The autobiographical narrative Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself (1861), by Harriet A. Jacobs, a slave of African descent, not only recounts an individual life but also provides, implicitly and explicitly, a perspective on the larger United States culture from the viewpoint of one denied access to into slavery, thus leading her free readers to perceive those values within a broader social context.
Some critics have argued that, by conforming to convention, Jacobs shortchanged her own experiences; one critic, for example, claims that in Jacobs’s work the purposes of the domestic novel overshadow those of the typical slave narrative. But the relationship between the two genres is more complex: Jacobs’s attempt to frame her story her experience, and that of any female slave, cannot be fully understood without shedding conventional perspectives.
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