A comparison of the narratives of douglass and jacobs demonstrates the full range of demands and situations that slaves could experience. Some of the similarities in the two accounts are a result of the prescribed formats that governed the publication of their narratives. The fugitive or freed or ldquo ex rdquo slave narrators were expected to give accurate details of their experiences within bondage, emphasizing their sufferings under cruel masters and the strength of their will to free themselves.

One of the most important elements that developed within the narratives was a ldquo literacy rdquo scene in which the narrator explained how he or she came to be able to do something that proslavery writers often declared was impossible: to read and write. Authenticity was paramount, but readers also looked for excitement, usually provided through dramatic details of how the slave managed to escape from his/her owners. Slave narrators also needed to present their credentials as good christians while testifying to the hypocrisy of their supposedly pious owners. Both douglass and jacobs included some version of all these required elements yet also injected personalized nuances that transformed the formulas for their own purposes. Some of the differences in the readership and reception of jacobs rsquo s 1861 narrative and douglass rsquo s first, 1845 autobiography he wrote two more, in 1855 and 1881, the latter expanded in 1892 reflect simply the differing literary and political circumstances that prevailed at the prescribed formats governed the publication of slave narratives.

The abolitionist movement was beginning to gain political force, while the long delayed publication of jacobs rsquo s incidents in 1861 was overshadowed by the start of the civil war. Douglass was a publicly acclaimed figure from almost the earliest days of his career as a speaker and then a writer. incidents in the life of a slave girl disappeared from notice soon after its publication, without a large sale, while douglass rsquo s first book went through nine editions in its first two years and eventually became the standard against which all other slave narratives mdash even his own later ones mdash are measured. Douglass rsquo s 1845 narrative grew out of the story of enslavement that he honed as a speaker for the massachusetts antislavery society. Ldquo discovered rdquo and hired to lecture on the abolitionist circuit by william lloyd garrison in 1841, three years after he had made his escape from baltimore, douglass developed rhetorical devices common to sermons and orations and carried these over to his narrative, which abounds with examples of repetition, antithesis, and other classical persuasive strategies.

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His speech making career, reflecting his mastery of a powerful preaching style along with the rhythms and imagery of biblical texts that were familiar to his audiences. Douglass also reflected the emersonian idealism so prominent in the 1840s, as he cast himself in the role of struggling hero asserting his individual moral principles in order to bring conscience to bear against the nation rsquo s greatest evil. In addition, his story could be read as a classic male ldquo initiation rdquo myth, a tale which traced a youth rsquo s growth from innocence to experience and from boyhood into successful manhood for douglass, the testing and journey motifs of this genre were revised to highlight the slave rsquo s will to transform himself from human chattel into a free american citizen. Harriet jacobs, on the other hand, began her narrative around 1853, after she had lived as a fugitive slave in the north for ten years. She began working privately on her narrative not long after cornelia grinnell willis purchased her freedom and gave her secure employment as a jacobs modeled her narrative on the sentimental or domestic novel. Jacobs rsquo s manuscript, finished around four years later but not published for four more, reflects in part the style, tone, and plot of what has been called the sentimental or domestic novel, popular fiction of the mid nineteenth century, written by and for women, that stressed home, family, womanly modesty, and marriage.

In adapting her life story to this genre, jacobs drew on women writers who were contemporaries and even friends, including well known writers lydia maria child and fanny fern her employer rsquo s sister in law , but she was also influenced by the popularity of harriet beecher stowe rsquo s uncle tom rsquo s cabin. Stowe rsquo s genius lay in her ability to harness the romantic melodrama of the sentimental novel to a carefully orchestrated rhetorical attack against slavery, and no abolitionist writer in her wake could steer clear of the impact of her performance. Jacobs, and also frederick douglass in his second autobiography of 1855, took advantage of stowe rsquo s successful production of a work of fiction that could still lay claim to the authority of truth. incidents in the life of a slave girl did not fictionalize or even sensationalize any of the facts of jacobs rsquo s experience, yet its author, using pseudonyms for all of her ldquo characters, rdquo did create what william andrews has called a ldquo novelistic rdquo discourse, 1 including large segments of dialogue among characters. Jacobs used the devices of sentimental fiction to target the same white, female, middle class, northern audiences who had been spellbound by uncle tom rsquo s cabin.

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Yet her narrative also shows that she was unwilling to follow, and often subverted, the genre rsquo s promotion of ldquo true womanhood, rdquo a code of behavior demanding that women remain virtuous, meek, and submissive, no matter what the personal cost. Gender considerations account not only for many of the differences in style and genre that we see in douglass rsquo s and jacobs rsquo s narratives, but also for the versions of slavery that they endured and the versions of authorship that they were able to shape for themselves in freedom. Douglass was a public speaker who could boldly self fashion himself as hero of his own adventure. In his first narrative, he combined and equated the achievement of selfhood, manhood, freedom, and voice.

The resulting lead character of his autobiography is a boy, and then a young man, who is robbed of family and community and who gains an identity not only through his escape from baltimore to massachusetts but through his douglass focuses on the struggle to achieve manhood and freedom. Harriet jacobs, on the other hand, was enmeshed in all the trappings of community, family, and domesticity. She was literally a ldquo domestic rdquo in her northern employment, as well as a slave mother with children to protect, and one from whom subservience was expected, whether slave or free. The overriding concern of jacobs rsquo s narrative was one that made her story especially problematic both for herself as author and for the women readers of her time.

Because the major crisis of her life involved her master rsquo s unrelenting, forced sexual attentions, the focus of jacobs rsquo s narrative is the sexual exploitation that she, as well as many other slave women, had to endure. For her, the question of how to address this ldquo unmentionable rdquo subject dominates the choices she delineates in her narrative mdash as woman slave and as woman author. Yet while douglass could show ldquo how a slave became a man rdquo in a physical fight with an overseer, jacobs rsquo s gender determined a different course. Pregnant with the child of a white lover of her own choosing, fifteen year old jacobs reasoned erroneously that her condition would spur her licentious master to sell her and her child.

Once she was a mother, with ldquo ties to life, rdquo as she called them, her concern for her children had to take precedence over her own self interest. Thus throughout her narrative, jacobs is looking not only for freedom but also for a secure home for her children. She might also long for a husband, but her shameful early liaison, resulting in two children born ldquo out of wedlock, rdquo meant, as she notes with perhaps a dose of sarcasm, that her story ends ldquo not, in the usual way, with marriage, rdquo but ldquo with freedom. Rdquo in this finale, she still mourns even though her children were now grown that she does not have ldquo a home of my own. Rdquo douglass rsquo s 1845 narrative, conversely, ends with his standing as a speaker before an eager audience and feeling an exhilarating ldquo degree of freedom.

Rdquo while douglass rsquo s and jacobs rsquo s lives might seem to have moved in different directions, it is nevertheless important not to miss the common will that their narratives proclaim. They never lost their determination to gain not only freedom from enslavement but also respect for their individual humanity and that of other bondsmen and women. narrative of the life of frederick douglass, an american slave 1845 is available, along with introductory material, at incidents in the life of a slave girl 1861 by harriet jacobs is available with introductory material at an introduction to the wpa slave narratives 1 for the sake of brevity, i have omitted many references in this essay. More extensive and detailed discussion and documentation can be found in two articles that i have previously published on which i have drawn substantially in my discussion here: the background of the slave narrative collection, american quarterly 19, no. 3 fall 1967 , 534 53, and ex slave interviews and the historiography of slavery, american quarterly 36, no. 2 david brion davis, slavery and the post world war ii historians, daedalus 103 spring 1974: 7. 3 george fitzhugh, sociology for the south, or the failure of free society richmond, va.

Phillips, american negro slavery, a survey of the supply, employment, and control of negro labor as determined by the plantation regime new york, 1918 reprint baton rouge, louisiana, 1996. Elkins, slavery: a problem in american institutional and intellectual life chicago, 1959 , 11. 8 the fisk university interviews were originally published in mimeographed form: ophelia settle egypt, j. Johnson, unwritten history of slavery: autobiographical accounts of negro ex slaves nashville, 1945. A second volume, fisk university social science institute, god struck me dead: religion conversion experiences and autobiographies of ex slaves nashville, 1945 , was also part of this project and was published at the same time. Both documents have been reprinted as volumes 18 and 19, respectively, of george p.