Day 4 - Truth and Cooper: A Comparison

As we saw on Day 3, the works of two highly influential writers and activists can seem quite different, but may in fact be very similar when read with a time-frame in mind. Sojourner Truth and Anne Julia Cooper are two such individuals. Both exhibit the importance of women to society with references to personal experience and religion.

Sojourner Truth's "Ain't I a Woman" speech , delivered in 1851 at a Women's Rights Convention in Ohio, was renowned in that it crossed the racial divide of the time and spoke to white and black women of the North and the South. Truth expressed a mixture of agony and requisition with statements like "Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman?...I have borne thirteen children, and seen them most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none by Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman?"

Truth's speech was given just a couple years before Harriet Jacobs began writing Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, when the animosity between the North and South was growing every so rapidly. Her antebellum speech was much more impassioned than Anna Julia Cooper's essay, "Womanhood: A Vital Element in the Regeneration and Progress of a Race," which I will discuss now.

Cooper's essay is calculated, eloquent and much more religiously driven than Truth's message. Cooper was highly educated, having received a Ph.D. from the University of Paris, becoming only the fourth African American woman to receive a doctoral degree. She writes of how Christianity and Feudalism were the two "sources from which, perhaps, modern civilization has derived its noble and ennobling ideal of woman." On the subject of Christianity, Cooper writes that "Christ gave ideals not formulae. The Gospel is a germ requiring millennia for its growth and ripening." On the subject of Feudalism, she explains, "Chivalry, according to Bascom, was but the toning down and softening of a rough and lawless period (The Dark Ages). It gave a roseate glow to a bitter winter's day." She goes on to state that the mixture of these two "streams...is destined to be a potent force in the betterment of the world."

After delving into this history, Cooper makes the case that Negroes, since they were not involved in the merging of these two streams, were left in the dust. She then makes the conclusion that, just as women of the Dark Ages were involved in the betterment of their time, black women of today are responsible for the betterment of the Negro race. She explains, "Only the BLACK WOMAN can say 'when and where I enter, in the quiet, undisputed dignity of my womanhood, without violence and without suing or special patronage, then and there the whole Negro race enters with me.'"

Both Truth and Cooper ask the audience to recognize the merging of sexism and racism. They both draw attention to the "black woman," the pinnacle of these two vices, and they both effectively iterate the necessity of respect for women and for the colored. Because Truth wrote before the Civil War, she expressed rage and a greater sense of urgency. Cooper, on the other hand, wrote after the War, powerfully detailing a strategy which she believes black women should implement in order to alleviate modern civilization of the vice of racism.

Day 3 - Wheatley and Jacobs...Two Women's Views of Slavery

Phillis Wheatley's poetry and Harriet Jacobs' "fictionalized" documentary each present quite different, yet somehow unifying principles of slavery in America. It is absolutely crucial in analyzing the differences between these two authors to recognize the time-frame within which they wrote. Wheatley lived between ca. 1753 to 1784, dying around the end of the American Revolution, a time when America was still focused on freeing herself from Great Britain and developing her own identity. Jacobs lived between ca. 1813 to 1897 during the time when slavery became a central focus in American society with the Dred Scott Case in St. Louis, the formation of the anti-slavery Republican Party, Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation and, of course, the Civil War.

In her poem "To the Right Honorable William, Earl of Dartmouth...," Wheatley rejoices in the appointment of William as the 2nd Earl of Dartmouth and Secretary of State to North America; she feels this will bring Freedom to America. She writes:

"No more, America, in mournful strain
Of wrongs, and grievance unredressed complain,
No Longer shalt thou dread the iron chain
Which wanton Tyranny with lawless hand
Had made, and with it meant to enslave the land."

Here's the key: I don't believe Wheatley is writing about African American slavery. She is writing about America's slavery. She is comparing the Freedom which she once had in Africa to the prospect of Freedom for America from the "Tyranny" of British rule. We must keep in mind that Wheatley was raised in a fairly nurturing environment, and was given the gift of an education including English, Theology and Latin. She was in no way a "slave" as we may conceive of a slave today. Harriet Jacobs, on the other hand, was.

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In her "fictionalized narrative" Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Jacobs recounts her own experience as a black female slave through Linda Brent, a character she created to protect her own identity. Jacobs tells us exactly why she is writing her book in Chapter V:

"Reader, it is not to awaken sympathy for myself that I am telling you truthfully what I suffered in slavery. I do it to kindle a flame of compassion in your hearts for my sisters who are still in bondage, suffering as I once suffered."

She tells of how as a child, "a man forty years [her] senior daily [violated] the most sacred commandments of nature," and of Mrs. Flint, the jealous mistress who was more preoccupied of her husband's lust towards his slaves than of "the condition of shame and misery in which her unfortunate, helpless slave was placed." In the end, Jacobs tells graphically of her escape from the South, including details of her self-imprisonment on the plantation to avoid her Master.

All in all, both Wheatley and Jacobs describe the tyranny of slavery very effectively; Wheatley describes the slavery of her country, and Jacobs describes her own slavery through
Linda Brent. They also both implicitly convey the message that the dominance the white man exerts on society must be stood up against when he jeopardizes its moral fabric.

Day 2 - Jane Austen's Mansfield Park

This past Wednesday we watched one episode of the 1983 TV series and completed the rest of Jane Austen's Mansfield Park by watching the less authentic, more aesthetically pleasing 1999 film version. Though the film may conjure a few misinterpretations of Austen's novel, the general themes seem to convey similar messages to the audience.

In the novel, Austen writes "There will be little rubs and disappointments everywhere, and we are all apt to expect too much; but then, if one scheme of happiness fails, human nature turns to another; if the first calculation is wrong, we make a second better; we find comfort somewhere." This theme of changing schemes and making calculations better in order to modify the "norms", I believe, encompasses a large part of what Austen is trying to convey, whether it's her portrayal of women in society or her views on colonialism. Fanny Price, the protagonist, is portrayed as a fairly radical means of influencing change.

In terms of women in society, Fanny refuses to be married against her will, despises men such as Sir Thomas for judging her based on her looks, and cannot bear to be looked upon as the daughter of a low-class family. Fanny wants people to recognize her for who she is, not for who she is supposed to be. Edmund is one of the few individuals who embraces Fanny for her personality and wit, and this empowers Fanny with the confidence to facilitate change within her family. She ends up marrying Edmund, and Sir Thomas eventually abandons his work in Antigua and accepts Fanny for who she is.

Although Fanny may be a bit psychologically complex, and although her actions may even be viewed today as extreme for her time, I believe it is people like Fanny, people with strong moral values and a deep understanding of their surroundings, that can best communicate a sense of urgency and moral obligation.

Day 1 - Women in Literature

When signing up for an upper-level English course to fulfill my undergraduate requirements, this course, Women in Literature, particularly caught my attention. Especially in a time such as ours, when for example, the American Presidency is for the first time being tossed back and forth between an African American and a woman, I believe it is crucial to understand the women of our past in order to more thoroughly appreciate the women of today and our future. I have hardly had any exposure to women’s literature per se, and that is largely a reason for my enrollment in this class.

One woman for whom I hold a deep respect for is the women’s suffragist Susan B. Anthony, partly because I recently transferred from the University of Rochester in New York where she studied, and more so because I believe the woman’s right to vote in the United States was a critical moment in establishing American women’s identity and allowing the voices of millions of mothers, wives, sisters and daughters around the country to finally be heard.

I am expecting this course to help me develop an appreciation for women’s roles in society in various social contexts. Through the most difficult of times, such as slavery and the World Wars, or through the most prosperous of times such as the Roaring Twenties, women have served crucial roles which certainly deserve our attention.