Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Arts and Humanities Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Literature in English, North America

Scripps Senior Theses

2020

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

Articles 1 - 1 of 1

Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

A Revision Of A Revision: Reading The Heroic Slave As A Response To Uncle Tom's Cabin, Isabelle Phan Jan 2020

A Revision Of A Revision: Reading The Heroic Slave As A Response To Uncle Tom's Cabin, Isabelle Phan

Scripps Senior Theses

Frederick Douglass and Harriet Beecher Stowe have long been heralded as complementary contemporaries, working towards the similar goal of transforming antebellum society through abolitionist literature. This essay explores the ways in which their relationship is complicated by reading Douglass’ only work of fiction The Heroic Slave as a response to Uncle Tom’s Cabin. This argument is predicated on the separate argument that Uncle Tom's Cabin is its own revision of Douglass’ first autobiography Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave: specifically, I find that Stowe’s insistence on a Christian framework of abolition in her revision of Douglass' …