I've been hard at work seriously revising my Frederick Douglass's sister article for the past few days. The good part about revising is that you already have stuff on the page, some of it even good. The bad part -- especially if you are doing something that might better be called an "overhaul" than a "revision" -- is that you may have to lose some of that good stuff. You have to figure out how to fit it seamlessly into the new version, and then it might not even serve a purpose after you have done that.
We won't even get into all of the unturned stones that you feel along the edges. You have a pretty good idea that nothing will be under those stones, but you just have to turn them to make sure. I'm always certain that the big smoking gun or key to reshaping the historiography of the history of the world will be under that one little pebble in the back of the record garden.
My first version of the article was strong on narrative and the transparency of my research, but very weak on analysis. When Gentleman Caller read it, he said that it was more of an extended annotation -- which is what it started out as, anyway -- than a full-fledged, polished article. He was right. In fact, he named exactly what bothered me about it. Since most of the research had been geared toward writing an annotation, and since the longer version was initially a paper for an organization that cared deeply about annotations and the stories behind them, I remained stuck in the rut of that approach. Now, I'm attacking the material with the "so what?" question in mind.
You know what? It's a fan-effing-tastic revision, even as undone as it is. In fact, I'm starting to explore an idea about Douglass and class, and how his class and his status as a free man affects his abolition -- all in contrast to a close friend who approached abolition with an entirely different set of needs. This might play into what I end up writing about Anna, who I am starting to suspect identified herself with a different class than Douglass did.
Oh, and the League of Gileadites in which this "sister" was involved? Bad. Ass.
Thursday, January 07, 2010
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4 comments:
If all your research about the women in Frederick Douglass' life turns into a book, I am so going to have to read it. I probably should read another biography of Douglass first, though, because now I know nothing about his personal as opposed to public/political life.
(The deleted first post was mine - I found it easier to delete the post and start over rather than revise it.)
RPS77 -- I get that, the deleting thing, that is.
Actually, not a lot of people write about his personal life. William McFeely was praised for doing so, although, well, let's just say that sometimes his interpretations of documents got a little too creative so that, at one point, he chucks actual evidence in favor of a more provocative but unsubstantiated idea. Still, it's a pretty good read and a pretty good overview of Douglass's life. Waldo Martin's "The Mind of Frederick Douglass" isn't a standard biography, but you come away from it feeling as if you have a better idea of Douglass himself.
See, I'm trying to fit into all of this by showing more of Douglass's personal life and his ideas about women by approaching him through those women. There's a lot going on with what he expects of women in his personal life that shows some of the limits of his ideas and depth of analysis on women's rights -- although, of course, he was much more enlightened for his time than your average man, or activist. I'm also finding that, as he becomes free, an activist, a celebrity and gains access to certain tools of power, he loses touch with the lives and needs of the people whom he is trying to help. He's more their patron than of them -- not that he'd necessarily agree with that assessment.
But, I have to sort all of this out, and part of this particular article has to do with that sorting.
Oh, and then, of course, there are Douglass's own autobiographies -- three! The Narrative, which takes him up to his escape; My Bondage and My Freedom, which takes him through his tour to the British Isles and back; and Life and Times, which covers all of that and the rest of his life. He doesn't get into his own personal life in either, really. They are public and political documents; but if you get one of the Blassingame edited versions of the first two (and even the most recent volume of correspondence), the annotations flesh out a large amount of personal data.
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