A Slave Girl
The basic plot of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl as an anti-slavery text and the typical plot of the 19th century genre of sentimental fiction are alike in that just as the 19th century genre did, Harriet Jacobs made a plea to the Northern, white, female listeners during a time when "true womanhood" truly meant chastity and virtue. Harriet Jacobs pushes the message that slavery makes it totally impossible for a black woman to live as a virtuous or chaste person. As she supports some of the conventions of the sentimental genre by highlighting the importance and worth of motherhood and family life, Jacobs also exhibits how the institution of slavery threatens and destroys both white and black women and challenges the sociopolitical,
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Though it was seen by some as being published a bit too late to have any social or political impact, Harriet Jacobs’s work, was also a mode for bringing about change, individually, socially or politically mostly on the issues of race and class.
One example of similarity is how the Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is very similarly structure to that of Samuel Richardson's seduction novel Pamela, where the chaste heroine triumphs when the man she worked for and the man who would be her seducer proposes marriage. Although the happy endings of sentimental novels do not apply to a story of a young girl's life as a slave. With Linda Brent, for black women, to get marriage in order to escape from cruelties of life, was not an option.
Another similarity was Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, or Life Among the Lowly (1852), which embellished the dilemma of slaves and had an impact on its readers in a way that it was sometimes mentioned as one of the reasons of the American Civil War. In Stowe's ending "Uncle Tom" the only escape was by dying, Linda's escape gives her a life as a totally free
Though it was seen by some as being published a bit too late to have any social or political impact, Harriet Jacobs’s work, was also a mode for bringing about change, individually, socially or politically mostly on the issues of race and class.
One example of similarity is how the Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is very similarly structure to that of Samuel Richardson's seduction novel Pamela, where the chaste heroine triumphs when the man she worked for and the man who would be her seducer proposes marriage. Although the happy endings of sentimental novels do not apply to a story of a young girl's life as a slave. With Linda Brent, for black women, to get marriage in order to escape from cruelties of life, was not an option.
Another similarity was Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, or Life Among the Lowly (1852), which embellished the dilemma of slaves and had an impact on its readers in a way that it was sometimes mentioned as one of the reasons of the American Civil War. In Stowe's ending "Uncle Tom" the only escape was by dying, Linda's escape gives her a life as a totally free