My Bondage and My Freedom

Content warning: This section of the guide discusses racism and enslavement.

One of Douglass’s preeminent themes in his second memoir is enslavement’s dehumanization of both the enslaved and the enslaver. Having acquired more education, independence, and eloquence since the publication of the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass a decade earlier, Douglass identifies his tormenters, whereas he had previously withheld their names, and engages in penetrating psychological analyses. By doing the latter, he is careful not to deny his past tormenters their humanity despite their own abdication of it.

Douglass first details how enslavement transformed him from a carefree child (he was not aware of his condition for his first eight years) into a brute, due to witnessing violence against fellow enslaved people; his mistreatment at the hands of his supposed guardian, Aunt Katy; not being allowed the right to read; and enduring Edward Covey’s relentless cruelty. Douglass frequently uses the noun “brute” throughout the memoir. It identifies what he felt he had become due to ill-treatment at the hands of enslavers, overseers, people who broke the will of enslaved people, and anyone else committed to enslavement or trapped within it. By using the same language to illustrate his condition and that of his oppressors, he emphasizes their equal humanity and equal debasement.

Douglass is most emphatic in depicting the meanness of white men: the way in which Colonel Lloyd beat Old Barney, his peer in age, for taking less exacting care of the colonel’s horses; the instance in which Captain Anthony refused Douglass’s Aunt Esther the right to love Ned and beat her savagely for venturing forth anyway with her romance; the savage violence committed by the overseers Mr. Sevier, Austin Gore, and Mr. Plummer, as well as that which Douglass suffered from Covey. Those who stood to gain the most from the enslavement system were most committed to enforcing its rules through violent punishment.

Consequently, Douglass’s depictions of Lucretia and Sophia Auld are notably more sympathetic. Unlike Aunt Katy, these women had never inflicted physical violence on him and had expressed maternal tenderness during a time in which he hungered for such care. Though he expresses disappointment at Sophia’s transformation, he doesn’t blame her for it. Like Covey, Sophia was a devoutly Christian enslaver, but Douglass never expresses disapproval of her hypocrisy, as he does Covey. He doesn’t believe that Sophia relished meanness, as Covey did. Instead, he likens her suffering to his own, believing that she, too, suffered from her husband’s dominance and that of every other Southern white man.