GENDER, SLAVERY, AND AMERICAN DREAM IN HARRIET JACOB’S AND FREDERICK DOUGLASS’S AUTOBIOGRAPHIES

Abstract

This research seeks to explore the accurate details of their fugitive slaves throughout their narratives, which emphasizing their sufferings under cruel masters and the strength they gained after they freed themselves. The autobiographies that will be utilized in the study include Frederick Douglass’s “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: an American Slave” and Harriet Jacobs’s “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” were written by fugitive slaves of both genders. These two pieces reveal the differences in their experience and how their experiences, as a result of their respective genders, formulated their characters based on their innate gender traits. This paper will explore how the opposite genders were suffering and treated by their masters and mistresses. Even though Jacobs and Douglass obtained their freedom, their memories attached them to the past and formulated their personalities as well as their future