The American Slave Narrative and the Victorian Novel [Paperback]

Conceived as a literary form to aggressively publicize the abolitionist cause in the United States, the African American slave narrative remains a powerful and illuminating demonstration of America's dark history. Yet the genre's impact extended far beyond the borders of the U.S. The American Slave Narrative and the Victorian Novel investigates the shaping influence of writings by Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, and other former slaves on British fiction in the years between the Abolition Act and the Emancipation Proclamation. Julia Sun-Joo Lee argues that novelists such as Charlotte Bronte, Elizabeth Gaskell, and Charles Dickens integrated into their works generic elements of the slave narrative-from the emphasis on literacy as a tool of liberation, to the teleological journey from slavery to freedom, to the ethics of resistance over submission. It contends that Victorian novelists used these tropes in an attempt to access the slave narrative's paradigm of resistance, illuminate the transnational dimension of slavery, and articulate Britain's role in the global community. Through a deft use of disparate sources, Lee reveals how the slave narrative becomes part of the textual network of the English novel, making visible how black literary, as well as economic, production contributed to British culture.

Introduction. The American Slave Narrative and the Victorian Novel

Chapter One. The Slave Narrative of Jane Eyre

Chapter Two. Slaves and Brothers in Pendennis

Chapter Three. Female Slave Narratives: The Grey Woman and My Lady Ludlow

Chapter Four. The Return of the Unnative : North and South

Chapter Five. Fugitive Plots in Great Expectations

Epilogue. The Plot Against England: The Dynamiter

Works Cited

Lee's book is valuable not only for demonstrating how much Victorian novels have in common with American slave narratives, but for beginning to address the questions this kinship raises...This book brlã¤