Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and...

The Cambridge Introduction to the 19th-Century American Novel, the traditional sentimental novel’s storyline focuses around a young woman finding her way through life, usually without the support of a conventional family. The women overcome life’s hardships, and â€Å"the key to these women’s triumphs lies in their achievement of self-mastery† (Cane 113). According to Gregg Cane, these didactic novels are targeted at young women to instill the idea that a domestic home, marriage, and family are what construct a morally good woman. The plot is used to extract an emotional reaction from the audience. Nina Baym describes all sentimental novels as having the same plot, In essence, [they are] the story of a young girl who is deprived of the†¦show more content†¦Wilson’s novel takes place in the supposedly free north, and she uses the sentimental novel outline to expose the truth about the free north, and like Brent, connect herself to her audience. Both women portray their stories using the sentimental novel so that they can reach out to a white, female audience, and at the same time subvert their audience’s reality in order to reveal how similar slaves and free women are, and fight for freedom. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl was first published in 1861, around the same time the civil war began. Francis Smith Foster notes that Jacobs takes conventional antebellum literary methods, the adored sentimental novel, and uses them to familiarize herself with her audience, while at the same time modifies them â€Å"in order to accommodate her testimony as she tests her readers’ abilities to accept and act upon that test imony† (97). Foster also sums up how closely Jacob’s story follows the sentimental outline, Incidents reads like a story of pursuit and evasion, one full of heroes and villains, of bright young men claiming the freedom to seek their fortunes and of desperate maidens trying to preserve their virtue, of mothers trying to protect their children and of the hardworking poor trying to survive the greed and exploitation of the powerful and wealthy. (163) Jacobs positions herselfShow MoreRelated Three Women Writers: A Study in Virtue and Christianity of the 18th and 19th centuries2420 Words   |  10 Pagesculture. This website is devoted to three women who, like Morrison and Angelou, have aided in the formation and development of the African American literary tradition, but often remain unremembered in todays society. Phillis Wheatley, Harriet Jacobs, and Harriet Wilson have all made valuable contributions in the forms of poetry, narrative, and fiction to the early stages of a growing literary tradition. Although these women portrayed different viewpoints, utilized different writing styles, and wroteRead MoreFreedom, Without Qualification Is An Important Piece Of `` Americana ``1595 Words   |  7 PagesFreedom’s complicated nature becomes an important topic when comparing the free and enslaved black women in three antebellum narratives: Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Melton A. McLaurin’s Celia, a Slave, and Harriet E. Wilson’s Our Nig. Freedom is obviously preferable to enslavement—this fact is indisputable. Millions of male and female slaves risked their lives to escape slavery; no free person of color wanted to be enslaved. However, merely saying â€Å"freedom† without qualificationRead MoreThe Harlem Renaissance By Zora Neale Hurston925 Words   |  4 Pagesthey never lived in her hometown. Nevertheless, upon leaving Eatonville, the protagonist began losing her identity as â€Å"Zora,† instead, she was recognized as only being â€Å"a little colored girl† (1041). Hurston’s nickname â€Å"Zora† represents her individuality and significance; whereas, the name â€Å"a little colored girl† was created by a white society to belittle her race and gender (1041). Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God further demonstrates the author’s perspective of colored women. The mainRead More The Legacy of Perceptions of Interracial Relationships as Demonstrated in Late 19th and Early 20th Century Black Literature and Events2089 Words   |  9 Pagesunder the institution of slavery, our understanding of them is necessarily beset with dominance, violence, and rape. Interracial relationships and the children they produced became another manifestation of power relationships between whites and blacks in our contorted social atmosphere. Even to the present day, interracial relationships are often looked upon as being propelled by impure motives and compounded by the social dynamics that have been inherited in our culture. Literature Events