Slave Girl Critics Flashcards
When was the civil war?
1861 - 65
When was the 13th amendment?
1865 - abolished slavery except as punishment for a crime
The northern states?
By 1804 all the northern states had abolished slavery, and expansion into north-west territory doubles the size of the US. There was an attempt to curtail the expansion of slavery in these new states, however the complete abolition of slavery was a minority view
When was the confederation formed?
1861
When was the emancipation proclamation issued?
1863 by Lincoln, which freed all the enslaved people in the Confederate states
Legal context - fugitive slave wat?
In the 1850s, if a slave escaped to the north he can legally be sent back to the south
When did the slave narrative emerge as the main form of literature for African American authors?
mid-nineteenth-century - it was used to bolster support for the abolitionist movement, arousing sympathy by appealing to northern sensibilities
What did many want to happen to the freed slaves?
Some people, including Lincoln himself at one point, wanted the slaves to be free but to emigrate to the Caribbean and found a separate society there
What did both authors want the criticisms of slave holders to introduce?
The ambitions go beyond ending slavery.
According to DeLombard - they hoped to introduce ‘black self-representation in the court of public opinion’ as this would be ‘imperative to the larger project of black civic inclusion in the nation’
How do harsh depictions of the violence of slavery inform their narratives?
Their first hand accounts of the harsh conditions faced by slaves grants legitimacy to their narrative
What pseudonym did Harriet Jacobs use?
Linda Brent - anonymity was necessary in this period due to the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850
How are white slave holders exposed as hypocrites?
Text states that treating slaves as human beings was a ‘blasphemous doctrine’, stating that the immoral treatment was justified by the biblical injunction
Who was the implied audience of the novel?
McKay and Foster believed it was addressed to ‘an implied audience of northern white women with lives bound by codes of the cult of true womanhood’, meaning that the unjust treatment of women was an appeal to their sensibilities
Who did she select to edit her manuscript?
Lydia Marie Child who was a feminist and abolitionist
What did Lydia Marie Child want to accomplish?
She wanted to tell Jacobs’ story of compromised womanhood ‘with the hope of arousing conscientious and reflecting women at the North to a sense of their duty in the exertion of moral influence on the question of slavery’
What is the sentimental narrative?
It focusses on emotions and feelings as a basis for a person’s actions, rather than reason - it became popular in the 18th and 19th centuries
How does Jacobs establish thematic resonances between slave and sentimental narratives?
The effects of parental loss
Her feelings as a mother
How did Jacobs record her story?
McKay and Foster - ‘through the manipulation of the conventions of the popular sentimental fiction of her day’
How does the yoking of the two genres force the reader to confront their own privilege?
Nina Baymrightly - ‘the slave woman’s problems were of another order of magnitude than the bourgeois heroine’s’
How might using sentimental fiction be limiting?
Smith claims that it leads no room for women to express sexual desire
What sentimental fiction could it be compared to?
Pamela by Samuel Richardson
An upper class man pursues his servant, but she never gives in to him and her innocence touches him morally. They eventually marry.
The genre is spiritual autobiography
