Questions After 4/23 in EN 211

The picture of Ms. Jacobs above is from 1894.  Below is a drawing of her hiding place in her grandmother's attic.

Good afternoon :)

Tomorrow we will continue to discuss Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and (I hope) watch Fatu's presentation.  I also hope to be commenting on your papers soon!

Next week we will start reviewing for the final and finishing up with Whitman and Dickinson.

Here are the links to the videos we watched in class yesterday:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TuhCzvp-RY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20EHtBdnaVE

I hope to read Dr. Fagan Yellin's biography of Harriet Jacobs at some point as she has done so much to recover Jacobs' life and work.

Here are a few more questions:

-- What does Jacobs' narrative add to your understanding of slavery?

-- How does she depict her family?  her community? her owners?

-- Discuss Jacobs' response to Mrs. Bruce's decision to buy her freedom.  Do you feel that Mrs. Bruce did the right thing?  Or not?  Why?

-- Discuss Jacobs' decision to hide in plain sight rather than to escape up North.

-- Compare and contrast the actual runaway notice for Harriet Jacobs http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h1541t.html with the version included in Incidents.  What does this tell you about Jacobs' presentation of herself to her audience?  What does this tell you about Dr. Norcom's perception of Jacobs?

-- How does Jacobs use literary devices in her narrative? How does she use elements of literature?

-- How does Dr. Fagan Yellin's referring to Jacobs as a "teenager" affect your understanding of her narrative?

-- Compare Jacobs' childhood to Douglass' and Equiano's.

-- Compare Jacobs' youth to Douglass' and Equiano's.

-- Which would be a better way to group authors--by their date of birth or their date of death?  Why?  (In a review of a book by Prof. Devoney Looser, I noted  that " Looser playfully argues for classifying authors by the dates of their death, rather than their birthdates.  She observes that 'Jane Austen (1775-1817) and Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) would come before Maria Edgeworth (1768-1849) and Frances Burney (1752-1840)' (169)." )  As Harriet Jacobs died in 1897, we would be ending with her although Harriet Beecher Stowe would be very close to the end since she died in 1896.  We would also be reading Melville alongside Whitman as their dates of death are very close (1891 vs. 1892).  Imagine if I were better at following chronology!

Feel free to come up with some of your own questions based on your interests and our class discussion.