Autobiography of a Female Slave

by Martha Griffith Browne, Mattie Griffith

"The first lick from Mr. Peterkin laid my back open. I writhed, I wrestled; but blow after blow descended, each harder than the preceding one. I shrieked, I screamed, I pleaded, I prayed, but here no mercy shown me. Mr. Peterkin having fully gratified and quenched his spleen, turned to Mr. Jones and said 'Now is yer turn; you can beat her as much as you please, only jist leave a bit o'life in her, is all I cares for.' " In the pages of this putative autobiography the author poses as a slave for the purpose of bringing attention to the injustice of slavery. The actual author Mattie Griffith, passing as a black, wanted her book to horrify and shame the nation. Identifying herself as Ann, a former servant woman, she recalls her protected youth and good education as a nearly-white child. She tells that at twelve she was sold to a brutal master named Peterkin. On his Kentucky plantation she witnessed and experienced the cruelty of slave life. After his death one of his daughters took Ann to the city as her servant. Ann found new friendships there and fell in love with Henry, a slave who killed himself after being cheated out of his self-purchase. After being sold to an elderly Bostonian who emancipated her, Ann finishes her story as a schoolteacher for black children. Pseudo-slave narratives like Griffith's appeared over the course of the abolitionist movement, and this is the only one now in print. Born in Kentucky, Griffith was by inheritance the owner of six slaves. As a young woman she went north because she loathed the "peculiar institution." Living in poverty in Philadelphia, Griffith wrote Autobiography of a Female Slave to help finance her effort to emancipate her slaves and resettle them in free territory. She professed a keen knowledge of a slave's daily life and the brutal incidents a slave experienced. From this material she created her fictional story. The novel failed commercially, although it was hailed within the abolitionist movement. The American Anti-Slavery Society soon afterward gave Griffith the funds to return to Kentucky in order to free and resettle her slaves.

Mattie Griffith (c.1826Ð 1906) has disappeared from American literary history. She remained a lifelong activist, first for abolition, and then for women's suffrage and for temperance. Joe Lockard is a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Berkeley.

Genres: Nonfiction, History

418 pages, Paperback

First published January 13, 1970

Reviews

[Perry Whitford · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rather like the book I only just finished reading, <>Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man<>, this is not an autobiography at all, but a work of fiction based on actual events.

However, this one is written by a white author, herself a one-time slave owner who was pressurised by the authorities in Kentucky for the lenient treatment of her 'property' and only wrote this novel to buy the freedom of her former slaves.

It's the story of Ann, a young mulatto woman whose kindly master dies at the beginning of the book, after which she is separated from her mother and sold to a harsh new master and his cruel daughters ('It was Jane's boast that she had whipped more negroes than any other girl of her age.')

Published in 1859, the theological rhetoric appears early and often with Mammon, Gomorrah and the vengeance of the Lord evoked in eloquent terms, but the brutal realities of slavery were just as graphically portrayed - beatings, belittlings, whippings, being sold in the marketplace like cattle.

The cruel and callous nature of the white Southerners was truly horrifying and made me incredibly angry throughout. I don't think I have hated two fictional characters more than the two daughters of Mr. Peterkin. If only some pleasing twist of fate would have allowed Ann to beat and whip them, as unrealistic as it would have been!

And then there was Nace, the cringingly jocular, leering old slave who acts as the eyes and ears of the master, glorying in the punishment of the other slaves like a loathsome role model for Samuel Jackson in Django Unchained.

There were some decent characters along the way too, both black and white, but the novel could have done without the young master, a pale, sickly, Christ-like figure who spoke in nothing but piously stilted dialogue.

Ann is teased, tormented and abused beyond the point of distraction, and the most trifling of mistakes, sometimes for nothing at all. How could anyone tie another human being to a whipping-post and lash them with cowhide dipped in brine? It happened, and Browne doesn't hold back in depicting the full awfulness of it.

Throughout her day to day indignities Ann is constantly invited to comment on the views of her master and his daughters when her only possible response is to humbly make no reply, leading her to conclude how

'the worst part of our slavery is that we are not allowed to speak our opinion on any subject. We are to be mutes, saves when it suits our owners to let us to answer in words obsequious enough to please their greedy love of authority.'

This final insult of slavery was really brought home in this novel.

Autobiography of a Female Slave is so much more than just a brave book for its time. Certainly the religious rhetoric ruins it somewhat, though it shouldn't be forgotten that the zealots were so important in the cause to abolish slavery.

When Browne stuck to the domestic scenes and the cause of liberty above the cause of Christianity, this book was highly affecting. For the Southerners it was all about money and power ultimately, as it always is:

'No; there is no argument, no reason to justify slavery, save that of human cupidity.'

[Misti · Rating 4 out of 5]

Intense. Hard to read at times, but historically accurate regarding slavery so it is difficult to swallow. Perhaps should be required reading.

[Kit Dectot · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book written by Martha Griffith Browne is a fictional autobiography following the trouble filled life of Ann. The historical accuracy of the book makes this story all the more emotional as we see Ann endure hardship after hardship. The cruelty of many of the characters is enough to make one feel anger and disgust yet Ann provides hope for us through her faith that her life will be improved. The descriptions are beautifully written and one can feel Ann’s faith and desperation as her story develops. Although this book may be hard to read and intense, I recommend it.

[Harry Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was actually written in 1856 by a white woman (a Kentucky slave-owner turned abolitionist), which nearly disqualified it for adoption as my Juneteenth reading this year. However, as it is dedicated “to all persons interested in the cause of freedom,” I deemed it not entirely inappropriate.

Like many similar books of the antebellum era, Griffith’s Autobiography seeks to steal a march on slavery’s sugar-coaters by portraying the peculiar institution as the cruel, treacherous, family-destroying inferno it was. Nothing about this portraiture is controversial today, and modern readers will find it unremarkable, as harrowing as it is. Where Griffith may stand out a bit is in the special pains she takes to show that one of the greatest evils of the slave system was its tendency to undermine Christian belief and practice, for blacks –

‘When I dies, I’ll jist lay down and rot like de worms, and dere wont be no white folks to ‘buse me.’

‘No, there will be no white folks to abuse you in heaven; but God and His angels will love you, if you will do well to get there.’

‘I don’t want to go ther, for God is one of the white people, and, in course, he’d beat [us].’ (pp. 208-209)

– as well as for whites:

To impugn the justice of his Maker’s decrees was a common practice with him. He had so long rejoiced in power, and witnessed the uncomplaining vassalage of slaves, that he began to regard himself as the very highest constituted authority! (p. 235)

It may be objected that Griffith, owing, perhaps, to this religious emphasis, devotes excessive attention to white heroes, called sometimes “prophets” (p. 81) whose eyes are “saint-like” (p. 296); but the objection would be inadmissible. In the first place, given that Griffith’s task is necessarily to inspire white redemption, she never diverts from the context of black suffering. One of her book’s dramatic highpoints is the death of the Christlike “young Master,” which not only fails to yield a promised salvation but is paralleled ingeniously with the wretched martyrdom of a blameless slave. In the second place, the supposedly-heroic white people in the Autobiography are really just exhibiting basic decency. One of them admits, “I deserve no thanks for the performance of my duty” (p. 359), and of another benefactor protagonist-narrator Ann declares, “How beautifully she illustrated, in her single life, the holy ministrations of true womanhood!” (p. 347)

With this last point, Griffith is arguing that fairness toward blacks is not only a Christian imperative but a womanly one. Indeed, she makes the case explicitly (and somewhat self-referentially):

Woman, when once she interests herself in the great cause of humanity, goes to work with an ability and ardor that put to shame the colder and slower action of man. The heart and mind co-work, and thus the woman, as if by the dictate of inspiration, will achieve with a single effort the mighty deed, for the attainment of which men spend years in idle planning. Women have done much, and may yet achieve more toward the emancipation and enfranchisement of the world. The historic pages glitter with the noble acts of heroic womanhood, and histories yet unwritten will, I believe, proclaim the good which they shall yet do. Who but the Maid of Orleans rescued her country? Whose hand but woman’s dealt the merited death-blow to one of France’s bloodiest tyrants? In all times, she has been most loyal to the highest good. Woman has ever been brave! She was the instrument of our redemption, and the early watcher at the tomb of our Lord. To her heart the Savior’s doctrine came with a special welcome message. And I now believe that through her agency will yet come the political ransom of the slaves! God grant it, and speed on the blessed day! (pp. 196-197)

To Christianity and womanhood must be added the founding principles of our nation, to round out the trifecta of Griffith’s inspiration:

In no situation, with no flowery disguises, can the revolting institution be made consistent with the free-agency of man, which we all believe to be the Divine gift. We have been and are cruelly oppressed; why may not we come out with our petition of right, and declare ourselves independent? For this were the infant colonies applauded; who then shall inveigh against us for a practice of the same heroism? Every word contained in their admirable Declaration applies to us. (p. 242)

More often than not, though, American ideals – as well as Christian and womanly ones – do not so much inspire as shame, when reality falls short of them. “Give us no more Fourth of July celebrations,” declares Ann, in an especially gloomy moment, “the rather let us have a Venetian oligarchy.” (p. 375) It is mostly as sources of shame that American ideals appear in this 1856 book, driving home the lesson that shame can be an important engine of progress.

Unlike others of her era, Griffith is as egalitarian as she is opposed to slavery. “‘I do not see why Fred Douglas [sic] is not equal to the best man in the land,’” she proclaims from the mouth of a white abolitionist. “‘Might I not (if it were made a question) prefer uniting my sister’s fate with such a man, even though partially black, to seeing her tied to a low fellow, a wine-bibber, a swearer, a villain, who possessed not one cubit of the stature of true manhood, yet had a complexion as white as snow?’” (p. 79)

Finally, Griffith is an elegant writer and a prescient one:

‘Will my death-hour ever come?’ I asked myself despairingly. ‘Have I not tasted of the worst of life? Is not the poisoned cup drained to its last dregs?’

I fancied that I heard a voice answer, as from the clouds.

‘No, there are a few bitterer drops that must yet be drunk. Press the goblet still closer to your lips.’

I shuddered coldly as the last tones of the imagined voice died away upon the soft night air.

‘Is that,’ I cried, ‘a prophet warning? Comes it to me now that I may gird my soul for the approaching warfare? Let me, then, put on my helmet and buckler, and, like a life-tired soldier, rush headlong into the thickest of the fight, praying that the first bullet may prove a friend and drink my blood!’ (p. 327)

[Sydney M · Rating 4 out of 5]

It took me a while to finish this book as it was a bit slow-moving, and the language a bit tough to ingest, but all in all I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It was a bit of an emotional roller coaster, but that being said, I think it’s a very important piece of literature that everyone should read

[George Monenciu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here is my review of the book:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8Tw5...

[Elaine Jones · Rating 2 out of 5]

The two stars is out of appreciation for the place in history this book was written. Browne was a white slave owner who wrote the book in an attempt to raise enough money to relocate the slaves she inherited from her father. She was vocally adverse to slavery, and the book made her a figurehead in the fight for abolition.

The protagonist, Ann, just exemplifies all the issues with the book that represent the last 3 stars. She’s supposedly a slave that’s mostly European in genetics and European in appearance. So of course, the mostly white naturally beautiful slave gets an education at the plantation she was born. Ann frequently demeans the other slaves she interacts with, and Browne writes these characters as if they should thank Ann for even the smallest shred of kindness. It just exemplifies what this book is, a romanticized version of a horrific era in history written by a privileged woman who could never relate. While the implementation of Christian rhetoric to disavow the practising slave owners who claim to love Christ is appreciated, it isn’t enough to overcome the glaring errors the mar the pages.

[Crissie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellence extraordinaire is fair credit due for literary talents this work exhibits! Despite being a white female who came into ill gain by inheritance of slave chattels, its original author fought battles that emotional fears of her social peers couldn't mount.

This fictional drama also merits honorable mention for its raw truth in depiction of grossly unjust trauma enslavers inflicted on their victims by law For instance, antagoness Ann is a light-skinned quadroon born to a half-white slave mother from whom Ann was torn while she was a young child. Later on, Ann endures greater agony when her one true love Henry committed suicide after he arrived to pay the last installment for his liberty - but the 'master' advised Henry of his sale 1 day before to Negro traders.

Although this review is on the original author's 1st edition freely available in the public domain, its pages contain a message worth reading and heeding as lone 'pseudo-slave narrative' in known existence on this day.