Forged by Women: Revisiting the Self-Made Man in Douglass’ Women by Jewell Parker Rhodes.

Numerous works have celebrated Frederick Douglass as a self-made abolitionist, orator, writer, and advocate for women’s rights and have associated him with ideals of manhood. Employing critical masculinity studies, Africana womanism, and the female gaze, this article argues that Jewell Parker Rhodes’s Douglass’ Women (2002) destabilizes Douglass’s masculinity and restores the voices of Anna Murray Douglass (his first wife) and Ottilie Assing (his German translator and intellectual companion). The novel reimagines how Douglass’s legacy relied on Anna’s fiscal, emotional, and logistical help and on Ottilie’s multifaceted support as an editor, translator, confidante, and lover. By restoring these women’s voices and drawing attention to the unequal gender relations at the heart of the famous reformer’s self-representation as an autonomous man, Rhodes’s work reveals the deep dependence of Douglass and the wider anti-slavery leadership on women.