Reconciling Public and Private in Frederick Douglass' Narrative

Abstract

meaning based upon Douglass' particular experience. As generalization and abstraction expresses the public focus; its full meaning, however, depends upon its grounding in the facts of Douglass' life preceding it. fourth sentence is a personal statement emanating from the private perspective, repeating and buttressing the truth of the generalization again by placing within the confines of his own experience. Here the two perspectives are not at war but rather mutually supportive, for the complete meaning even of the factuality of the first two sentences depends upon their contextual meaning. passage continues, A want of information concerning my own [birthday] was a source of unhappiness to me even during childhood. white children could tell their ages. I could not tell why I ought to be deprived of the same privilege (p. 23). passage, expressive of the private focus in that directly concerns the private, inner feelings of the narrator, implies the public focus, for underlying the statement is the narrator's knowledge that readers will share his belief that one should be able to tell one's age. No proper, just or moral system, the logic runs, deprives humans of the knowledge of the dates of their birth; I am human; therefore. . . . statement expresses the private perspective; its logic expresses the public. two are again melded, though logically separable. same balancing strategy obtains again when Douglass writes about his separation from his mother, the personal statement of biographical fact balanced by its generalized meaning in the context of slavery. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.208 on Fri, 14 Oct 2016 04:11:17 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Frederick Douglass' Narrative 5 5 3 My mother and I were separated when I was but an infant-before I knew her as my mother. It is a common custom, in the part of the land from which I ran away, to part children from their mothers at a very early age. Frequently before the child has reached its twelfth month, its mother is taken from and hired out on some farm a considerable distance off, and the child is placed under the care of an old woman, too old for field labor. . . . I never saw my mother, to know her as such, more than four or five times in my life; and each of these times was very short in duration, and at night. (p. 24) Note that the passage begins with the personal perspective, generalizes about practices during slavery, then returns to a personal vantage point. This practice prevails throughout most of the Narrative, its function being two-fold: to sustain balance between the public and private focus; and to ground abstractions about the evils of slavery in the specific, concrete experience of one person, thus rendering the argument more vivid and more convincing than abstract discourse alone could likely make it. method is analogous to some grand metaphor: the tenor, slavery; the vehicle, the facts of Douglass' life. Thoreau's method in Walden is similar in that he constantly moves back and forth between the concrete and the abstract, between the particularities of his own experiences and the wider implications generated therefrom. Such strategies are not uncommon in slave narratives, the difference being that Douglass is so intensely engaged in the abolitionist cause that he could not for a moment allow his story to give way to adventure for adventure's sake, adventure intended to entertain readers; he could not allow a plot to govern the rendition of his narrative except in the most general way. Douglass moves from slavery to freedom, but his emphasis is far more on the journey than on the physical one. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave is an accurate title in that points to the broad span of his life, most of which was spent in slavery, rather than to the escape itself, which, becomes clear, is not the central issue. Douglass was himself aware of this emphasis as he makes clear in the final version of the autobiography, Life and Times.7 The abolition of slavery in my native State and throughout 7 Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (I892; rpt. New York: Collier, I962) hereafter referred to as Life and Times. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.208 on Fri, 14 Oct 2016 04:11:17 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 554 American Literature the country, and the lapse of time, render the caution hitherto observed [of not revealing his means of escape] no longer necessary. But even since the abolition of slavery, I have sometimes thought well enough to baffle curiosity by saying that while slavery existed there were good reasons for not telling the manner of my escape, and since slavery had ceased to exist there was no reason for telling it (p. I 97). His lack of interest in entertaining or satisfying the curious has a clear and definite effect on the form of the autobiography. Narrative has only one climax, though might be expected to have two-one internal, the other external; one in which the narrator undergoes some transformation, the other in which he projects into the world through action the results of his transformation. One of these climaxes expresses the private focus of the narrative (taking place, as does, within the psyche of the narrator); the other public, an objective, historical event. true climax of the autobiography is the private, one, explicitly revealing the formation on Douglass' part of a new consciousness, a different awareness and sense of self, and a firm resolve for the future. other potential climax of the action, the one which should show the glorious passage of the narrator from slavery to freedom, does not occur.8 In other words the private perspective of the Narrative holds sway insofar as the plot is concerned. How can this be if the work is a weapon in the arsenal of abolitionism? Douglass' explanation of why he conceals his mode of escapethat telling how he escaped would increase the danger to others using that means-is quite reasonable. He reveals in the final version of his autobiography, as noted above, but there in the context of nearly the whole span of Douglass' life (or nearly so) cannot begin to have the impact and meaning that would have had in the context of the Narrative alone. Its dramatic significance is drastically diminished. That the lapse of time has decreased the sense of its importance is reflected in Douglass' reluctance (even when the information can have no negative effect on anyone) to fill in the details of his actual escape. In any event, if one seeks the ' Jean Fagin Yellin notes the psychological bias of Douglass' Narrative; see Intricate Knot: Black Figures in American Literature, I7 76-I863 (New York: New York Univ. Press,