Douglass was separated from his Harriet Bailey, his mother, soon after he was born as he tells us through his writings.
- ¨Never having enjoyed, to any considerable extent, her soothing presence, her tender and watchful care, I received the tidings of [my mother’s] death with much the same emotions I should have probably felt at the death of a stranger¨
In Chapter I of the Narrative, Douglass explains that his master separates him from his mother soon after his birth. This separation ensured that Douglass did not develop a family bond toward his mother. Douglass talks about how a slave is “shaped,” beginning at birth. He explains the ways by which slave owners alter social bonds and the natural processes of life in order to transform men into slaves. This process begins at birth. Slave traders first remove a child from his family, and Douglass shows how this destroys the child’s support and sense of a personal history.
In this quotation, Douglass uses adjectives like “soothing” and “tender” to re-create the childhood he would have known if his mother had been present. Douglass often recreates this assertion in his narrative in order to contrast normal stages of childhood development with the quality of development that he knew as a child.
His focus on the family structure and the awful moment of his mother’s death is typical of the conventions of nineteenth-century sentimental narratives. The destruction of family structure would have saddened readers and appeared to be a signal of the larger moral illnesses of the culture. Douglass, like many nineteenth-century authors, shows how social injustice can be expressed through the breakdown of a family structure. Douglass became deeply engaged with the abolitionist movement as both a writer and an orator.
