Harriet Jacobs Essay -- essays papers

Harriet Jacobs Incidents in the Life of a Slave fille was written to appeal to an audience of free white wowork force and to involve them in the anti break ones backry 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. Jacobss memoir 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...