As Harriet Jacobs builds the courage to admit to her grandmother that she is pregnant, she sits down “in the shade of a tree.” The symbol of this tree, which is mentioned at the moment when Jacobs considers the consequences of her sexual relationship, parallels imagery from Their Eyes Were Watching God, in which a pear tree is the site of Janie’s sexual awakening. This parallel is strengthened by the fact that the women have similar confrontations with their grandmothers, after encountering the trees. Harriet’s grandmother tears Harriet’s mother’s wedding ring from her finger and says she is a disgrace. Janie’s grandmother, after witnessing her kissing a boy named Johnny Taylor, immediately proposes that she marry a man who is much older than her. When Janie expresses disgust at the prospect, her grandmother slaps her.
McFeely suggests that Douglass’s speculation about the race of his father was probably founded on gossip he heard in his grandmother’s cabin, “as people accounted for his difference in color from his brothers and sisters.” This talk related to the fact that Douglass was “‘yellow,'” and that he “had a muted, dull complexion” that was lighter than those of his relatives. (8)
Although William McFeely says Douglass “placed the blame squarely on slavery” for the fact that he wasn’t close to his mother (6), the historian also cites a reason for Douglass to resent her. McFeely writes, “To be sure, even frequent visits would have been a poor substitute for the constancy of a daily life together, but Harriet did not make them at all” (7).
The scenario described, in which a master would feel “compelled” to send his own child away “out of deference to the feelings of his…wife” echoes the story of Abraham and his wife Sarah. In Genesis 21, Sarah sends her handmaid, Hagar, away when she is mocked by the son Hagar bears for Abraham. Likewise, a master might have been compelled to send his child away if a slave mistress felt like the child of her husband and an enslaved black woman made a mockery of her marriage.
Douglass lived on the plantation of a man named Edward Lloyd, a successful farmer and planter who served as both governor of Maryland and a senator. In his biography of Douglass, William McFeely writes “Douglass never explicitly said whom he most suspected to have been his father, but late in life he was still intrigued by the story of a slave son of Edward Lloyd’s who was bitterly resented by a half brother whom he clearly resembled.” McFeely also noted that during moments of passion in the midst of a speech, Douglass had been known to allege that Lloyd was his father. (13-14) This prospect corresponds with Douglass’s comment about “the double relation of master and father.”
In his discussion of what he characterizes as Douglass’s complicated relationship with the Aulds, William McFeely writes “By separating the boy from his relatives, the two had unwittingly seen to it that he had no family ties strong enough to keep him from trying to escape from slavery” (39). This relates to remarks Douglass makes early on in his narrative about “The ties that ordinarily bind children to their homes” being suspended for him, and the fact that the absence of his mother and the distance from his grandmother kept him from feeling close to his brother and sisters. McFeely’s observation contrasts Douglass’s experience with that of Harriet Jacobs, about whom Winifred Morgan wrote “Jacobs fears that if she runs away, the Flints, as retribution, would sell her children; yet she takes a chance on breaking the cycle of slavery because she fears even more having Ellen grow up and repeat her humiliation” (87). There don’t appear to be as many comparable bonds for Douglass.
Jacobs feeling that it would be better for her child to die than to continue living in slavery offers a parallel between Jacobs, Margaret Garner and Morrison’s Beloved. Furthermore, Jacobs’ reference to being “broken in,” or the idea of a mother being forced to observe the abuse of her children so regularly that she eventually accepts it, offers insight into something Frederick Douglass wrote. As he describes the first place where he lived, Douglass indicates that there was little to hold him there because his familial connections were disrupted by the business of slavery. Of his siblings, he writes, “the early separation of us from our mother had well nigh blotted the fact of our relationship from our memories.” Much like the daily experience of slavery results in Jacobs observation of mothers who’ve been traumatized to the point that they express little, as they watch their children being beaten, disruption of families during slavery severed the basic ties between relatives, resulting in situations like the one Douglass described.