Themes of Horror, Desperation and Shame in Frances Harper's Eliza Harris

The literary works of African Americans active in the abolitionist movement of the mid-nineteenth century, particularly those who have been slaves themselves, display a remarkable number of similarities in structure, themes, and techniques of delivery. This is not surprising considering that the majority of them attempt to convey the same message, namely that the evil of slavery is not just in the ownership of one human being by another, and the terrible atrocities that are the consequence of it, but also in the fact that it exists in a nation that prides itself on traditions of liberty, and is justified by a twist in the doctrine of Christianity despite the latter's main message of all the people being equal under god.

Even poetry is quite similar in delivery to prose written by these writers, as is shown by the works of Frances Harper, specifically Eliza Harris. While conveying the feelings of fear and desperation of a fleeing slave, the horror of slave catchers' trade, and the shame of these events taking place under a banner of liberty through powerful imagery and interactive techniques such as addressing questions directly to the reader, Harper also structures the poem in such a way as to make it sound like a narrative, which was the favorite form of writing for her contemporaries.

The first noticeable thing about Eliza Harris is the poem's structure. The poem is written in accentual verse, with four stressed syllables appearing consistently on each line. This gives it an even, easy-flowing feel, like something one would expect from a narration. It is easy to imagine this poem being told in accompaniment with a strumming of a guitar or even a lire. Its plot is also chronologically straightforward, with brief asides addressing the reader interspersed throughout it. Compared to other works studied in the course, it is not difficult to detect the similarities between the work of Harper and that of Douglass and Jacobs, for example, even though the former is a poem and the two former are written in prose.

All of them, however, represent a narrative of someone's life - in Harper's poem, it is more of an episode in life, but enough background is given to construct the entire life of this runaway slave - just as all of them contain asides, directed at the readers, that periodically break the chronological flow of the narrative. The only difference is that Douglass and Jacobs' narratives are delivered in first person, while Harper's account in Eliza Harris is written in third person.

Harper sends a number of powerful messages by opening her poem with a simile, comparing the runaway slave to a "fawn" fleeing "from the arrow" (1). On the one hand, she conveys the theme of slaves being treated like animals - those that are obedient being treated like beasts of burden, while those that are disobedient or run away being treated like wild animals. On the other hand, the animal used for comparison is a fawn - a harmless, innocent creature. It is clear that this is exactly how the author wishes the reader to perceive the fleeing woman.

The fact that Harper is talking about a woman rather than some brainless creature of the forest becomes clear in the remaining lines of the first stanza. In the second line, the woman is identified as such, and in the concluding two lines, Harper presents the woman's facial expression and the feelings she experiences. The portrayal of feelings is how the author immediately contrasts the animal simile from the first line with the rest of the stanza. Only humans can experience the emotions described here - despair, anguish, and care - which means that the fleeing woman is indeed a human being. The message here is clear: what readers see in their mind's eye when reading these lines is a human being, experiencing emotions that they themselves can feel at times, and yet that human being is being reduced to animal state by her fear because people pursuing her see her as nothing more than an escaped animal.

In terms of the message and the imagery, similarities with other African American authors of the period are obvious. Both Douglass and Jacobs, for example, touch upon the subject of runaway slaves and how they are pursued by either the slave owners themselves or the hired slave hunters. Their descriptions concentrate on the fact that the slaves are hunted the same way game is hunted in the forest - using bloodhounds, with hunters on horseback, armed with shotguns but also carrying chains in case the runaway is successfully recaptured. Harper adds to her description this same imagery in the third stanza where she talks about "the tramp of the horse and the bay of the hound, with the fetters that gall, were trailing the ground!" (11-12).

Stanzas two and four do well to convey the desperation the woman is feeling that pushes her to this action. The first line of the second stanza ends with the woman "reaching the brink" (5). Physically, this might mean that at this point she reached the river shore in preparation to crossing. It is certain, however, that the meaning is deeper, and the woman's 'brink' is actually a combination of personal thoughts and feelings - brought upon, no doubt, by her experiences - that pushes her to such a desperate act. Crossing a river is dangerous enough by herself in a favorable weather, but here she does it in the middle of winter (the seventh stanza tells the readers that she crosses over ice) and with a child in her arms. In her emotional state, however, she "heeded no danger, she paused not to think" (6) what dangers and privations she might experience. The last line of the stanza shows exactly what point the woman has reached: when it comes to her son, "she'll give him his freedom, or find him a grave!" (8). Her escape, therefore, is a matter of life and death; in examining her priorities, she sees death, for both herself and her child, as the next most viable option after escaping to the north as compared to remaining in bondage. This is why she prepares to undertake such risks with both her own and her child's well being.

The theme of desperate times calling for desperate measures is not unique to Harper's writing. Douglass does not come lightly by his decision to physically attack a white man - he is forced into it by the unbearable treatment he receives. But the feats of both Douglass and Eliza Harris in Harper's poem pale in comparison to what the main character in Jacobs's story had to go through to achieve eventual freedom. It is difficult to imagine spending more than a day in a closet-sized space under the roof in which she finds herself after hiding in her grandmother's house to escape hew owner's unbearable treatment, and she spends years living in that space.

Characteristic of the writings by African American abolitionist authors of the period is a literary technique of an interactive aside. Both Douglass and Jacobs employ it numerous times in their writing, and Harper does the same twice in this poem. This is a useful tool that keeps the reader involved, especially with a subject so emotionally charged as slavery. One can easily imagine a reader of that era shouting out loud the answers to the questions the authors pose to them, or shaking their heads in consternation at the images that these questions produce. These asides are at the same time an attempt to have the readers feel ashamed for their own country that treats a huge portion of its human population as property and denies them even the most basic human rights, and a call to action that would attempt to rectify this situation and allow the readers not to feel shame anymore. At the same time, so as not to alienate their audience, the authors do not separate themselves from the country, often mentioning that they themselves feel just as ashamed by what is happening in and with their nation as they are outraged by the condition of their racial brethren.

Harper is not different in the way she uses asides in her poem. Stanzas four and five are devoted to the questions she throws at her audience, first portraying the unspeakable shame that leaves "stains on [the] glory" (18) of her "proud country" (17) - "how shall I speak" (17) of them, she asks, and "how give them their name?" (18) - and then portraying the depravity of inhumane treatment of "a woman whose crime is the hue of her face" (22). In her second aside in stanza eleven, she helps the reader establish a close, almost visceral connection with her heroine by describing what immense relief feels like, after "a fever... burning through bosom and brain" (41) finally cools "'neath a healing spell, and you knew, oh! the joy! you knew you were well" (43-44). The feeling of the heat of an extreme emotional and physical strain dissipating into the coolness of relief at a successful resolution of one's undertaking is a purely human experience, which aims to reaffirm once again for the readers that the black woman experiencing it is just as human as they are.

This analysis shows that the writings of African American authors of the period a few years prior to the onset of the Civil War carries many similar themes and messages, all of them aimed at advancing the abolitionist agenda. This was accomplished in two ways: they at the same time showed the inhuman depravities of white slave owners and the all-too-human sufferings of black slaves.