Harriet Jacobs Essay -- essays papers

Harriet Jacobs Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl was written to appeal to an audience of free white women and to involve them in the antislavery struggle. At a more personal level, it was written to vindicate Harriet Jacobs, both to reveal her history and to account for it in a public setting. Jacobs's narrative signals several significant departures from the literary and social conventions of the slave narrative, a genre that enjoyed widespread popularity in the United States during the 1840s and 1850s. Slave narratives written by men characteristically focused on the heroic struggles of individuals, lone figures struggling against the injustices of the slave system. Issues of family and community were often subsumed within these individual struggles. Incidents in the...