SOLITUDE AND LONELINESS IN FREDERICK DOUGLASS’ NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS AND HARRIET JACOBS’ INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

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SOLITUDE AND LONELINESS IN FREDERICK DOUGLASS’ NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS AND HARRIET JACOBS’ INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

Abstract:

This study is a psychoanalytic interpretation of Frederick Douglass‘ Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs‘ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl in relation to solitude and loneliness. This is born out of the fact that previous studies in Slave Narratives have focused more on sociological aspect of slavery. This study examines solitary and lonely African American slave characters under trauma in the two texts and reveals how they psychologically cope and react in solitude and loneliness in their daily experiences. The specific objectives of the research are to demonstrate that slave narrative is an apt literary discourse for examining African American slaves‘ experience and that although solitude relieves the slave characters from social anxiety, it however, brings to the fore psychological conflicts in the slave characters. In the case of loneliness, a psychologically painful experience, it results into the loss of self, social fragmentation and despair. The study combines both the qualitative research methodology and interdisciplinary approach as methodology, in addition to the use of secondary sources. The study discovers that the slave characters lacking a social support base, exhibit neurotic trends and coping strategies that hold them back and hamper their progress. Consequently, they evince either a movement against, or away and towards other strategies. Male slave characters, on the one hand, exhibit a movement away and against others strategies by evading social network. Female slave characters, on the other hand, exhibit movements toward and away from others strategies by both evading and liking social contact – confirming the notion that male slave characters fight a lonely, aggressive plight to freedom while female slave characters identify with their respective family in their plights. The study explores Freudian and Horneyan strands of psychoanalysis in examining the characters‘ personality disorder.

SOLITUDE AND LONELINESS IN FREDERICK DOUGLASS’ NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS AND HARRIET JACOBS’ INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

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