Description
Choose ONE of the following questions to answer for this week’s discussion.
Published soon after Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harper’s “Eliza Harris” retells and comments on one famous passage in Stowe’s novel, the harrowing escape of the slave Eliza from the South to the North, across the treacherous ice of the Ohio River. Why would Harper write a poem about this fictional character? What dimensions or implications of Eliza’s escape does Harper develop?
Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is revolutionary not only its portrayal of the signature ways slavery affected women but in its blending of genres: it is both a slave narrative and a work of sentimental writing. Choose one scene from Jacobs’s narrative and write about how she engages with sentimental ideas. Is she challenging the prevalent view of sentimentalism? Is she conforming to it? How does she view her own connection to and with sentimentalism?
Reminders:
Discussion posts should be at least 300 words and reference all authors mentioned in the question.
Posts should include at least one direct quotation from each text to help support your points (with correct citations and formatting).
Two discussion replies of at least 50 words are due by Friday at 11:59 PM.
You do not have to reply only to those posts that answered the same question as you. You should endeavor to respond to posts answering the other question as well.
The best replies are ones that add to and further the conversation: don’t simply agree or disagree; rather, ask questions, provide more examples, and help develop the ideas.
You will not be able to see anyone else’s answers until you post your own.
