The Unacknowledged Legacy of 19 th Century Slave Narratives
to be pious , domestic , submissive , and pure ” ( Fulton 249 ). Silences , on the other hand , are gender neutral . This is not to say that slave narratives were not explicit : “ Murder , mutilation , torture , thwarted escape , and ( insinuated ) rape were both horrifying and titillating to genteel audiences and became necessary elements to drive the popularity and sales of slave narratives ” ( Abdur-Rahman 236 ). However , authors like Jacobs and Douglass made conscious choices to omit certain scenes — for example , Jacobs refuses to openly discuss sexual relations and Douglass does not describe his journey along the Underground Railroad . Silences or gaps in narratives can be referred to as “‘ undertell ,’ a deliberate and necessary understating of the truth ” ( Whitsitt 74 ). This exercise of narrative control reveals both newfound autonomy and internalized shame , forces that compete with one another across these texts ’ pages .
Gender-specific framing has another effect : it establishes archetypal roles for the “ characters ” in slave narratives . Though Douglass and Jacobs chronicle their own experiences , there is some fictionalization : “[ T ] he author portrays the way he or she overcomes the slaveholding society ’ s continuing attempts to eradicate his or her identity ; simultaneously , s / he rewrites that identity to fit the dominant culture ’ s norms ” ( Drake 43 ). Douglass models his story after the Franklinian autobiographical novel , which “ portrays the self as unique , even Oedipal in its ability to throw off the restraints of the past and ‘ father ’ a new man ” as a way to “ disprove the myths of black inferiority ” ( Drake 46-47 ). This archetype is generally referred to as the articulate hero , a man who has risen above his station to represent success , telling his story with clarity and strength . Jacobs , meanwhile , follows what Braxton introduces “ as a counterpart to the articulate hero [:] the archetype of the outraged mother ” ( Braxton 382 ). These
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