“These things took the shape of mystery”: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl as American Romance

This article argues that, in addition to being a trustworthy personal history, Harriet Jacobs’s autobiographical slave narrative, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, may be read alongside some of America’s well-known fiction writers as working within the Romance tradition. Jacobs’s narrative goes far beyond a strict retelling of events, and incorporates important literary techniques, as an effort to articulate not only the objective horrors of historical American slavery, but also to provide readers with a profound and transcendent “inner” view of the lived experience of slavery.