In my last couple of posts, I’ve been discussing various texts that share a theme of autodidacticism, or self-learning. This concept caught my attention a few weeks ago when I first learned about the personal curriculum trend through a couple of YouTube videos I watched. The personal curriculum is an activity of designing a syllabus or plan for yourself over a few months, usually week by week, to learn something new.

The first literary work that I thought of when I learned about this trend was Charlotte Smith’s 1788 work Emmeline: The Orphan of the Castle. Emmeline is in an interesting position for learning in this work. She is an illegitimate daughter of deceased parents in the home of her paternal uncle. She is underprivileged in the sense that she is considered a social outcast generally, and her uncle accepts her on charity but wants nothing to do with her. She is housed in the neglected castle, largely alone except for a couple of servants, with a lot of time to explore and invent projects for herself. As I shared in a previous post, Emmeline recovers several moldy tomes from her uncle’s library that has been overtaken by nature, and she gives them to her instructor, Mrs. Carey, to augment her studies. The imagery in this chapter of her life is appealingly juxtaposed with the Enlightenment values of the day. As a gothic romance, the novel both exalts and subverts Enlightenment-era values like rationality, learnedness, hierarchy, self-determination, and the preference for the modern over the archaic. The library of forgotten texts found by Emmeline suggests a world of learning that has been obscured by modern ideals, languishing knowledge literally disappearing with dampness and mildew in a neglected library.

I wondered if those seeking a personal curriculum might have at all felt these sentiments: that something is vanishing; a desire to grasp fading knowledge before it is gone; a sense that knowledge is there but not knowing what, quite.

The modern world in which Emmeline lived shares many qualities with the modern world of today in how it is ever-fresh, looking forward, not backward, less interested in what Shakespeare said than in the new technology being invented that will cut costs and make things faster, more efficient. The gothic romance always subverts this modern, technology-forward thinking by presenting it with hauntings, madness, or obsessions that represent the repressed elements flowing uncannily back into the modern reality.

Emmeline is a late 18^th century British gothic romance that speaks to the issues of its time and beyond, particularly regarding the abuse of power and wealth and the ill treatment of women left vulnerable under these power systems. A very different work in genre, being autobiography rather than a romantic novel, the 1845 The Narrative of the Live of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave is a factual account imbued with rhetoric to convince the reader that slavery is an unjust system that must be abolished.

What would Frederick Douglass, who provided such deep and stirring insights in his own time, think and say about America today? There’s no way to get his commentary directly, but it’s an interesting exercise to read his work, available all over the place, in any format desired, for free, and consider how ideas and systems in his world are still represented in a different guise.

(Or you could just type that into Chat GPT, I feel like somebody would say. I understand many people like Chat GPT. However, while I do use the Google AI, or whatever is handy, to help me convert cups to tablespoons and the like, I do not think it is appropriate to use Chat GPT to develop or share insight about humanity. The first and foremost reason is because processing and analyzing a literary work yourself changes you. A lot of different connections will form in your mind, and you will be able to relate the work to circumstances around you in all kinds of ways. You will remember the work and be able to recall it at will, or perhaps something you encounter will remind you of it. You will not have this experience from reading a couple of AI-generated paragraphs. Another reason not to use Chat GPT or other large language models is because they are “trained” from largely stolen content, and by using them, you are supporting and becoming dependent on a system of theft. The developers and executives that created these models did not care about respecting intellectual property. They also created a technology that encourages people not to think for themselves anymore. How will it benefit these executives if people become increasingly reluctant to think for themselves?)

In Frederick Douglass’ autobiography, Mr. Auld, Douglass’ enslaver, finds his wife teaching Douglass the alphabet, and chastises her. Douglass overhears this conversation, which he describes as one of the most important and insightful ones he has ever heard. Auld states that Douglass ‘should know nothing but to obey his master—to do as he is told to do…’” According to Auld, if Douglass is taught to read, “'[i]t would forever unfit him to be a slave. He would at once become unmanageable, and of no value to his master. As to himself, it could do him no good, but a great deal of harm. It would make him discontented and unhappy.’”

It is this argument that impresses onto Douglass the value of learning.

These words sank deep into my heart, stirred up sentiments within that lay slumbering, and called into existence an entirely new train of thought. It was a new and special revelation, explaining dark and mysterious things, with which my youthful understanding had struggled, but struggled in vain. I now understood what had been to me a most perplexing difficulty—to wit, the white man’s power to enslave the black man. It was a grand achievement, and I prized it highly. From that moment, I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom. It was just what I wanted, and I got it at a time when I the least expected it. Whilst I was saddened by the thought of losing the aid of my kind mistress, I was gladdened by the invaluable instruction which, by the merest accident, I had gained from my master. Though conscious of the difficulty of learning without a teacher, I set out with high hope, and a fixed purpose, at whatever cost of trouble, to learn how to read. The very decided manner with which he spoke, and strove to impress his wife with the evil consequences of giving me instruction, served to convince me that he was deeply sensible of the truths he was uttering. It gave me the best assurance that I might rely with the utmost confidence on the results which, he said, would flow from teaching me to read. What he most dreaded, that I most desired. What he most loved, that I most hated. That which to him was a great evil, to be carefully shunned, was to me a great good, to be diligently sought; and the argument which he so warmly urged, against my learning to read, only served to inspire me with a desire and determination to learn. In learning to read, I owe almost as much to the bitter opposition of my master, as to the kindly aid of my mistress. I acknowledge the benefit of both.

With this resolve, Douglass trades food with neighborhood boys for reading lessons. He focuses all available time and energy on the task because he is so sure that it will help him gain freedom.

How does literacy help Douglass gain freedom?

Douglass does not share the details of his escape in the narrative, stating he believes the details could be used by enslavers to prevent other enslaved people from escaping. He does share details of a botched attempt at escape, however, in which he writes forged passes for himself and other people attempting to escape, so it seems likely that literacy is a useful tool in his eventual successful path to freedom.

What Douglass discusses in the above passage, however, lies more in the ideological realm than practical application. He recognizes, in the fear of his enslaver, that there is a body of knowledge from which he, an enslaved person, could take and to which he could contribute that would endanger this system of power. When he learns to read, he reads the works of abolitionists. It can be inferred that his recognition of allies and sympathetic citizens strengthens his resolve and self-belief. Later, he becomes one of the most noteworthy of those writers and orators.

How hard must it be to develop the idea that something is wrong when everyone around you is telling you that is right? Or when what seems wrong to you seems fine to everyone else? I don’t know if Douglass read Ralph Waldo Emerson’s 1841 essay “Self-Reliance,” but it’s another work that makes me feel like we did not stop and do enough reading in the 1840s, learn and process ideas that could sustain us as a culture instead of just mindlessly spinning the wheels.

Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.

Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness.

The word “explore” jumps out at me whenever I read this passage. It implies a certain courage, a sense of responsibility, and a need for an analytical faculty. I relate the humanities-focused personal curriculum trend to this idea because it suggests that people feel the need to educate themselves upon a structure they decide for themselves, rather than consuming what is in a “feed.”

What are the intentions behind a system? What motives can you infer are hidden behind mechanisms? A process of learning takes time. Frederick Douglass spent many years developing his faculties before successfully escaping from slavery. One thing I take from his work is that acts of change toward good are small and incremental, not large and sweeping. Each work studied, each situation analyzed is a step toward applied knowledge.