Harriet Ann Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl' and Frederick Douglass’ Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American slave', in the History of American Slave Narratives

Abstract

Harriet Ann Jacobs is considered as one of the most influential African American women writers. The publication of her slave narrative “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” (1861) caused an unprecedented scandal in the traditional American literature due to the hard and detailed descriptions of the African American slave routines and punishments. Likewise, sixteen years before, Frederick Douglass and his narrative “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American slave” (1845) used literature not only to provide a description of the slave abuses but also to fight for freedom and rights of African American people. The present study intends to analyse these two texts that had a huge impact during the abolitionist period. The two narratives try to make the reading public aware of the situation of African American slaves and claim that they should be equal citizens to white people. To assess their contribution to the vindication of black people’s rights in the Southern States I will analyse the main topics in slave narratives (sex, abuse, religion, family relationships, social rights, etc.) and some repeated motifs (the loss of innocence, dehumanization of individuals, the ongoing abuses, the quest of freedom, etc) that allow a detailed gender comparison between the two experiences. The analysis of Jacobs and Douglass autobiographies is methodologically informed by the authors’ experiences and their fight for social rights that developed much later for black people in the Southern States. During the course of this essay many authors whose opinions upon this subject are valued will be considered and featured in order to study the impact, reflection and controversy of gender, race and justice between readers