The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman 469not learned to trust, for all she could ever trust or
rely on was herself. Though frail and old, she leads
the freedom march, although she knows the social
rules and consequences: death. A former illiterate
slave girl who has managed to live for 110 years by
the sweat of her brow is not afraid of death, for she
has not been afraid of life. Though she has not gone
through the traditional stages of life development,
she has lived her life through principles of work,
ethics, courage, and compassion, which have made
her life meaningful and important. Her journey
from self to community is complete.
Su Senapati
Work in The Autobiography of Miss Jane
Pittman
Since identity is intricately tied to the work a
person does and since slaves had historically been
separated from the product of their labor, Gaines
pays particular attention to the theme of work. The
protagonist of this story, Miss Jane Pittman, starts
her work life at the age of 10 as a caretaker of chil-
dren and later in life works as a field hand, a cook,
and a laundress, but no matter what she does and
no matter how menial the task, she does it well and
this gives her the strength and courage to face all
challenges in life.
Born into slavery, all Jane knows is work; how-
ever, although her masters appropriate the product
of her labor, they cannot appropriate the sense of
self that she derives from her work. Ironically, when
she is a child slave at the Bryant plantation, the
added work of supplying water to exhausted sol-
diers passing by brings her in contact with Colonel
Brown and the outside world, which in turn propels
her on a journey of growth and enlightenment. A
child herself, she without hesitation shoulders the
responsibility of protecting, nurturing, and educat-
ing baby Ned, working endlessly to give what has
been denied to her, an education. Her hard work
pays off, for Ned grows up to be a marvelous human
being who works to uplift the lives of the poor and
the persecuted.
Jane takes pride in her ability to work hard and
earn adult wages on the Boone plantation. The fool-
ishness of such pride, though excusable in a child,
has disastrous consequences in adults as is revealed
by the Katie Nelson and Black Harriet incident
on the Colonel Dye plantation. Such events where
pride and competition at work cause havoc shape
Jane’s work mantra for life, for as a former slave she
must define the parameters of work, since excessive
work has been the cause of injury and death for
many a slave. She concludes, “Hard work can kill
you, but plain, steady work killed nobody. Steady
work and eating plenty of fish killed nobody.”
Although work is empowering to the individual,
not all work is empowering. Albert Cluveau, the hit
man who kills Ned, spends the last 10 years of his
life cowering in bed with his daughters, frightened
of the “Chariots of Hell” that he is convinced are
pursuing him. He has killed over a dozen men and
for him killing is work, a way of making a living; but
it is dirty work where the exercise of free will and
ethical choice are willingly suspended, reducing the
worker to subhuman levels and denying her/him any
sense of self-worth.
Furthermore, work is a concrete manifestation
of the African-American contribution to the build-
ing of America; so, when newly freed slaves are
riddled with confusion and have no place to go and
rumblings of “go back to Africa” slogans are heard,
Ned urges ex-slaves to question the validity of such
statements, reminding them of the back-breaking
work they have rendered: “This earth is yours . . .
your people’s bones lays in it; it’s yours because their
sweat and their blood done drenched this earth.”
However, just physical labor is not enough as Ned
reminds his students: “Working with your hands
while the white man writes all the rules and laws will
not better your lot,” for until the products of Afri-
can–American labor are appropriated by African-
American laborers, they will be exploited and their
sense of self-worth crippled.
But Joe Pittman’s work ideology best summa-
rizes the reason and importance of work. When
Jane, frightened by dreams of Joe’s death, asks him
to quit breaking horses for a living, he says that man
is contracted to die but until he does, “he should
do what he is good at doing” so that when he dies
people can say, “He did good as he could.” Joe and
Ned and Jimmy and many others like them know
and recognize their calling in life, but for many
others such callings in life are closed because of