William Wells Brown's slave narrative goes into detail about his personal experiences and his escape from slavery. Reliving the story of his escape mirrors one of the commonly followed literary traditions within the slave narrative genre. He describes his struggle for freedom and the several attempts and hardships he had to go through to finally achieve independence. The struggle for independence is very important for slaves to portray in order to accurately depict the lives of slaves to the readers.
In contrast with other slave narratives that have been studied within the genre, William Wells Brown does not go into personal stories and experiences involving religion and Christian redemption. Brown completely fails to mention any form of spirituality in his short narrative, while other popular slave writers at the time, such as James Albert Gronniosaw, Old Elizabeth, and Lucy A. Delaney focus almost exclusively on the redemption aspect of their lives.
When compared stylistically, Harriet Jacobs and Frederick Douglass wrote fairly similar narratives. Keeping in mind that these narratives were all from different perspectives and all had their obvious differences, these three narratives were similar in the fact that they were all about their lives as slaves and their particular struggle and escape for freedom. At the time, novels such as these showed proslavery individuals how cruel and inhumane slavery was and how emancipation needed to be established. Narratives that were written and published about slavery but after emancipation were used to show how inequality still existed in the North and South while simultaneously giving a description of slavery.
Judging from the articles I've read over Henry Bibb, in which Brown is often mentioned, it seems like his narrative was still greatly successful upon its publication, despite the absence of any detailed piety. While the role of religion in slave narratives seems to be largely important in appealing to readers, Brown was successful without it, which I found quite interesting. Great entry!
ReplyDeleteWhy was Brown mentioned in the articles with Bibb? I also think that he was extremely successful in writing his narrative even though it failed to include much of the religion aspect. With his travel story, he kept the audience intrigued and interested.
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