Aunt Hester is Douglass’s aunt and a slave of Captain Anthony’s. She receives a merciless whipping from her master, accompanied by degrading slurs, because she spends time with a male slave. Douglass witnesses this beating at a very young age, and it affects him greatly. The assault was Douglass’s first view of the cruelty of slavery, as well as the irrational jealousy and sexual greed that characterizes male masters’ relations with female slaves.
The Whipping of Aunt Hester Quotes in The Narrative of Frederick Douglass
The The Narrative of Frederick Douglass quotes below all refer to the symbol of The Whipping of Aunt Hester. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 1
Quotes
On watching Captain Anthony whip Aunt Hester: “I remember the first time I ever witnessed this horrible exhibition. I was quite a child, but I well remember it. I never shall forget it whilst I remember any thing. It was the first of a long series of such outrages, of which I was doomed to be a witness and a participant. It struck me with awful force. It was the blood- stained gate, the entrance to the hell of slavery, through which I was about to pass. It was a most terrible spectacle. I wish I could commit to paper the feelings with which I beheld it.”
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The Whipping of Aunt Hester Symbol Timeline in The Narrative of Frederick Douglass
The timeline below shows where the symbol The Whipping of Aunt Hester appears in The Narrative of Frederick Douglass. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 1
...and had a still more barbarous overseer named Plummer. Douglass cannot forget witnessing Anthony brutally whip one of Douglass’s aunts, Hester. Seeing the master draw blood and screams until he is...
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Aunt Hester was being whipped by Anthony for spending time with a slave from a nearby plantation, named Ned. Douglass...
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