Women under Slavery: The Representation of Women's Resistance in "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" and "Kindred"

This paper provides an examination of the depiction of enslaved women's conditions and their resistance in both antebellum slave narratives and neo-slave narratives. The study focuses on examining two prominent works, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs and Kindred by Octavia Butler, within the historical framework of the antebellum era up to the twentieth century. The main purpose of this thesis is to show how African American enslaved women were able to maintain their dignity and oppose oppression despite their harsh living situations. Furthermore, this study emphasizes the differences in how enslaved women are portrayed in literature across different times. This study is divided into three chapters. The examination proceeds chronologically by offering first an introduction to slave narratives and then focuses on the two works mentioned above in the final two sections.