Slave Narrative Literary Analysis

Prior to the publication of any slave narrative, African Americans had been represented by early historians’ interpretations of their race and culture. Commonly accepted gender roles are a product of the biological and social evolution of humankind and are polarized between masculine and feminine expressions. These roles have been universally adapted and historically assigned to individuals based on gender. The collective acceptance of individual gender roles has fashioned them into a lens through which all human experience is filtered down to the individual. The differences between males and females and their respective gender roles result in distinctly different perspectives between the two sexes, often of the same event. One instance of this phenomenon can be observed through literature via the comparison of the distinctions between male and female slave narratives. The two most popular slave narratives, Frederick Douglass’s, “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass,” and Harriet Jacob’s, “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” offer insight into gender-specific dissimilariti…