“(…) STRUGGLING ALONE IN THE POWERFUL GRASP OF SLAVERY”: HARRIET JACOBS’ INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

ABSTRACT The following article is going to analysis Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl with a focus on how she reshapes the slave narrative genre (previously defined through male author texts) using seduction and sentimental novel genre, albeit reworked to address race and gender issues. At the same time, she uses motherhood as the lens to analyze gender and race. In this process, she reaffirms and rearticulates legal and cultural discourse of slavery and womanhood to uncover their fictive construction. By this, she on one hand claims the title of both ‘woman' and ‘mother' for black female slaves and on the other hand, questions the appropriateness of society's definition of womanhood.