Female Slave Narratives’ Discourse in Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Gilbert’s The Narrative of Sojourner Truth

Abstract

The present research work deals with discourse in three distinct female slave narratives that belong to a similar period (The Antebellum Era). These works did not only deal with writing in general but attempted to unveil what happened to female slaves during such a crucial period in the history of the United States of America. In fact, the central point during the 19th century was for the accounts written by bondsmen as they conquered the slave narratives’ genre. Therefore, a shift to female slaves was more than needful particularly that women in general were under a complete domination in the societies. Consequently, the three women writers and tellers wanted to attract the attention of the audience through their accounts which are viewed as their own voice to defend their fellows and to express themselves in the literary field. Therefore, this thesis aims to discuss women’s contribution to the narratives of enslavement. Nevertheless, the presence of different forms of this literary genre leads to question their authenticity, and it is actually what this research attempted to answer, by applying discourse analysis on Harriet Jacobs’ account entitled Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Olive Gilbert’s The Narrative of Sojourner Truth, in order to explore the intensity of their messages. In addition to that, the analysis of the language was more than evident in order to see how close each of these works from the slaves’ lives and what they really witnessed at that time. Ultimately, prospecting various testimonies, critics’ opinions and writers’ elucidations were part of the present work for the purpose of obtaining a complete idea about the most genuine account. As a conclusion, Jacobs, Stowe and Gilbert presented true slave narratives and not just daily life stories. They managed to describe the suffering of a whole category of people. Furthermore, they succeeded to epitomize the struggle of female slaves along with their survival in a racist and patriarchal society by employing female protagonists knocking the doors of the world’s recognition and setting the ground for their successors ultimately to write confidently and live freely following their paths.