Over the last thirty years of slavery in the U.S.; from 1830 to 1865, African American writers have perfected the first truly indigenous genres of literature in the nation: the North American slave narrative. This genre attains it eloquent expression in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: an American Slave by Frederick Douglass; and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs. Similar to other slave narratives, the works of Douglass and Jacobs embody the tautness between the disagreeing motives which generated memoirs of the life of slavery. The need to realize the most important objective of ending slavery, took the narrators to the world which had enslaved them, as they account for the accurate reproductions of the experiences and places they had fled. This paper examines the accounts provided by both Douglass and Jacobs, noting the differences in their personal histories and the reasons behind differences.
White opponents admonished slave writers to adhere to well-defined formulas and conventions to create what they perceived as the most powerful propaganda in armaments. They also asserted that their authenticating endorsements should be in narration through introductions and prefaces. However, for the writers, the chance to give an account of their experiences meant something personal. Working vigilantly within the genre prospects, Douglass and Jacobs established ways to personalize their accounts and to express themselves in own voices in the pursuit of selfhood which had to be poised against the values and aims of their audiences.
During the time when the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: an American Slave, was published; the white abolitionist movement was starting to garner political strength, while the overdue publication of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, in 1861 was eclipsed by the Civil War’s commencement. Douglass was an overtly acclaimed person from nearly the earliest moments of his career in literature as a speaker and a writer. On the other had Jacobs was not well known; Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl vanished from limelight immediately after publication without making large sales; while Douglas narrative went viral, becoming the standard against which all other slave narrative including his were evaluated. Douglass’s narrative was created out of an enslavement story which he had perfected as the Massachusetts Antislavery Society’s speaker. Revealed and appointed to address the abolitionist circuit in 1841 by William Lloyd Garrison, Douglass advanced rhetorical instruments common to orations and sermons and carried them over to the narrative, which thrives with instances of antithesis, repetition, and other orthodox persuasive tactics. Douglass’s narrative was the zenith of his career in making speeches, reflecting his expertise in preaching powerfully with rhythm and Biblical texts imagery which was well known to his audiences. He also portrayed the Emersonian idealism which was intensely bulbous in the 1840s, as Douglass cast himself in the character of a besieged hero averring his personal moral standards so as to bring sense of right and wrong to endure against the greatest evil of the nation. Additionally, his account could be recited as a typical male “initiation” fable, a tale that traced the growth of a youth from boyhood to adulthood and from innocence to experience. For Douglass, the taxing and journey treatments of this slave narrative genre were reviewed to outline the will of a slave to change from being human chattel to free American citizen.
On the other hand, Harriet Jacobs started her narrative in the year 1853, upon living as a fugitive slave in North America for a decade. She started working independently on her narrative immediately after her freedom was purchased by Cornelia Grinnell Willis, who also granted her employment in New York City as a domestic servant. Jacobs finished writing her manuscript four years later although it was not published until some other four years. This reflects the style, plot and tone of what termed as the domestic and sentimental or domestic novel, famous fiction of the mid-19th century, written for and by women, who stressed family, home, marriage and womanly modesty. In acclimatizing her life story to the North American slave genre, Jacobs relied on female writers who were colleagues and even friends, including renowned writers such as Fanny Fern and Lydia Maria Child. However, she was also predisposed by the admiration of Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe which surfaced in 1851
Gender deliberations account not only for the various differences in genre and style evident in the two narratives. The version of slavery which they endured and authorship which they shaped of themselves also account for the differences. Douglass was a communal speaker who can confidently express himself as conqueror of his own adventure. On the other hand, Harriet Jacobs was enmeshed in all the accouterments of family, domesticity and community. She was factually a “domestic” in her employment, and also a slave mother with progenies to protect, and a person from whom subservience was anticipated, whether free or enslaved.
References
Douglass, F. (2003). The life and times of Frederick Douglass. Courier Dover Publications.
Jacobs, H. A., & Child, L. M. (2002). Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. University of Virginia.
