LITR 5535: American Romanticism

Student Presentation on Reading Selections 2005

Danny Corrigan

March 21, 2005

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs

Primary Themes: Good vs. Evil, but more accurately read as Innocence vs. Experience. Concept of individual state of grace before “The Fall”. Desire of the individual vs. society.

Narrative elements of Objective 1a. Romantic Spirit or Ideology

1. Desire and loss, rebellion, nostalgia, idealism

2. The Romantic impulse of desire for anything besides “the here and now”

3. Crossing physical borders or transgressing social or psychological boundaries

4. Romantic hero or heroine and desire to self-invent or transform

Desire for return to innocence of youth; loss of innocence; nostalgia for childhood.

Pg. 813 “I was born a slave; but I never knew it till six years of happy childhood had passed away”.

Pg. 813 “...though we were all slaves, I was so fondly shielded that I never dreamed I was a piece of merchandise...”

Pg. 814 “Such were the unusually fortunate circumstances of my early childhood. When I was six years old, my mother died, and then, for the first time, I learned, by the talk around me that I was a slave”.

Pg. 815 “Those were happy days - - too happy to last. The slave child had no thought for the morrow; but there came that blight, which too surely waits on every human being born to be chattel”.

Hope for the future; wants to marry free black man; be freed herself and have free children

Pg. 817 “This love-dream had been my support through many trials; and I could not bear to run the risk of having it suddenly dissipated”.

Pg. 819 “He left me, still hoping the day would come when I could be bought. With me the lamp of hope had gone out. The dream of girlhood was over. I felt lonely and desolate”.

Although there is still much debate about whether this is a true slave narrative or a work of fiction, the narrator does utilize several elements of Romanticism.

1. Can the narrator be considered a Romantic heroine?

2. What other Romantic characteristics, if any, can be found in the text?

3. This work has an obvious political objective and agenda. Does that decrease or strengthen any Romantic elements? With the added political element, how does it compare to other texts we’ve read?