How Audience Has Shaped Black Autobiography

Images of Harriet Jacobs and Booker T. Washington respectively.

When reading any literary work, understanding the audience the author intended to reach reveals fresh layers of meaning. In Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl she clearly indicates through the preface that she is writing for a specific audience: white northern women. Booker T. Washington, by contrast, intended his autobiography Up from Slavery to reach a somewhat broader audience, though it was still largely shaped by white readers’ expectations. By analyzing both texts we see how the differences in audience lead to either emphasis on particular ideas or sanitization of certain experiences from slavery. While both Harriet Jacobs and Booker T. Washington shape their narratives around white audiences, Jacobs exposes the emotional and moral horrors of slavery to elicit sympathy and provoke Northern women into action, whereas Washington strategically edits and moralizes his experiences to reassure white readers and present himself and his race as beneficiaries of slavery. In both cases the audience plays an important role in shaping Black autobiography.

The preface in Life of a Slave Girl explicitly states who the work is meant for. “I do earnestly desire to arouse the women of the North to a realizing sense of the condition of two millions of women in the South, still in bondage and suffering what I suffered and most of them far worse.” Throughout the narrative she describes the abrupt transition from girlhood to womanhood, and how physiological torture followed. While she does include accounts of physical brutality inflicted on others, such as the enslaved man who was force-fed dog food, she focuses more heavily on the internal effects of slavery on herself, particularly as a Christian woman and later as a mother. On page 28 Jacobs writes, “Soon she will learn to tremble when she hears her master’s footfall. She will be compelled to realize that she is no longer a child…” Slave or not, feeling uncomfortable amongst certain men was probably a widely shared experience amongst women at that time. As Brent tells her story she tiptoes the line between garnering sympathy and alienating white readers. On page 51 she states, “I feel that the slave women ought not to be judged by the same standard as others.” Jacobs attempts to preserve Christian sympathy while explaining the morally impossible choices she was forced to make as a young enslaved woman. As Brent’s story develops she often writes about yearning to be with her children, an experience many women and mothers could probably sympathize with. When she finally makes it to the North she calls them out for their complicity “…Northern soil, but I no longer called it free soil.” Instead of enjoying the rest of her life with her children in peace, she lives in constant fear until she is bought and freed. In conclusion, she relies on shared womanhood and motherhood to bridge the racial gap.

The image above captures Booker T. Washington delivering his Atlanta address.

    Although Washington's story was written for a wider audience, it was still carefully edited for white audiences. Throughout his writing it feels as if he was under constant pressure to prove himself to the white people, many of whom came for the entertainment of watching him fail at his Atlanta address. He wrote about his life through a highly retrospective lens aimed at proving his worthiness as a good black person. He details the strife he went through just to learn how to read. But perhaps the most salient example is his description of a childhood hat. He could have said that he begged his mom for a hat so he could fit in at school with the other boys. Instead, he turns it into a life lesson about only taking what you deserve. He disparaged the boys that spend money on store bought hats, saying that buying something they didn’t have enough money for and therefore didn’t earn later landed them in prison. Indeed, it was his willingness to wear a scrappy homemade hat that gave him value. He is willing to cast down his bucket where it lands and not desire more for his race or himself as a member of it. Throughout, he refers to black people as “members of my race,” attempting to form a group identity around being a good black person who will take what they are given and be grateful for the skills learned during slavery. He frames racism and injustice as obstacles to overcome rather than systems to confront. Washington’s insistence on respectability and self-denial can be read as a survival strategy in a violently racist society. However, this strategy comes at the cost of reinforcing white comfort, requiring Black people to police themselves in order to be deemed worthy of basic respect. However, from reading this piece it seems like he really believed most of what he said. In catering his narrative to white audiences, Washington transforms Black suffering into proof of moral virtue rather than evidence of injustice.

While we will never know the private beliefs of either Harriet Jacobs or Booker T. Washington, their narratives clearly demonstrate how the audience can affect literary work under oppression. Jacobs navigate a careful balance between blaming the white race for her torture and cultivating thier sympathy. She emphasizes her womanhood and motherhood to demand moral reckoning. Washington, writing with the knowledge people wanted him to fail, shaped black suffering into evidence of discipline and progress. These texts both demonstrate that autobiographies are never neutral accounts, especially in times of oppression. Instead they aim to negotiate the terms and expectations in the white and black relations. Understanding their audience tells us not only what they wished to express explicitly, but also what they were forced to withhold.

Thanks for reading,

-Sasha

Works Cited

Jacobs, Harriet A. (Harriet Ann), 1813-1897. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl : Written by Herself. 

Washington, Booker T. Up from Slavery. Dover Publications, 1995.