University of Richmond UR Scholarship Repository Honors Theses Student Research Spring 2002 Escaping the auction block and rejecting the pedestal of virtue : slave narratives redefine womanhood in nineteenth-century America Candice E. Renka Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarship.richmond.edu/honors-theses Recommended Citation Renka, Candice E., "Escaping the auction block and rejecting the pedestal of virtue : slave narratives redefine omw anhood in nineteenth-century America" (2002). Honors Theses. Paper 326. This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Research at UR Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Honors Theses by an authorized administrator of UR Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. UNIVERSITY OF RICHMOND LIBRARIES I \\I \\II \\\II\\\ I\\\\\\ II 111\I \\II ~I\~\\3 3082 I\\~\\\\\\\\\\\ 00748 1921I\~ Escaping the Auction Block and Rejecting the Pedestal of Virtue: Slave Narratives Redefine Womanhood in Nineteenth-Century America Candice E. Renka Honors Thesis Department of English University of Richmond Dr Thomas Allen, Thesis Director Spring 2002 The signatures below certify that with this essay Candice Renka has satisfied the thesis requirement for Honors in English. (Dr Thomas Allen, thesis director) (Dr Robert Nelson, English honors coordinator) Black women's slave narratives bring to the forefront the paradoxes of antebellum America's political and moral ideologies. These autobiographies criticize the dichotomous gender roles that were widely accepted in the nineteenth century United States. Women's slave narratives perceive the exclusion of women of color and women of the working class from the prevailing model of womanhood as indicative of an inadequate conceptual framework for understanding female personhood.