock because for a while he had been living with a kinder family, he was used to having enough to eat.

The villain in this story is the white owner. "I have said Master Thomas was a mean man. He was so. Not to give a slave enough to eat, is regarded as the most aggravated development of meanness even among slaveholders. The rule is, no matter how coarse the food, only let there be enough of it. This is the theory; and in the part of Maryland from which I came, it is the general practice—though there are many exceptions. Master Thomas gave us enough of neither coarse nor fine food. There were four slaves of us in the kitchen—my sister Eliza, my aunt Priscilla, Henny, and myself; and we were allowed less than a half of a bushel of corn-meal per week, and very little else, either in the shape of meat or vegetables. It was

“not enough for us to subsist upon.”

This paragraph is important to appreciate the clarity, the strength of Douglass’s style: we can understand everything he said, it is written with well-shaped sentences meant to be read by everybody. His English is contemporary, the language he uses is characterized by freshness.

Master Thomas - a poor man

“Bad as all slaveholders are, we seldom meet one destitute of every element of character commanding respect. My master was one of this rare sort. I do not know of one single noble act ever performed by him. The leading trait in his character was meanness; and if there were any other element in his nature, it was made subject to this. He was mean; and, like most other mean men, he lacked the ability to conceal his meanness. Captain Auld was not born a slaveholder. He had been a poor man, master only of a Bay craft. He came into possession of all his slaves by marriage; and of all men, adopted slaveholders are the worst. He was cruel, but

“We have this description of the villain and paradoxically also of the weakness of this man: he had been a poor man and having been a poor man had hardened him instead of making him compassionate.

Conversion

In his description of Master Thomas there is also a reference to conversion. Religion is an important topic in this novel because the religion practiced by slave owners in the South had nothing to do with Christian values. The literal reading of the Bible became a way to emphasise, support, legitimize violence against blacks.

“Prior to his conversion, he relied upon his own depravity to shield and sustain him in his savage barbarity; but after his conversion, he found religious sanction and support for his slaveholding cruelty. He made the greatest pretensions to piety. His house was the house of prayer. He prayed morning, noon, and night. He very soon distinguished himself among his brethren, and was soon made a class-leader and exhorter.”

He resolved to put me out,

As he said, to be broken, Frederick Douglass and his old new master quarrelled: they had a number of differences and when he realized that it is not easy to subdue, control Frederick's attitude, the master decided to put him out, to let him spend a year somewhere else, lending him to Covey, who was a poor man who had a reputation as someone who could break slaves, rendering them docile and submissive.

"My master and myself had quite a number of differences. He found me unsuitable to his purpose. My city life, he said, had had a very pernicious effect upon me. It had almost ruined me for every good purpose, and fitted me for everything which was bad.[...] I had lived with him nine months, during which time he had given me a number of severe whippings, all to no good purpose. He resolved to put me out, as he said, to be broken; and, for this purpose, he let me for one year to a man named Edward Covey. Mr. Covey was a poor man, a farm-renter."

Mr. Covey: "He rented the place"

upon which he lived, as also the hands with which he tilled it. Mr. Covey had acquired a very high reputation for breaking young slaves, and this reputation was of immense value to him. It enabled him to get his farm tilled with much less expense to himself than he could have had it done without such a reputation. Some slaveholders thought it not much loss to allow Mr. Covey to have their slaves one year, for the sake of the training to which they were subjected, without any other compensation. He could hire young help with great ease, in consequence of this reputation. Added to the natural good qualities of Mr. Covey, he was a professor of religion—a pious soul—a member and the Methodist church—a class-leader in Religion became a way to support the system and also to legitimize the use of violence because the Bible refers to the need to whip and punish people.

Chapter X

“I LEFT Master Thomas’s house, and went to live with Mr. Covey, on the 1st of January, 1833. I was now,

For the first time in my life, a field hand. In my new employment, I found myself even more awkward than a country boy appeared to be in a large city. I had been at my new home but one week before Mr. Covey gave me a very severe whipping, cutting my back, causing the blood to run, and raising ridges on my flesh as large as my little finger.

In chapter X we have the life with Mr. Covey. We now have a number of very specific time references. There is another reference to the whipping but is not very graphic, we do not find the long descriptions that are regularly associated with the whippings (especially of women).

“I lived with Mr. Covey one year. During the first six months of that year, scarce a week passed without his whipping me. I was seldom free from a sore back. My awkwardness was almost always his excuse for whipping me. We were worked fully up to the point of endurance. Long before day we were up, our horses fed, and by the first approach of day we were off to the field with our.

hoes and ploughing teams. Mr. Covey gave us enough to eat, but scarce time to eat it.”

The effect of this situation is soon clear. Broken in body, soul and spirit“If at any one time of my life more than another, I was made to drink the bitterest dregs of slavery, that time was during the first six months of my stay with Mr. Covey. We were worked in all weathers. It was never too hot or too cold; it could never rain, blow, hail, or snow, too hard for us to work in the field. Work, work, work, was scarcely more the order of the day than of the night. The longest days were too short for him, and the shortest nights too long for him. I was somewhat unmanageable when I first went there, but a few months of this discipline tamed me. Mr. Covey succeeded in breaking me. I was broken in body, soul, and spirit”

See how a slave was made a man

Here we find the turning point: after the first 6 months.“I have already intimated that my condition was much worse, during the first six

months of my stay at Mr. Covey's, than in the last six. The circumstances leading to the change in Mr. Covey's course toward me form an epoch in my humble history. You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man."

Then there is another description of a whipping and Douglass tried to escape from Mr. Covey going back to his master's house just to show the master what are the consequences of living with Mr. Covey.

"I arrived at master's store. I then presented an appearance enough to affect any but a heart of iron. From the crown of my head to my feet, I was covered with blood. My hair was all clotted with dust and blood; my shirt was stiff with blood. I suppose I looked like a man who had escaped a den of wild beasts, and barely escaped them. In this state I appeared before my master, humbly entreating him to interpose his authority for my protection. I told him all the circumstances as well as I could, and it seemed, as I spoke,

at times to affect him. He would then walk the floor, and seek t