Term Paper on "Douglass Women by Jewell Parker Rhodes"

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[EXCERPT] . . . .

Douglass' Women by Jewell Parker Rhodes

Award-winning author Jewell Parker Rhoads, who penned Voodoo Dreams and Magic City, gives fiction readers something new to think about with her newest work, Douglass' Women. Douglass' Women is the story of famed abolitionist Frederick Douglass and the two women who devoted their lives to him, his Black wife, Anna, and his white mistress, Ottilie Assing. Rhodes explains in an author's note how she came across a quote by Frederick Douglass describing his wife as "an old black log." She began to wonder about this faceless woman, damned to the ages by such an unflattering description, and decided to tell her story as well as the story of another woman, this one Caucasian, who also struggled for Douglass' elusive love.

Anna Douglass and Ottilie Assing are both real people. Both struggled in relationships with the great abolitionist, but historically they struggled in private. In Douglass' Women, Rhodes has opened the floodgate and given them the voices history denied them. The author alternates voices, giving a few chapters to Anna who clings to her Freddy believing that "love be true," and then a few chapters to Ottilie who longs for Douglass' body and soul and calls herself "the wife of his spirit." In doing so, Rhodes manages to create not one but two flawed, beautiful literary voices. Douglass' Women, with its vibrant characters, attention to historical detail, and moving plot provides a treat for any adult reader.

The book opens with a section from Anna. She describes how she, a freeborn Black, met Frederick Douglass (then Freddy Bailey) at the docks in Baltimore. In spite of the fact that he is a slave and has the scars on his back to prove it, he stands tall and noble, looking more like a captain than a captive. Anna, who thinks of herself as old, ugly, and beneath his notice, strikes up a conversation and then a relationship with Freddy. She eventually gives him money to help him escape to the North.

Up North, Freddy -- now known as Frederick Douglas -- quickly becomes involved in the abolitionist movement. Every night he rants and rails against the unfairness of slavery and promotes a color-blind society, but at the same time, he is becoming dissatisfied with his uneducated, dark-skinned wife. Meanwhile, he meets blonde-haired blue-eyed Ottilie Assing who is his intellectual equal and who is drawn to, rather than put off by, his color. They begin an affair. Over the years, as Frederick continues his abolitionist work both at home and abroad, his passions remain divided between his faithful, loving, but socially unsuitable wife and his thrilling, outspoken mistress. But in the end, he betrays both these women for a cause even dearer to his heart than love: abolition.

Since this is a character-driven novel, Rhodes goes out of her way to develop three strong, interesting characters: Anna, Ottilie, and Frederick. Anna's voice is the first the reader attends to. One can practically hear her low, lyrical tones reciting the stories of ancient tragedies and modern events. Anna is especially fascinated by the legend that the bones of slaves who were killed being brought across the sea lie at the bottom of the ocean, ready to intervene in a person's life for good or evil. She has always believed that the bones bring good to her, and at times prays to them for help. With her parents' happy marriage as a model, Anna believes the most important thing for a woman to do is keep house and take care of her husband and children. "Let me have your clothes," she says to Frederick shortly after they are married, "I'll fold them so they won't need ironing tomorrow. I should draw water, too, for us to wash. Put away our clothes, lay out our bedclothes. These my wifely duties. I should start as I mean to go on."

When she recognizes her husband's affair with Ottilie, she is devastated, especially when she learns Frederick plans to move Ottilie into their house during the summers. She initially tries to order Ottilie out of her house, but Ottilie says only Frederick has the authority to do that. In the end, Anna asserts her authority over the wifely things she can control. "The children are not to know....You are not to enter my kitchen. My sewing room....Or my children's rooms....Change your own linens." Thus she fights for Frederick in the only way she can, being a wife and mother. It isn't enough. Even on her deathbed she remains unsure of Frederick's love:

Ottilie's character is much more complex and perhaps a bit harder to empathize with as well. Ottilie tells the reader of being born in a well-to-do German family. Her mother is a Christian, her father, a Jew. Both are intellectuals with a love of the arts. She is aware of the anti-Semitism her father faces, but being blonde and blue-eyed, she never faces prejudice herself. She grows up glorifying America as the land of freedom and dreams. After her parents die, she decides she must travel there. En route, however, she is given a rude awakening to slavery when a slave named Oluwand throws herself overboard rather than endure any more sexual abuse from her master. For the rest of the novel, Ottilie feels haunted and protected by Oluwand, just as Anna feels protected by the bones.

Ottilie joins the abolitionist network soon after she enters America. She sees Frederick while he is giving an impassioned speech on the life of a slave, and is immediately attracted to him. Anna she dismisses as looking "like a butcher's wife." When Frederick is forced to flea the country to avoid slave catchers, Ottilie travels with him and very deliberately seduces him. While he lives abroad in England, the two carry out a stormy circumspect affair of heart, body, and mind. For Ottilie can give Frederick one thing Anna can't: an intellectual companion. Someone to debate with, someone to respect, someone to help him fulfill his dreams of sharing his story with the whole world. Ottilie even catches herself thinking of Anna, "She was unworthy of him. She should have been the slave," although she immediately rebukes herself for such thoughts.

Although Ottilie considers herself Frederick's spiritual match, Frederick treats her much the same way he treats Anna. He uses her talents and her body as he pleases and ignores the rest of her. "I wished, oh, how I wished he'd speak sweet words," Ottilie mourns. But it is not to be. After Anna's death, Frederick promptly remarries another white woman. Ottilie, devastated by his rejection of her, commits suicide.

The characterization of Frederick Douglass is perhaps the most interesting in the book. Frederick is never given a voice of his own. We see him through the eyes of Anna and Ottilie, and their vision does not paint a very flattering picture. Here is a man who seems to use his women as thoughtlessly as he uses a dishrag, with little care for their feelings. For instance, he does not even notice that his wife, Anna, is pregnant, until Ottilie arrives to spend the summer and points it out to him. Nor does he notice or care when Anna comes out of a long depression and starts getting out of bed for the first time in a year.

Frederick is also, for all his talk of color-blindness, quite racially prejudiced, as is shown when his oldest daughter falls in love with a runaway slave. He snaps, "I raised you for better than this. Better than him....I'm married to an old black log. Would you repeat my mistake?" Thus the character of Frederick comes across as complex and bewildering. On the one hand, he is a hero who works tirelessly for the abolitionist movement. On the other, he is a small man, a selfish man, who holds many of the same biases he condemns.

The carefully constructed plot is another element that makes Douglass' Women well worth the time it takes to read it. Anna and Ottilie's voices serve not only to provide excellent characterizations, but to tell a story -- or perhaps two stories -- as well. Rhodes uses her characters to propel the reader through the history of the last years of slavery and the abolitionist movement. For instance, she mentions that due to the Fugitive Slave Act, Frederick can still be captured and returned to slavery, even though he lives in a "free state." To avoid slave catchers, he must leave the country until the abolitionists can arrange to buy his freedom. The novel also discusses the influence of John Brown and how some abolitionist rhetoric turns from peace to violence under his influence. Even Frederick Douglass is moved by Brown, telling his mistress Ottilie, "Just as I fought Covey [a former, cruel master], Brown is encouraging the race to rise up." Douglass is forced to flea to England for the second time after Brown is caught and hanged.

Although Rhodes… READ MORE

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