In eleven pages this paper analyzes the depictions of slavery and interracial relationships between women that exist in these two works. Four sources are cited in the bibliography.
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is also included. Bibliography lists 4 sources. SNButjac.doc Jacobs and Butler Look at Slavery Written by Susan A. Nelson
- June, 2001 For More Information On This Paper Please African American authors, Harriet Jacobs and Octavia Butler both
wrote books that developed themes addressing specific issues germane to slavery in pre-Civil War America. Although Jacobs Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) is autobiographical, and
Butlers Kindred smacks of science-fiction/ fantasy, both works have common threads with respect to their interracial female relationships, etc. This essay will examine examples of these relationships, and also
draw the political connections necessary to elucidate Butler/ Jacobs divergent literary choices. Harriet Jacobs wrote Incidents in the Life of a
Slave Girl under the pseudonym Linda Brent, after she escaped a severely abusive slave owner and became an abolitionist in Rochester, New York. In addition to her novel, two
of her other great accomplishments were to establish a school for Black refugees (Jacobs Free School), in addition to assisting in the development of the National Association of Colored Women.
In one of the most significant slave narratives ever written, Jacobs -- born a slave to mulatto parents in 1813 North Carolina -- recounts her remarkable story. From
her sale to an abusive master, to her bid for freedom as the lover of a White man, to her ultimate and harrowing emancipation, her work is an outstanding example
of one womans extraordinary courage, and one of the most provocative first-person accounts of slavery in American history. This book exemplifies what