A Voice for the Victims

I wanted to take another look at the scene with Aunt Hester because I think this scene illustrates those things which we really don’t want to remember or even acknowledge to have actually happened and be a part of our history. It’s common knowledge that slavery is a horrible thing that dehumanizes people to the point where it would be better if they were merely beasts of burden as their masters believe them to be. But they aren’t. They are people with blood and a voice.

            Those two things are what make the section with Aunt Hester so hard to stomach. We can confer Mr. Plummer’s beatings of her are a regular occurrence based on Douglass’ description of how he would “whip upon her naked back till she was literally covered with blood […] He would whip her to make her scream, and whip her to make her hush” (2). This is the moment where we see the lust for power over someone else that is at the heart of what slavery is. Mr. Plummer’s goal on a daily basis is to draw blood and take away Hester’s voice and only allow it to come forth when he wants it.      

            This is even more prevalent on the following page when Douglass shows us what he saw on the day that he entered “the blood-stained gate, the entrance to the hell of slavery” (2). I think what touches me most deeply about this scene is how Douglass’ language makes the sight and sounds appear the way it would be if it were rape. He slows down the scene and begins, not with the actual act of the whipping, but the events which lead up to it. Mr. Plummer “took her into the kitchen” (3). For me, the word “took” doesn’t necessarily sound excessively forceful as compared to “he dragged her into the kitchen” – no, he took her. He then “stripped her from neck to waist, leaving her neck, shoulders, and back, entirely naked” (3). Now it starts to sound more forceful because he stripped her from neck to waist and it sounds as though she were not a person but a piece of wood that needs to be filed down and rid of its rough edges. except her doesn’t uncover her completely – he leaves her bottom half covered because all he seems to care for is the soft, scarred flesh of her back.

            The tension continues to build as Douglass describes how Mr. Plummer “made her get upon the stool, and tied her hands to the hook […] Her arms were stretched up at their full length, so that she stood upon the ends of her toes” (3). He made her – whether she wanted to or not, she had no choice – and her arms were stretched so that she stood upon the ends of her toes. Everything about this image is tense, and we see her hanging there like a piece of meat that is about to be stripped of its skin to expose the muscle and bone beneath – which is what is about to happen to her, and we already know it just from this image.

            And then it hits us. “[H]e commenced to lay on the heavy cowskin, and soon the warm, red blood […] came dripping to the floor” all while we hear “heart-rending shrieks from her” (3). At this point in our lives, almost everyone knows what blood looks like, and we see it here the same as anywhere else we would see it – warm and red, dripping to the floor – and we hear the pain in Aunt Hester’s voice. It’s the same here as it would be if it were a white woman that this were happening to, yet it makes no difference to Mr. Plummer because to him, she’s just an animal that he’s strung up and, somewhat ironically, using another beast’s skin to punish her. This scene shows us how she is dehumanized in Mr. Plummer’s eyes very similarly to how a rape victim is not seen as being another person in the eyes of their rapist.  

            With this interpretation in mind of how the way the scene portrays her as being a piece of livestock that’s been sent to a slaughter house, I think the scene is justifiably graphic. In some ways, yes, it may humiliate her further but considering the way that she had been dehumanized as she is, what further damage could she sustain by being seen as she is here. She is a woman who is being punished and treated in a manner which takes away any opportunity for her to be seen as belonging to that domestic sphere which is so essential to this time period. What else could be done that could harm her more than what has already happened to her?

To be honest, reading this scene wasn’t the hard part because I have a tendency to distance myself from the speaker and characters when reading a piece of literature in order to analyze it better. Trying to write about it and convey my feelings about the scene without becoming nonsensical is the hard part – that is, I want what I’m trying to say to make sense without my emotions getting in the way too much. Which is hard because this is a topic which I have very strong feelings about because, as a writer myself, the thought of having my voice being taken away from me is the worst possible end. I think that’s the reason why Douglass learning to read and write was so vital to his salvation.