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 “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
Racial Ideologies in Frederick Douglass and Linda Brent's Narratives 4) Slavery was justified by racial ideology. Consider three texts, including one that was written by a former slave. How do the authors either replicate or refute racial ideologies common in the nineteenth century? I am going to focus on the narratives of Frederick Douglass and Linda Brent as examples of a refusal of racial ideologies and Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin as an example of replicating (although
Both novels, Incidents in the Life of a Slave girl by Harriet Jacobs, and Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass, share common slave narrative elements. The main characters Linda Brent, and Frederick Douglass undergo similar experiences dealing with slave owner hypocrisy and slavery's corruptional effects upon their masters. On top of that, both individuals emphasise the weight that knowledge has upon their situational understanding as well as eventual escapes. As a female
A Medley of Traditions in Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Though considerable effort has been made to classify Harriet Ann Jacobs'Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Written by Herself as another example of the typical slave narrative, these efforts have in large part failed. Narrow adherence to this belief limits real appreciation of the text's depth and enables only partial understanding of the author herself Jacobs's story is her own, political yes, but personal as well