Trauma&Gender

Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an Americanslave and Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl are two representativesof slave narrative which records black slaves’ sufferings and traumas caused by racialdiscrimination. Slave narrative is a kind of indigenous genre of written literature,perfected by African American writers from early1830s to the end of the Civil War in1865. The genre achieves its most eloquent expression in Douglass and Jacobs’narratives, in which Douglass’s book is as the representative of the male slavenarrative, and Jacobs’s narrative is the representative of the female slave narrative.Those two books are about the inspiring stories of oppressed slaves’ journey of self-pursuit and self-assertion. In the book Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl the authorexposes her traumas to tell what she has suffered and openly accuses the sexual abusesof black slave women under the system of slavery meanwhile proudly records blackwomen slaves’ struggle for gaining equal rights and self-respect.The big difference between the two works is that they are written by writers ofdifferent genders, which can be embodied in the differences of using the narrativeskills. By making use of their traumas and employing different narrative skills, theirwriting purposes can be conveyed clearly, which is to display the ideal selves. Sobased on slave narrative to analyze the differences in using narrative perspective,duration and narrative situation, this thesis intends to display different motives andintentions conveyed by the two writers through their works. This thesis is divided intofive parts. The first part is introduction, which briefly introduces the development ofslave narrative, and then followed by the introduction of writers and their works aswell as present researches on their works home and aboard. Chapter two is theanalyzing of the narrative perspective in the two narratives. By combining traumaticevents experienced and witnessed by the authors with the narrative skill of narrative perspective to reflect their way of gaining self consciousness and development.Chapter three is devoted to the manipulating of duration. It analyzes how the authorstry to construct their identity by combining duration with the process of displaytraumas. Chapter four is concerned with the narrative situation which is the mostdistinguished difference between two narratives. In Douglass’s narrative the directcommunication between the narrator and narratee was not carried out by the author,which aims to display his independence and his believing in the ‘individualism’ whichis the essence of the Romantic period. The direct communication between narrator andnarrate in Jacobs’s narrative aims to show the author’s sense of responsibility andmission as well as to arouse white women writers’ sympathy for their black sisters whoare suffering under slavery and leads to their accusation towards merciless slaverysystem and sex discrimination that hurt them as well. Chapter five is the conclusion.Douglass is the predecessor and teacher who provides Jacobs with a model tofinish her narrative, as for Jacobs, she has added some things that have been missedand left untouched by her predecessor, which enriches the contents of this literaturegenre.