Frederick Douglass and American Identity

Frederick Douglass

Our discussion at the end of class was especially intriguing, as we were beginning to grapple with the question of how to adjust our understanding of American identity in light of Douglass’ narrative. Taylor’s point that this tale reminds us not only that we’ve made mistakes in our national past, but also that we have the potential to remedy those mistakes, is an uplifting view. Democracy ought to be self-correcting, hence Obama’s allusion to the preamble to the Constitution: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” This is an interesting twist on our discussion of utopian thinking in American culture. The Constitution – and Douglass’ narrative – help nudge us away from the idea of perfection as an immediate or obvious reality, suggesting instead that democracy is a state of imperfection that allows for perpetual self-correction. If we live by the Constitution, we are ever in search of improvement, never satisfied with the way things are, continually asking ourselves, “Who among us is still chained? Who among us has not drunk as deeply of liberty as the rest?”

There are many competing views of America, but it always strikes me as ironic that the views claiming to be the most patriotic are often the most hostile to self-examination. If we take the preamble to the Constitution as our guide, it seems we ought to approach our national identity with some humility. National pride need not be arrogant if it is mindful of past and present flaws and earnest about setting them right. Benjamin Franklin’s quest for self-improvement by measuring his daily behavior against his list of virtues seems an apt analogy.

We are living in a time when the beacons of hope that sustained former generations and fueled utopian thinking about American destiny seem dimmer. There is no New World beckoning to us, no literal frontier to be settled, no promise of infinite economic expansion. Our frontiers are metaphorical (technology, science, environment), and many of them are transnational. If our national identity depends on holding up America as the solitary exemplar of virtue and goodness in the world, then we are setting ourselves up for disappointment, because our flaws will seem to undermine our claims to greatness. If we understand our past and present with humility, facing the future with a desire for improvement rather than a stubborn defensiveness, we will be better positioned to collaborate within and without our borders to meet the challenges of our day.

Douglass’s conclusion to his Narrative is driven both by a sense of purpose and a feeling of humility. In part, this was driven by the social pressures of his time, as he sought (like Wheatley and Bradstreet) to transform the social power structure from within, rather than seeking to overthrow it. We hear in his parody of the hymn “Heavenly Union” a sharper tone than he allows himself in much of the narrative, which might remind us of the great restraint he shows in many of the earlier scenes. We ought not mistake his restraint for indifference; it is a strategy for achieving maximum impact, for maintaining a tone that invites the reader to listen and, in listening, to think both rationally and emotionally about the injustice of slavery.

These are Douglass’ closing words:

“Sincerely and earnestly hoping that this little book may do something toward throwing light on the American slave system, and hastening the glad day of deliverance to the millions of my brethren in bonds – faithfully relying upon the power of truth, love, and justice, for success in my humble efforts – and solemnly pledging my self anew to the sacred cause, – I subscribe myself, FREDERICK DOUGLASS” (1945).

When I think of Americans whom I most admire - exemplars of those personal characteristics toward which I aspire – Douglass stands among them as a self-made man who took control of his own future against incredible pressures. What most inspires me is his ability to speak both passionately and rationally. Garrison’s and Phillips’ prefatory letters, while designed to spark abolitionist fervor, seem less effective in this regard, as they simplify and vilify others without admitting any uncertainty, the way Paine’s “American Crisis” works the reader into a patriotic lather. Douglass avoids this pedantic approach by giving us scenes of true life, speaking from his own experience and often letting the reader draw her own conclusions. The result is an American narrative that reminds us of problems and promise, encouraging us to emulate its narrator in our quest of self-improvement and our search for a more perfect union.

Douglass – Day Two

We’ll finish Douglass’ Narrative for Friday. President Obama’s speech on race, “A More Perfect Union,” may be a useful comparison to Douglass’ narrative (see link below).

Questions to consider:

• Compare Douglass’s view of God to the views Franklin, Paine, Crevecoeur, or Wheatley espouse. Which passages reveal Douglass’s thinking about religion most clearly? See, also, his comments in the Appendix and his closing poem.
• Connect this statement by Garrison to examples from Chapters IX to the end: “There is in him that union of head and heart which is indispensable to an enlightenment of the heads and a winning of the hearts of others” (1884). Where do you see Douglass appealing to reason and where do you see him appealing to feeling in this section of the reading?

• We just had time for a few examples today of how Douglass, Garrison, and Phillips link this narrative to American mythologies, specifically the Puritan story of spiritual destiny and the Revolutionary story of independence. What other connections or contrasts do you see in these later chapters between the different definitions of American identity that we’ve seen in the reading thus far?
• We considered today how Franklin’s Poor Richard might have interpreted the first section of the reading. How would Poor Richard view these later chapters?
• We’ve discussed how Farmer James moves from elation to despair in Letters from an American Farmer. What changes in Douglass as a narrator do you see in these later chapters (if any)? How do these changes compare to those that Farmer James undergoes?

Frederick Douglass – Day One

Douglass’s Narrative helped fuel the abolitionist cause that Crevecoeur alludes to and Wheatley, more subtly, affirms in her poetry. We’re fast forwarding about sixty years to Douglass, but since his narrative follows the conventions of Franklin’s Autobiography and Crevecoeur’s Letters, Douglass will help us transition to Romanticism.

You might find this biographical timeline for helpful for following Douglass’s life at a glance. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave is also available in full text here. See also this documentary on Abolition and Douglass.

Questions to consider:

• Pick a few passages in the reading for Wednesday that either remind you of experiences in your own life or cause you to reflect on the differences between your experience and Douglass’s. Which of the other writers after midterm addresses similar issues to those in the passages you’ve chosen? Compare/contrast with Douglass.
• Who is Douglass’s audience, and how does he seek to reach this audience? How do his literary strategies in this first installment compare to Wheatley’s and Crevecoeur’s literary techniques?  What does he add to the conversation about race relations in America?
• Compare Douglass’s view of God to the views Franklin, Paine, Crevecoeur, or Wheatley espouse. Which passages reveal Douglass’s thinking about religion most clearly?
• How does Douglass characterize himself as a narrator? Compare/contrast his characteristics with Farmer James in Letters from an American Farmer. What do you most admire about Douglass and Crevecoeur’s narrator, Farmer James?
• Why does Douglass’s narrative come with a preface (and why is the author of the preface significant)? How is this preface similar to or different from the preface that framed Rowlandson’s narrative? How does it compare to Crevecoeur’s introduction to Letters from an American Farmer? Discuss two or three key passages in the reading for Wednesday that you feel the preface foreshadows especially clearly.
• Jot down a few questions that the reading raised for you and try to answer them using textual examples from the reading, information from the links for Douglass on the course website, and connections to one of the texts after midterm.

Phillis Wheatley – Mon, Oct 25

Hope you enjoy Wheatley’s poems. As always, the biographical sketch in the anthology is a helpful introduction. Wheatley’s poetry is astounding given the fact that she was kidnapped at an estimated seven years of age (with no knowledge of English) and began writing poems just four years afterward. Even more astonishing is her publication of her first poems in 1767 at approximately age thirteen or fourteen.

Questions to consider:

1. “On Being Brought from Africa to America” is Wheatley’s most controversial poem. It is also frequently cited as an example of her double voice. To whom might Wheatley be speaking in this poem? How does she code her more subversive message, and what might that coded message be? How does her message in this poem compare to Letter IX of Letters from an American Farmer?
2. What intertextual echoes or contrasts do you hear between “A Farewell to America” and the final section of Crevecoeur’s narrative? How do you make sense of the different attitudes this poem expresses toward “Britannia” and “New-England”? How do you interpret Wheatley’s reference to Temptation in the final two stanzas?
3. “Thoughts on the Works of Providence” is the most challenging poem of the three. You’ll notice some comparisons between Bradstreet’s “The Flesh and the Spirit,” particularly in Wheatley’s personification of Wisdom, Chaos, Reason, Love, and others. What does this poem tell us about Wheatley’s theology, in comparison to other writers we’ve read recently, such as Edwards, Paine, and Crevecoeur? How might she define “God”? How does her view of nature relate to her theology?
4. Close reading of the personified characters (see the capitalized and italicized names) will also help us get at the heart of this text. See this link for more on Phoebus. What is Wheatley trying to accomplish by dramatizing these characters? See, especially, the conversation between Reason and Love.
5. Wheatley relies heavily on nuance in this poem, creating imagery that requires interpretation. What nuances seem most significant to you? More specifically, why does she emphasize light so strongly?

Research presentation schedule – updated

Here is my most recent presentation schedule for the rest of the semester:

• Crevecoeur, Oct 20: Taylor
• Douglass, Oct 27: Tyler
• Emerson, Nov 3: Nick, Zach
• Fuller, Nov 8: Katy, Carroyl
• Thoreau, Nov 10: Brett, Brandon
• Irving, Nov 15: Melissa, Marcus
• Hawthorne, Nov 19: Ivana, Ryan
• Melville, Nov 29: Shannon, Matt I.
• Whitman, Dec 1: Michele, Steph
• Dickinson, Dec 8: Sarah, Justin

Crevecoeur – Day One

Hope you enjoy the first installment of Letters from an American Farmer. Let’s remember that this narrative is fictional, even though some of it is drawn from Crevecoeur’s experience (so it is “based on true stories”). The biographical sketch in our anthology offers a helpful summary of its literary classification as “a form of epistolary [letter-writing], philosophical travel narrative that integrates important Enlightenment ideas into descriptions of ordinary American life” (Saar 922). At the very least, Crevecoeur’s status as a Frenchman-turned-American gives us a reason to argue against the rationale for renaming our favorite fast food as “freedom fries” (or does it?).

Questions to consider:

• Storytelling and style: What purpose does Farmer James’s introductory dialogue with the minister serve, in terms of literary style? What other literary devices do you find that enrich the narrative? Compare and contrast with Paine’s persuasive rhetoric or Edwards’s lyricism for intertextual depth.
• American identity: What do you make of Crevecoeur’s definition of an American? How does this compare with your own definition and with the themes we have traced in other readings?
• Enlightenment influence: I will talk a bit on Wednesday, if time permits, about natural law, since this idea influenced Crevecoeur immensely. Crevecoeur riffs occasionally on Enlightenment philosophers like Rousseau, who gave us the famous line, “Man was born free, but everywhere he is in chains” (see “The Social Contract” for more from Rousseau). How does the philosophy of Letters from an American Farmer compare to John Locke’s ideas in “Essay Concerning Human Understanding” in our anthology (635-6)?

Paine – The American Crisis and The Age of Reason

Thomas Paine will take us into new territory next time. Like Franklin, he’ll try to get us to look at American life from a different point of view than we’ve yet considered.

It could be useful to compare Paine’s ideas with this article on Religion in 18th-century America.

Questions:

• How can we reconcile Paine’s frequent mention of God in “The American Crisis” with his discussion of religion in “The Age of Reason”? How is he defining “God”?
• Note the different publication dates between the two texts. What do the biographical sketch in the anthology or the links on the course website tell you about the historical factors that may have influenced Paine’s texts? Who is his intended audience for each text?
• We’ll want to keep thinking about defining characteristics of American identity and Paine’s place in that discussion.
• Paine is known for his “plain” style of writing, though this by no means suggests that his writing is unsophisticated. Where do you see his “plain” style most clearly? Where do you notice the artistry in his use of language? Both of these essays are meant to persuade the reader of something. What is Paine’s persuasive purpose in each, and how does he use his literary style to achieve that purpose?

Franklin and Satire

Franklin was the Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert of his time (in addition to being an eminent scientist, citizen, and statesman), so I hope we have some fun with his satirical sketches next time. This definition of satire may be useful for context.

For discussion on Wednesday, please pick “The Speech of Polly Baker,” “An Edict by the King of Prussia,” or “Remarks Concerning the Savages of North America,” read closely for its message (see the footnotes for help), and come prepared to perform a passage that you find especially funny or powerful. Hopefully you’ll enjoy “A Witch Trial at Mount Holly,” too, but we won’t focus on this for discussion. We’ll start in small groups to prepare a brief summary of the sketch for context, then perform an excerpt for the large group.

Questions to consider:

“The Speech of Polly Baker” (1747)

• Compare with the other trials we’ve discussed (Hutchinson, Carrier, Morton). What is different about this text’s portrayal of women?
• What are the charges against Polly? What is her defense?
• Watch for moments of irony and wit

“An Edict by the King of Prussia” (1773)

• The historical context is significant here, as this sketch was published in the years leading up to the American Revolution. What relevance does this text have to the relationship between the American colonies and Great Britain in 1773?
• How do you know this sketch is satirical?
• Watch for evidence of rationalism

“Remarks Concerning the Savages of North America” (1784)

• Compare/contrast with Bradford, Rowlandson, Handsome Lake, and Morton
• Where do you see Franklin’s use of humor to provoke thought about race relations? What do you think he wanted to accomplish by writing this?

Thoughts on “The Crucible”

After we’d discussed the film last night I was thinking about the depiction of John and Elizabeth Proctor, especially the scene where they forgive each other while standing in the bitter wind by the sea. While some aspects of the film seem overly dramatic (the opening revel in the forest, the closing rush into the sea with much froth and shouting and Reverend Hale’s exclamation, “I quit this court!”), the conversations between John and Elizabeth bring the hardship of Puritan life into focus. Elizabeth’s cold suspicion of John, especially after discovering that he’d spoken with Abigail in private during his visit to the town, their tense meeting with Hale during which John cannot remember all of his commandments, and John’s treatment of Mary Warren, their servant girl, all resonate with the pictures of Puritan life we find in Winthrop and Bradford.

But we know from Bradstreet’s poetry and from her letter to her children that there was tenderness in this culture. People loved and laughed and cried. Not everyone was certain of their faith in every aspect, nor was everyone comfortable making judgments of others. In that scene by the sea we hear echoes of “To My Dear and Loving Husband,” and we can feel some of the tenderness evident in Taylor’s poetry, such as “Upon Wedlock, & the Death of Children.” In Elizabeth’s stern demeanor, we see some of Mary Rowlandson’s flinty character, but in the scene by the sea we also see the softer side of the Puritan woman, the side that Rowlandson showed when she wept for her lost child. Judge Danforth is a steely figure, reminiscent of Winthrop in the trial of Anne Hutchinson, but the characters of Mr. Jacobs and Mr. Nurse represent the gentler side of Puritan masculinity, which Taylor reminds us of in his poetry. In Thomas Putnam we see the materialism that Bradford lamented near the end of his history of Plymouth, and in John Proctor we see the emergence of a new kind of American, whose rationalism is the harbinger of democracy.

Reflections on “America” and “American literature” at midterm

First, the theoretical assumptions underpinning our course derive from multiculturalism (versus ethnocentrism) and historicism (versus canonicity). The first assumption is that America is, by definition, multi-vocal, that we cannot understand America if we listen only to one set of voices. The second assumption follow this one, namely, that the canon of white male authors that dominated American literature for much of the twentieth century must be expanded if we are to understand as diverse a tradition as ours.

“America” was the general name for the New World (both North and South America) after Amerigo Vespucci had published his account of South America in Europe (see the opening essay in our anthology, “Colonial Period to 1700,” 1-15). Columbus calls the new country he visits America (120), and Cotton Mather, in his “Magnalia Christi Americana,” similarly describes New England as a place distinct from the Old World (514).

America in this period was contested space, English and French and Spanish settlers all vying for control over the land. The meaning of “America” was up for grabs, in flux, evolving throughout this period, as it is to the present day. But, as Andrew Wiget explains in “Native American Oral Narrative,” North America was not a “new” place, and “Columbus did not enter a silent world” (18). Nor did indigenous tribes exist in isolation from the expanding colonies. The conflicts, compromises, and conversations between European and Native Americans challenged the idea that America was a blank slate, which is perhaps why Native American voices have so often played a marginal role in our literary tradition and why including those voices now is so essential to re-envisioning a more multicultural national heritage. Tribal history is also American history, just as the history of the Amana Colonies near Cedar Rapids or Vedic City near Fairfield is American history, though these utopian communities all have origins predating the United States of America.

The Puritans, like the settlers of Amana or the architects of Vedic City, brought their past into conversation with their dream of a new society. Even as they broke with the established religion of the Old World, they preserved many aspects of English culture that persist to this day in New England. And even though the Salem Trials marked the end of Puritan control of New England, hastening the advance of Enlightenment thinking, Puritan heritage is with us still in many forms. We go to college to get a job because we have inherited the Puritan distrust of intellectual inquiry for its own sake; we want a practical outcome of our labor. We don’t take vacations for sheer pleasure; we justify them because time off will make us more productive when we return to work. These habits of industry and self-denial may not always take overtly religious forms, but they linger in our national consciousness, affect our political discourse, and continue to reveal the tension between faith and reason in our civic life.

We read these texts to understand why New England didn’t persist in the way Winthrop thought it would, to comprehend what caused the utopian vision to fail. This helps us better understand what drove Founders like Jefferson and Franklin and Adams to establish a wall between church and state, as they sought to avoid foreign and domestic tyranny. Reading these figures and wrestling with the ironies they represent gives us insight into how we want to define America in our own time (since that definition is still up for grabs). Which origins do we want to claim for the future? Which origins do we want to memorialize for the sake of never repeating them again? This is a story that we each get to contribute to as citizens. We are all authors of America. These texts, these stories and sermons and poems, provide a conversation that we each get to join.