Female and Unfree in America: Captivity and Slave Narratives

Loredana Bercuci

doi:10.1515/rjes-2020-0004

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Female and Unfree in America: Captivity and Slave Narratives

Romanian Journal of English Studies

Volume 17 (2020): Issue 1 (December 2020)

By: Loredana Bercuci

Open Access

|Jan 2021

Abstract

This study analyses two seminal American memoirs that depict female captivity: A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson (1682) by Mary Rowlandson and Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861). My aim is to discuss, using the tools of Critical Race Theory, the intersections of gender and race, focusing on how the two women’s femininity, as well as their individuality, is linked to Christianity and motherhood.

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