Reading Testimony, Witnessing Trauma

Confronting Race, Gender, and Violence in American Literature

Eden Wales Freedman

• Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781496827357
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: North American Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Winner of the 2020 Eudora Welty Prize Theorists emphasize the necessity of writing about—or witnessing—trauma in order to overcome it. To this critical conversation, Reading Testimony, Witnessing Trauma: Confronting Race, Gender, and Violence in American Literature treats reader response to traumatic and testimonial literature written by and about African American women and adds insight into the engagement of testimonial literature. Eden Wales Freedman articulates a theory of reading (or dual-witnessing) that explores how narrators and readers can witness trauma together. She places these original theories of traumatic reception in conversation with the African American literary tradition to speak to the histories, cultures, and traumas of African Americans, particularly the repercussions of slavery, as witnessed in African American literature. The volume also considers intersections of race and gender and how narrators and readers can cross such constructs to witness collectively. Reading Testimony, Witnessing Trauma 's innovative examinations of raced-gendered intersections open and speak with those works that promote dual-witnessing through the fraught (literary) histories of race and gender relations in America. To explicate how dual-witnessing converses with American literature, race theory, and gender criticism, the book analyzes emancipatory narratives by Sojourner Truth, Harriet Jacobs, and Elizabeth Keckley and novels by William Faulkner, Zora Neale Hurston, Margaret Walker, Toni Morrison, and Jesmyn Ward.

CHAPTER 1

“To Be Free to Say So”

Witnessing Trauma in the Narratives of Harriet Jacobs, Sojourner Truth, and Elizabeth Keckley

The capacity for narrative nonfiction to witness trauma is upheld by auto-biographical critics and memoirists alike. Life writing, theorists maintain, permits the author to witness in three principal ways. First, writing out and through one’s trauma (what Suzette Henke calls “scriptotherapy”) empowers the writer to process and prevail over her tragedies (xxi). Second, life writing allows the speaker to testify to a newly particularized self that emanates directly out of her encounter with catastrophe (Ellerby xxi). Third, writing through trauma permits the survivor to “speak truth to power,” to testify publicly not only to the suffering she has endured but also against the systemic oppression and violence that helped facilitate her individual experience (Hill 6). In these ways, autobiography offers primary witnesses the opportunity to (re)assert control over their life narratives, to reform shattered selves, and to combat respective and collective injustice.

Evidence of autobiography’s witnessing potential is found in nineteenth-century American emancipatory narratives, which testify to the formerly enslaved speaker’s individual trauma and personhood (McBride 16), to the catastrophes borne mutually by all American slaves (Gates xxvi), and to the insidiousness of slavery itself (Foster Written 86). Emancipatory narratives also encourage dual-witnessing, exhorting readers to witness their accounts secondarily by reaffirming their speakers’ individual and representative personhood and racially induced suffering. On this premise, this chapter analyzes three emancipatory narratives: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, by Harriet Jacobs as “Linda Brent” (1861); Narrative of Sojourner Truth, by Sojourner Truth and her amanuensis Olive Gilbert (1850); and Behind the Scenes Or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House by Elizabeth Keckley (1868) to examine how and to what effect the narratives witness as well as how readers respond to the texts in question. To explore the multiple jeopardies of marginalized race and gender (and intersections of racism and sexism) in traumatic autobiographical witnessing, this chapter considers emancipatory narratives written by or on behalf of African American women.

The distinction drawn between male-and female-voiced narratives is significant. While theorists such as William Andrews, Sterling Bland, and Robert Stepto have written extensively about the testimonial value of androcentric emancipatory narratives, few critics originally considered the witnessing potential of female bondswomen. Joanne Braxton explains that the 1845 Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass has traditionally been read as the “central text” of the emancipatory narrative genre (19). Based on Douglass’ narrative, theorists such as Stepto have identified the principal “Afro-American archetype” as that of the “articulate hero” (or male primary witness), who, through self-acquired literacy, writes to witness his traumatic history (Stepto 17). In exclusively analyzing male slave heroics, however, theorists have ignored the testimonial power of the equally “articulate and rationally enlightened” female slave narrator, eliding Afra-American experiences from their critical purview (Braxton 19). To address this critical gap and build upon the foundation laid by Braxton (and critics such as Houston Baker, Hazel Carby, and Frances Smith Foster), this chapter investigates the interplay of blackness, womanhood, and traumatic witnessing in American emancipatory narratives to discern how such identity constructs work together and against one another to help and hinder witnessing.

Ultimately, the chapter concludes that, despite the narratives’ testimonial potential, each narrator is restricted in her ability to witness trauma, particularly as it relates to her compounded marginalization as an enslaved Afra-American. Constricted perhaps by traumatic memory and by those social constraints dictating what a black female speaker may and may not disclose about her life (i.e., her knowledge of the prevalence of sexual abuse in American slavery and the racist misogyny it reflects),¹ Jacobs, Truth, and Keckley witness inconsistently, each testifying more explicitly through what she does not write than through what she does. The bondswomen’s struggle to witness, however, need not undermine the traumatic, literary, or historical import of their autobiographies. Instead, the omissions that pervade their recorded histories offer readers the opportunity to engage actively their testimony and witness with them, facilitating the speakers’ ability to testify across centuries to the multifarious traumas that arise out of institutional slavery and continue to shape American literary culture.

“Far More Terrible for Women”: Witnessing (Sexual) Trauma in Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents

I begin a-chronologically with an analysis of Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, published in 1861 under the pseudonym Linda Brent. Although Sojourner Truth’s 1850 narrative precedes Jacobs’s and presents similar subjects and themes to those addressed in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (such as the struggle for freedom by—and sexual oppression of—female slaves), Jacobs’s account remains the most critically cited female-penned emancipatory narrative and thus offers a rich foundation for continued analysis of the genre’s (in)ability to witness trauma experienced by American bondswomen. Throughout her narrative, Jacobs (as Brent) testifies out of her “own experience and observation” (81) to what Maya Angelou calls the “tripartite crossfire of masculine prejudice, white illogical hate, and black lack of power” (265) inherent in American slavery. “Slavery,” Brent attests, “is terrible for men; but it is far more terrible for women. Superadded to the burden common to all, they have wrongs, and sufferings, and mortifications peculiarly their own” (119). In presenting this charge, Jacobs witnesses both primarily (as “Linda”),² highlighting her own traumas and experiences, and also secondarily by proxy (as the titular “Slave Girl”), testifying as a representative of all bondswomen to the violence and oppression of slavery’s instilled racism and sexism.

Throughout Incidents, Jacobs upholds her commitment to witness primarily and secondarily by proxy. She concludes her narrative with the exclamation “What a comfort it is to be free to say so!” (263), indicating that freedom is not limited to one’s physical location or social station but includes the ability to witness as speaker of one’s own narrative and spokesperson for African American women in bondage. “Reader,” Brent pledges, “it is not to awaken sympathy for myself that I am telling you truthfully what I suffered in slavery. I do it to kindle a flame of compassion in your hearts for my sisters who are still in bondage, suffering as I once suffered” (47). In offering this assurance, Jacobs guards against those who would charge her with arrogance or indecency for daring to disclose the traumas she suffered as a slave. She also emphasizes that her dedication to testify is motivated not by self-interest but by a desire to speak for those other women who are unable to witness slavery’s catastrophes. A drawback to Jacobs’s effort to witness primarily and secondarily by proxy is that her particular experiences can be eclipsed by those of the collective, rendering her encounters, in Dwight McBride’s language, “less meaningful” (11). Accordingly, readers may struggle to witness Jacobs’s traumas secondarily, as her experiences belong not exclusively to her (or even to “Linda”) but to all bondswomen.

For this reason, readers must strive to dual-witness Jacobs’s unique psychic traumas as well as her collectively representative sociopolitical catastrophes. Jacobs invites such secondary witnessing when she addresses her readership above (i.e., “Reader, it is not to awaken sympathy …” [47]), and she elicits readerly engagement throughout her narrative. In Incidents’ preface, Brent speaks directly to her reader. “Reader,” she asserts, “be assured this narrative is no fiction. I am aware that some of my adventures may seem incredible; but they are, nevertheless, strictly true. I have not exaggerated the wrongs inflicted by Slavery; on the contrary, my descriptions fall far short of the facts” (5). Here, Brent asks to be witnessed secondarily. Even as she recognizes the difficulty dual-witnessing presents, she prompts readers to engage the veracity of her “adventures” or traumatic encounters. Brent intuits that readers may resist her history but asks them nonetheless to believe, as slavery represents too great a “wrong” to be a-witnessed. And yet, in admitting that her “descriptions fall short of the facts,” Jacobs-as-Brent also recognizes that the truths of her narrative remain unwitnessable, defying both language and belief. Accordingly, the author offers readers the opportunity to enter into her history, so they may witness secondarily what her speaker struggles to witness primarily.

Inciting readers to dual-witness is not without challenge. In To Tell a Free Story, William Andrews suggests that “black self-writers” who wished to witness slavery’s iniquities were “burdened” with the “task” of engaging a “skeptical, if not hostile white audience” (4). Frances Smith Foster acknowledges that in order to incite readers to witness the slave narrator’s history, the writer had first to “overcome the incredulity” of those readers whose “surprise” that a black slave could write “overshadowed any attempt” to engage the narrator’s testimony (Witnessing 9). Cognizant of such obstacles, Jacobs narrows the scope of her intended audience to Northern white women, encouraging white female readers to view her speaker not only as an oppressed African American but also (and principally) as an exploited woman. In doing so, Jacobs helps those white women who may resist her testimony connect instead to her suffering, through a shared sense of sisterhood and outrage at the subjugation women face. Brent rebukes, “Why are ye silent, ye free … women of the [N]orth? Why do your tongues falter in maintenance of the right?” (48). She appeals, in the words of the prophet Isaiah, “Rise up, ye women that are at ease! Hear my voice, ye careless daughters! Give ear unto my speech” (Isaiah 32.9; Jacobs 2). In such passages, Jacobs signifies on the biblical language of the Jewish and Christian prophets to call white and free women to cross over race and station and witness secondarily the suffering, personhood, and rights of Brent and, through her, all enslaved black women.

Jacobs models such interracial dual-witnessing throughout Incidents. Valerie Smith observes that every time Brent escapes an obstacle on her way to freedom, she does so “only with the aid of someone else”—most often a white woman (32), who, as Jean Yellin notes, “defect[s] from the slaveholders’ ranks to help” the African American runaway (“Texts and Contexts” 275). Brent could not have escaped slavery, Yellin contends, but for the assistance of the white woman who attempts to stop Brent’s master from molesting her, the female slaveholder who conceals Brent in her home for a month, or the Northern female employer who loans her own child to Brent, so she can evade slave catchers by traveling as a nursemaid instead of a fugitive. In each illustration, Yellin explains, readers observe women who forsake “allegiances of race and class” and “assert their stronger allegiance to the sisterhood of all women” (“Texts and Contexts” 275–76). Readers can follow suit by renouncing those social dictates separating women by race and class; by witnessing Brent’s oppression as a woman; and by rallying for Brent’s freedom as well as for the emancipation of all (black) women.

Jacobs also models interracial female dual-witnessing by including in her narrative conversations between white and black women that underscore multicultural engagement and cooperation. In one such scene, a white woman, moved by witnessing Brent’s trials, agrees to help her. “Among the [white] ladies … acquainted with my grandmother,” Jacobs writes, “was one who had … always been very friendly to her” (151). Jacobs reminds readers that, even when slavery works to divide women by race, interracial friendships can exist. Jacobs relates that, following Brent’s escape from slavery, the white woman asked her grandmother to “tell me all about it. Perhaps I can do something to help you” (151). In this scene, the white woman invites the black woman to witness to her and then offers not only to listen but also to act. Jacobs describes: “She listened attentively to the details of my story, and sat thinking for a while. At last she said, … ‘If you think there is any chance of Linda’s getting to the Free States, I will conceal her for a time’” (152). Through this passage, Jacobs demonstrates that interracial female dual-witnessing requires active listening, careful consideration (as when the woman sits “thinking”), and courageous action (when she promises to “do something” to help). Readers are called to follow this example: to read intently, to consider carefully what one has learned, and to cross over race and to unite in sisterhood and “do something” about slavery, presumably by advocating for those, like Brent, who remain enslaved.

Further interracial female dual-witnessing is displayed through the positive interactions exhibited between Incidents’ white editor, Amy Post, and its black author, Harriet Jacobs. Although Jacobs wields control over her narrative by writing her preface, Post pens its appendix—a coda that models dual-witnessing between women. Post begins by describing Jacobs as her “highly-esteemed friend” (304), placing Jacobs and herself on the same social level without claiming superiority due to race or class. She continues: “If readers knew her as I know her, they could not fail to be deeply interested in her story” (304), suggesting that, if readers engage Jacobs’s account and personhood (as Post has), they will engage her life narrative. Post next reveals that Jacobs initially resisted divulging her “bitter experiences”: “A woman can whisper her cruel wrongs in the ear of a dear friend much easier than she can record them for the world to read” (305). Post, however, encourages Jacobs to witness anyway, in order to work through her ordeals and to “arouse” readers to “work for the disinthralment” of other bondswomen (305). Jacobs’s reticence underscores the difficulty of primary witnessing, and Post’s insistence that she witness emphasizes how imperative the editor believes the process to be. The women’s conversation also instructs readers to remain mindful of the “mental agony” implicit in witnessing trauma (305) and to treat Jacobs’s testimony considerately, as Post has, by reading as an invested friend instead of a distant stranger. In framing her appendix, Post underlines the significance of Jacobs’s narrative and the importance of interracial dual-witnessing between women.

As Deborah Gray White demonstrates, Jacobs also celebrates interracial female dual-witnessing by testifying to the difficulties white women face as co-victims (with black women) of white patriarchal power (43). For example, when Brent’s master, Dr. Flint, sexually harasses her, she fears for her life, but she also empathizes with her mistress, Mrs. Flint, whose marriage vows have been “desecrated” and “dignity insulted” (White 43). Jacobs is able to read Mrs. Flint not only as a victimizer of Brent, whom the mistress repeatedly abuses, but also as a victim of her husband’s infidelity and a larger patriarchal system. Incidents does not imply, simply because free white women (such as Flint) and enslaved black women (such as Brent) are both subjugated, that their oppression is commensurate. Instead, as Foster maintains, while Jacobs “asserts a common sisterhood” between women, she also warns white female readers against empathic anti-witnessing or “conflating the situations of enslaved black women and free white ones” (Written 96). In her preface, Jacobs pronounces:

O, you happy free women, contrast your New Year’s day with that of the poor bond-woman! With you it is a pleasant season … Friendly wishes meet you everywhere, and gifts are showered upon you…. [Your children] are your own, and no [one] … can take them from you. But to the slave mother New Year’s day comes laden with … sorrows. She sits on her cold cabin floor, watching the children who may all be torn from her the next morning. (26)

Here, Jacobs reminds white female readers that, while they are free to celebrate life, family, and the passage of time, for black bondswomen, holidays such as New Year’s (when slaves are sold at auction) are not jubilant but traumatic. In illustrating such inequities, Jacobs does not elide racial differences between women but utilizes their disparities in status to embolden free white women to use their privilege to advocate for those without.

As Jacobs does not discount racial inequalities between women, she also does not pretend that interracial female dual-witnessing is effortless. Instead, she provides counterexamples of white women who are unwilling to dialogue with black women, demonstrating the effort required to cross over race to dual-witness as well as the damage that ensues when women refuse to do so. Consider the depicted relationship between Linda Brent and Mrs. Flint. Despite the abuse Brent receives from Mrs. Flint, the bondswoman remains surprisingly willing to dual-witness with her mistress, even as Mrs. Flint refuses to witness her secondarily. When Mrs. Flint demands that Brent tell her “all that has happened between you and your master,” she reports: “I did as she ordered. As I went on with my account, … she wept, and sometimes groaned…. I was touched by her grief” (53). Brent engages Mrs. Flint’s emotional response and exhibits empathy for her mistress. “Tears came to my eyes,” Jacobs writes, moved by Mrs. Flint’s sorrow. “But,” she recognizes, “I was soon convinced that her emotions arose” not from sympathy but “from … wounded pride…. Her dignity [was] insulted, but she had no compassion for the poor victim of her husband’s perfidy” (53). Whereas Brent is willing, Mrs. Flint is loath to dual-witness. The passage warns against the patriarchy’s ability to divide women who are otherwise united in their shared oppression and encourages readers not to align with Mrs. Flint but with those, such as Brent, who risk everything to witness their suffering and personhood.

However, even as Jacobs elicits dual-witnessing, she struggles to witness her own traumas primarily, particularly those relating to sexual assault. In fact, the author confides to her editor her reluctance to publish Incidents, as doing so will require her to print the “whole truth” of her sexual history (Nudelman 942). Such reticence is not unique to Jacobs. Judith Herman explains that, when a life writer is traumatized, formal difficulties specific to her trauma can interfere with her ability to convey her experience. The constricted author, for instance, may lack the language to witness trauma. When she attempts to detail the particulars of her experience, she may circle around the event instead of witnessing it. She may repeat herself without communicating or truncate her sentences before providing crucial information (Herman 7). Dori Laub expounds that, for the traumatized subject, “there are never enough words or the right words, there is never enough time or the right time to articulate the story that cannot be fully captured” (63). Emancipated narrators are no exception, leading Andrews to describe the attempt to witness slavery’s traumas as an “anguishing mental and emotional struggle” (9). “Rare [is] the autobiographer,” Andrews observes, who does not “lament” his or her inability to testify comprehensively to the pervasive “horrors of slavery” (9).

The struggle to witness trauma is evident in emancipatory narratives written by and for female survivors of sexual assault. Of all traumas, sexual abuse can be exceptionally challenging to witness, as it carries with it a perceived social stigma (Ahrens 3). The difficulty of witnessing sexual trauma pertains in particular to Afra-American slave narrators, whose ability to testify to sexual violatio...