Rethinking the Slave Narrative: Slave Marriage and the Narratives of Henry Bibb and William and Ellen Craft

(Hardback)

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The African American slave narrative is popularly viewed as the story of a lone male's flight from slavery to freedom, best exemplified by the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (1845). On the other hand, critics have also given much attention to Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861), to indicate how the form could have been different if more women had written in it. But in stressing the narratives of Douglass and Jacobs as models for the genre, scholars have ignored the formal and thematic importance of marriage and family in the slave narrative, since neither author explores slave marriage in their works. This book examines the central role of marriage in The Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave (1849) and Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom; or the Escape of William and Ellen Craft from Slavery (1860). Bibb's slave wife and child account for significant innovations in the form and content of his narrative, while the Crafts' mutual dependence as a married couple results in a sustained use of dramatic irony. The volume closes by offering a thoughtful consideration of the influence of Bibb and the Crafts on the later fiction of Douglass, William Wells Brown, and Martin Delany. In doing so, it invites a critical reexamination of current assumptions about slave narratives.

Reviews

Heglar's Rethinking the Slave Narrative is a must-read for scholars of both nonfictional and fictional slave narratives. Imbedded discussions of authentication processes, oral presentations, and literacy, as well as a fine bibliography, enrich a volume which justly deserves to be placed in Greenwood Press's series Contributions in Afro-American and African Studies-Journal of the American Studies Association of Texas
"Heglar's Rethinking the Slave Narrative is a must-read for scholars of both nonfictional and fictional slave narratives. Imbedded discussions of authentication processes, oral presentations, and literacy, as well as a fine bibliography, enrich a volume which justly deserves to be placed in Greenwood Press's series Contributions in Afro-American and African Studies"-Journal of the American Studies Association of Texas

Author Bio

Charles J. Heglar is Assistant Professor of English at the University of South Florida.