The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest J. Gaines
"The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman" by Ernest J. Gaines is a poignant fictional narrative that chronicles the life of a 110-year-old African American woman, Jane Pittman, who reflects on her experiences from slavery through pivotal moments in American history, such as the Emancipation Proclamation and the civil rights movement. Presented as a first-person account, the story reveals Jane's journey from a life of passivity to one of courageous assertion, symbolizing the broader struggle for African American identity and dignity. Through her reminiscences, Jane recounts significant historical events and figures, offering a personal lens on the impact of systemic racism and violence, including the brutality inflicted by the Ku Klux Klan.
The narrative not only highlights Jane's relationships with key male figures in her life, such as her adopted son Ned and her partner Joe Pittman, but also illustrates her resilience and nurturing spirit amidst hardship. Jane evolves from a victim of her circumstances into an empowered individual who actively participates in the civil rights movement, demonstrating a commitment to both her own identity and the collective struggle of her community. Her journey emphasizes the themes of memory, identity, and the urgency of social justice, making it a significant work within African American literature. The authenticity of Jane’s voice, shaped by Gaines’s research on slave narratives, adds depth to her portrayal as a symbol of strength and resilience in the face of adversity.
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The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest J. Gaines
First published: 1971
The Work
In The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman the heroine and many African Americans in south Louisiana move from passivity to heroic assertion and achieve a new identity. Gaines’s best-known novel is not an autobiography but a first-person reminiscence of a fictional 110-year-old former slave whose memories extend from the Emancipation Proclamation to Martin Luther King, Jr. The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman tells her unschooled but adept version of state and national occurrences and personalities (Huey Long, the flood of 1927, the rise of black athletes such as Jackie Robinson and Joe Louis). Her version of history is given to a tape-recording young schoolteacher who wants historical facts; Jane helps him to understand the dynamics of living history, the way she remembers it. Her accounts are loving, sane, and responsible. Her language—speech patterns and pronunciations—is authentic, since Gaines read interviews with former slaves.
Renamed Jane Brown by a Union soldier because Ticey (her original name) is “a slave name,” Jane wears her new designation proudly, as a badge of her identity as a free woman, when she and other former slaves attempt to escape from Louisiana. Many of them are brutally murdered by Klansmen. Jane, who is about ten at the time, escapes along with a small orphan, Ned. Jane becomes Ned’s mother and during Reconstruction she raises him when they settle on another plantation as fieldhands. Ned receives some schooling and as a teenager is involved in civil rights struggles. His life in danger, Ned escapes to Kansas. Jane chooses to remain in Louisiana.
Ned represents the first of three African American males in Jane’s life who struggle to define their racial and personal identities. The second is Joe Pittman, with whom Jane lives after Ned leaves. Joe loves Jane and wants her with him even though she is barren as a result of childhood beatings. He finds personal fulfillment in breaking wild horses on a Texas ranch; he accepts danger and the risk of death unflinchingly. Like Ned, who is murdered after he returns to Louisiana and sets up a school for black children, Joe is also killed fulfilling his destiny. Ned describes his identity as that of a black American who cares, and will always struggle. With these men, Jane finds a personal identity as a woman and demonstrates her desire to work with her black men but not to control them.
When Jimmy, a young civil rights worker much loved by Jane and others, is murdered, Jane—age 110—goes into the nearby town to drink from the segregated water fountain at the courthouse. She moves from the safety of silence and obscurity to join the ranks of African Americans who assert themselves and who risk losing their homes and lives but gain courage, dignity, and a heroic identity.
Bibliography
Babb, Valerie Melissa. Ernest Gaines. Boston: Twayne, 1991. A clear critical analysis that devotes one chapter to each of Gaines’s major works, including a detailed chapter on The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman that discusses the novel’s historical and cultural accuracy, use of oral history, themes, and character development.
Bell, Bernard W. “The Contemporary Afro-American Novel, Two: Modernism and Postmodernism.” In The Afro-American Novel and Its Tradition. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1987. Examines Gaines’s fiction as an example of Afro-American postmodernism, which differs from white postmodernism by exploring the power in folk tradition rather than rejecting fictional tradition.
Byerman, Keith E. “Negotiations: James Alan McPherson and Ernest Gaines.” In Fingering the Jagged Grain: Tradition and Form in Recent Black Fiction. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1985. Reviews Gaines’s fictional productivity and compares his use of folk tradition with the urban tales of James McPherson. Finds in Gaines’s stories possibilities for black resistance to white oppression.
Callahan, John F. “A Moveable Form: The Loose End Blues of The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman.” In In the African-American Grain: The Pursuit of Voice in Twentieth-Century Black Fiction. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988. Focuses on the novel’s use of the teacher as an oral historian editing his material. Callahan analyzes the art of the novel with reference to historiography and folk autobiography.
Carmean, Karen. Ernest J. Gaines: A Critical Companion. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1998. Critical overview of Gaines’s work and its importance to African American and southern literary history.
Doyle, Mary Ellen. Voices from the Quarters: The Fiction of Ernest J. Gaines. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2002. Focuses on Gaines’s achievement in capturing the oral traditions and the linguistic cadences of African American culture. Argues that the varied voices of his characters combine to generate the unique voice of the author himself.
Gaines, Ernest. Interview by John O’Brien. In Interviews with Black Writers. New York: Liveright, 1973. An important text for appreciating Gaines’s sense of himself as an artist as well as a son of the South who re-creates his past through his artistry.
Gaudet, Marcia, and Carl Wooton. Porch Talk with Ernest Gaines: Conversations on the Writer’s Craft. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1990. A brief introduction to Gaines’s life and works and a lengthy series of interviews of Gaines, with a heavy emphasis on The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman.
Hogue, W. Lawrence. “History, the Black Nationalist Discourse, and The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman.” In Discourse and the Other: The Production of the Afro-American Text. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1986. Examines the novel as a product of the Black Nationalist movement of the 1960’s. Sees Gaines as celebrating black history and correcting literary caricatures of African Americans by such white writers as Mark Twain and Harriet Beecher Stowe.
Wertheim, Albert. “Journey to Freedom: Ernest Gaines’ The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1971).” In The Afro-American Novel Since 1960, edited by Peter Bruck and Wolfgang Karrer. Amsterdam: B. R. Grüner, 1982. Analysis of the novel’s theme of finding freedom. Contains a detailed review of the book’s narrative structure.