Something Akin to Freedom: The Choice of Bondage in Narratives by African American Women

1 Intra-independence: Reconceptualizing Freedom and Resistance to Bondage

15 ‫ﱢﱡﱣ‬ 1 INTRA-INDEPENDENCE: RECONCEPTUALIZING FREEDOM AND RESISTANCE TO BONDAGE Frederick Douglass describes in his 1845 Narrative, his transformative encounter with The Columbian Orator (1797), an eighteenthcentury collection of speeches that served as a popular eloquence manual for students of rhetoric. In particular, Douglass notes the impact that a dialogue between a master and slave had upon him. Through reasoned argumentation, the slave convinces the master to emancipate him. Douglass writes that “these documents enabled me to utter my thoughts, and to meet the arguments brought forward to sustain slavery” (33). The Columbian Orator gives voice to a certain kind of freedom that Douglass felt within him but that he could not entirely express. Following his reading of these key passages, Douglass describes how he became obsessed with his desire for freedom. Freedom now appeared, to disappear no more forever. It was heard in every sound, and seen in every thing. It was ever present to torment me with a sense of my wretched condition. I saw nothing without seeing it, I heard nothing without hearing it, and felt nothing without feeling. It looked from every star, it smiled in every calm, breathed in every wind and moved in every storm. (33) Freedom becomes omnipresent for Douglass. He sees it in all places though its manifestation is remarkably unspecific. It shines from each star and inhabits every object, yet what does freedom look like? The question requires no answer because Douglass’s nineteenth-century readers knew what constituted freedom; they too would have read The Columbian Orator or would at least have been well-versed in the ideal of freedom Douglass sets forth in his narrative. It is the freedom described by the framers of the Constitution, “the unalienable Rights” of “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” which launched the 16 SOMETHING AKIN TO FREEDOM independence of the fledgling United States of America. As such, freedom requires no definition because it is as natural as the world from which it shines. Douglass is careful to suggest that The Colombian Orator does not introduce him to an unknown concept, but rather it enables him to speak its claims and thereby to recognize it both within himself and in everything around him. Freedom is so simple, so elementary that it needs no further elaboration . Significantly, however, it is a concept that Douglass must learn through his study of The Colombian Orator. This socially prescribed process suggests that his conception of freedom is not an intrinsic category , but instead it must be taught to him. Though he may perceive freedom in all things, this naturalized perception is socially produced. We must consequently recognize that his version of freedom is constructed to coincide with the expectations of his intended white audience and hence with ideals that emerged from a specific history of privilege and oppression. Despite its apparent simplicity, Hirschmann reminds us that “the value that we place on freedom, as well as the meaning we give to the word, is in no way essential or natural but the product of particular historical relationships that have developed throughout time” (“Toward a Feminist Theory” 52). As many critics have noted, Douglass derives his understanding of freedom from familiar national ideologies that enshrine self-reliance and autonomy. David Dudley positions Douglass in the tradition of early American writers who celebrate individual achievement: If young Benjamin Franklin arriving (alone) from Boston to Philadelphia epitomizes the white American version of the myth of the free man about to succeed in the land of unlimited opportunity , then Frederick Douglass and all male slaves, who, like him, escaped slavery alone and made their way North represent the African American version of the same myth. (6) Dudley’s emphasis on Douglass’s escape from slavery highlights the fundamental opposition between bondage and flight established in male slave narratives. In a text that Deborah McDowell identifies as “the prototypical , premier example of the form,” which “‘authorized’ most subsequent slave narratives” (37), freedom requires escape from the South.1 Despite this seemingly obvious association, it is important to note that flight did not guarantee unconditional freedom for escaped slaves. The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, which applied to Douglass and countless others, made Northern states uncertain territory as former Intra-independence 17 slaves were legally required to be returned to their masters in the South. While escaped slaves were not under the immediate control of vicious overseers, they were subject...