The Economy of Being: Temporality and Narrativity in Slave Narratives Case of: Harriet Jacobs ‘Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl’ (1861) and Frederick Douglass’s ‘Narrative of the Life

Abstract

The fulcrum of the present work lies in the relationship that binds time to narrative and narrativity aspects in two major slave narratives. We speak of the ex-slaves; Harriet Jacobs with her ‘Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl’ (1861) and Frederick Douglass in his ‘Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave’ (1845) as a case in point. The genesis of this study is to reveal the several temporal insights within the portrayal of the authors’ lives as slaves. The research delineates the issue of time which has been subject of several debates and controversy. The different views regarding time are to be exposed. From another perspective, we will draw on horizons of understanding narrative chemistry. Thus, the present paper builds on an analysis of slaves’ self-narration in temporal confines. In an attempt to see through the lenses of Jacobs and Douglass we have opted for this study which has objectives ;both the discussion of how far time plays a central role in slave narratives and how far the narrative condition is there. 122