Rosa/Harriet Comparative Essay

Again, play to the professor's sympathies. I knew she was a militant feminist with a vagina dentata, so I wrote about female oppression. These two works are very different takes on the female American experience; one is a Black Slave and one is an Italian immigrant. Both have issues adjusting to modern American life.

HUI390
15 October 2006
Bona

Rosa/Harriet Comparative Essay

Throughout history, women have been oppressed, viewed as objects, and forced to conform to certain standards imposed upon them by society. Because the woman was traditionally considered the property of her husband, more often than not she had nothing to claim as her own. The women protagonists of Harriet Jacobs’ Perils of a Slave Woman’s Life and Marie Hall Ets’s Rosa: the Life of an Italian Immigrant are examples of two 19th and early 20th women who crossed social boundaries and remained true to themselves, ultimately achieving personal freedom. In many ways, being a woman before the 20th century also meant surrendering to the criteria of the “Cult of True Womanhood”. Women in that time lived a life of what can only be viewed by the modern reader as a form of slavery — that is to say, the woman’s sense of self was lost, embedded in social construct — and this is something that continues to a certain extent today. These two women take the stories of their lives and turn them into narratives to be passed down through the ages— that is to say, both Rosa and Harriet end up taking possession of their own stories, and acknowledge that they do indeed have something to claim as their own. One of the expectations of women during this time was to remain silent; yet our protagonists Rosa and Harriet are strong, vocal women whose personalities cannot allow them to conform to this. Owing to Harriet’s literacy and Rosa’s storytelling ability, these two women allow others to be if not involved in, at least aware of, their lives. Both tell the reader their tales, by the end of which the speakers are no longer victims of servitude, but mobile, empowered women who have quite voluntarily chosen their respective destinies.

Both Harriet’s and Rosa’s societies preached an ideology of silence, keeping women in ignorance of things deemed unfit for polite conversation, and promoting a double standard that favored masculine power. Especially taboo for women to talk (or even know) about was the topic of sex. Harriet is a victim of explicit verbal sexual harassment, saying that due to her slavery under Dr. Flint, she is “prematurely knowing” and laments other “happy women, whose purity has been sheltered (Jacobs 35)”. On the other hand, even though Rosa is a desirable object for many men, she is kept in the dark about sexual practices, even when she is engaged to be married. Rosa asks her friend Pompeo about what “the man does to the girl when he has the matrimony with her”, but even though he knows, Pompeo can only say that he “can’t tell a girl that… Only the husband is allowed to tell the girl that after the matrimony (Ets 154)”. This reinforces the double standard of the time, that of men being in the know and the woman being kept ignorant. Harriet has her own problems with Dr. Flint, and frequently faces his tirades with stoicism and courage, “openly expressing her contempt for him (Jacobs 21)”. Like Rosa, her faith and her self-confidence allow her to endure in the face of oppression. Even though at that time a master could treat a slave as rudely as he pleases and the slave dare not speak (Jacobs 36), Harriet often speaks her mind so boldly as to be practically unheard of during that era.

Rosa and Harriet are very vocal women, often speaking their mind and always answering questions honestly. If Rosa or Harriet is silent, or chooses to leave something out of a scene, that information is therefore significant and should be noted. They both depict many specific details in their stories, so it is interesting to see the information that each author chooses to leave out. Even after the fact and both women have learned about sex, neither Harriet nor Rosa (both very vocal under other circumstances) can bring herself to talk openly about it.
Jacobs uses various rhetorical themes to tell her tale, including the use of metaphor and euphemisms to imply deeper meanings. When Dr. Flint attacks the integrity of the man Harriet wishes to marry, she defends him by stating that he “never insulted her (Jacobs 29)”; this comment has double meaning, as the word insult in this context is clearly, yet not explicitly, telling the reader that Dr. Flint had sexually abused her. In another verbal encounter between these two, upon his discovery of her pregnancy, Dr. Flint berates Linda with “talk such as would have made the most shameless blush (Jacobs 41)”; this is a euphemistic way to show that even though she cannot be explicit about language used, she still makes it known that his verbal abuse towards her was terrible. Harriet realizes that her body is (initially) the only thing that she can use to gain mobility, as it is the object of Dr. Flint’s advances. However, by the end of the story we see that the character has grown and developed — Harriet has found her own voice and intends to use that (rather than her body) for mobility and to spread awareness. Rosa, too, is forced into mobility because of her body, and like Harriet, by telling her story, she is able to involve people in her life and impart a sense of community. Knowing that she is desired as a sexual object by Dr. Flint, when she learns she is pregnant, Harriet withholds this information from Dr. Flint. She has a “feeling of satisfaction and triumph in the thought of telling him (Jacobs 37)”, as she knows it will be important verbal ammunition later.

Like Harriet’s, Rosa’s existence is one of incarceration; she is owned (and, essentially, sold) by Mamma Lena and later Santino. Mamma Lena promises Rosa to be married to Santino, yet at the ceremony, when she is asked “the question”, she couldn’t bring herself to say “I do”, in fact she “couldn’t say anything (Ets 154)”. Afterwards, she cannot bring herself to give us any details about the wedding night or the matrimony. Rosa often leaves out information about Santino—he was such a bad man, she repeatedly tells us that she has to “leave him out of [her] story, that’s all (Ets 205)”. Both Harriet and Rosa are involved in abusive relationships to which they are bound by law or by sacrament. When Santino beats Rosa because she will not obey him, she says she would rather die than sin against the Virgin Mary (Ets 199). It is a long time before she can fully assert herself, but ultimately Rosa realizes that she can, and does. She takes her mobility into her own hands, escapes to the family and friends of Gionin and starts a new life for herself and her children (200).

Neither woman’s domesticity is defined by her actual children or family members, but rather the family that she has chosen for herself. For example in the case of Harriet, her family becomes the employer Mrs. Bruce, who ultimately purchase her freedom and under whom she chooses to work and live. Even though she may want to, Harriet cannot “sit with her children in a home of her own (68)”. Yet, she is content with her freedom (such as it is). Similarly, Rosa chooses the community of the Commons to be her family. When her children ask her to quit working at the Commons because she is too old to do that kind of work anymore, she refuses, stating that the Commons is her home and she could not think of leaving (Ets 248). She would rather go to her “home” at the Commons than stay at her real home with her actual children. Even though Harriet and Rosa are domestics and remain so their entire lives, they ultimately choose their own personal vein of domesticity that allows them the most “freedom”.

Rosa often faces death with a clear conscience and a strong heart. She escapes death many times, like when the landlord sets fire to her building (Ets 217), but she is always exceedingly brave. Over and over again Rosa tells us that she is “not afraid of the death (253)”. In fact, Rosa recounts the one time she was so sick that she was “ready to die”, however she was not frightened (252). Although Rosa is not afraid to die, she “likes to live (253)”. This passage shows that Rosa’s character, like that of Harriet, is a survivor; it shows that Rosa is full of life. Harriet, likewise, also responds to similarly ominous situations with an impressive courage that comes naturally to her. Even though Dr. Flint threatens her with “death, and worse than death” she was naturally of a “buoyant disposition”, and like many a “poor, simple slave” before her, “trusted that some threads of joy would yet be woven into my dark destiny ( Jacobs 21)”. Both women are inherently courageous and never retreat into an attitude of victimization.

After having achieved freedom, we see that through the course of the novel each woman has developed a new outlook on life and carries a message to their audience: both women are now essentially free to do what they want without being afraid. Harriet has obtained her freedom through Mrs. Bruce and now, living as a free domestic, chooses to share her story with others. Even though she “objected to having her freedom bought”, when Harriet “rode home in the cars [she] was no longer afraid (Jacobs 67)”. In the same way, Rosa has moved from Italy to America to Italy and back to America, and has obtained freedom in the sense that she has come to recognize her own self-empowerment.

When Rosa returns to Italy after having been in America, she is no longer afraid to assert herself: at the train station, she sits down in the seats reserved for “high people”, something she would never have done before living in America. When the janitor, appalled by her impertinence, comes and scolds her, Rosa says that she gives herself the permission to sit down, that in America the poor people get smart, and are not so stupid anymore (Ets 190). She is also able to make her own decisions about people; for example, she decides not to go back to Remo, choosing instead to stay with the more dependable Gionin. She also finally stands up to Mamma Lena, realizing that “she was just like any other old woman who was alone and sad (Ets 195)”. At the end of her account, Rosa no longer fears bosses, nuns, or high people—she realizes that they cannot hurt her because she comes from America. “That’s what [Rosa] learned in America: not to be afraid (Ets 254)”.

To be an American woman is to be a powerful and a brave woman, and although Rosa and Harriet have endured oppression, they both emerge successful and wind up embodying this ideology. Both narratives are told from the end to the beginning to the end again, so the reader knows from the get-go that the speaker ultimately survives. It is all the trials and tribulations in between that draw the reader’s sympathy throughout the narrative and give both stories a kind of moral. It can be argued that the moral of both stories is not to be afraid.

In the final chapters of the texts, both Rosa and Harriet sum up their journey from imprisonment to freedom and make retrospective comments on this. These chapters are also perhaps the most important, because although the characters have spent a good deal of time assembling their tale and getting the reader to that endpoint, the authors do indeed have a message for their audience. In order to liberate the self, one must be able to liberate others, and through the distribution of their narratives both Jacobs and Ets (Cavalleri) attempt to do this. Ets’s story is an as-told-to biography, and Jacobs’s falls into a mixed genre of slave narrative and women’s domestic fiction; yet many lines of commonality clearly can be drawn between the two. At the conclusion of both however, the heroine is able to come to terms with her history, move past it, and essentially teach it to others. She has become empowered, makes it publicly known that to the best of her ability she has triumphed in the face of adversity, and maintains the possibility of upward mobility and freedom for women.