Comparison Of Clotel And Harriet E. Wilson's Our Nig

The foundation of Mitchell’s essay, “Her Side of His Story: A Feminist Analysis of Two Nineteenth-Century Antebellum Novels—William Wells Brown's ‘Clotel’ and Harriet E. Wilson's ‘Our Nig.’”, is how different representations of various black female writers in the nineteenth century lead to various characterizations of black women and their search for freedom. Mitchell compares William Wells Brown’s Clotel and Harriet E. Wilson’s Our Nig, two novels which Mitchell categorizes as influenced by the nineteenth-century English and American Romanticism trend of literature that both tell stories of black females and their experiences while attempting to attain freedom. Mitchell focuses on the differing intents and genders of each of the authors thus …show more content…
They propose that the traditional paradigm in teaching this topic is through analyzing writing that makes women’s voices heard. In the essay, the authors argue for a new way of remembering women and present a new way of teaching this topic to students. The authors note that the objective for students shouldn’t be solely on women’s place in the rhetorical tradition, but to examine their role within the memory or public imagination. This includes how “everyday” people remember these women or how they erase them from public memory. In addition, the authors argue that their pedagogy requires students to engage in the public memorialization of these women which allows a lens to be used to investigate how women have participated within the public sphere of society. The overall purpose of this new pedagogy is to help students move away from purely an academic perspective and to frame the topic with a larger goal of finding connections to our everyday lives today. The authors also see their work not only affecting the way women rhetoric are taught, but also as a way for further academic research from feminist historiographers. In sum, this article focuses on how women are memorialized and remembered by everyday people. The article lends itself to be read by a diverse set of audience members including: academics, teachers, and students. Given the pedagogical aspect of the article, it would be a useful tool for teachers at the collegiate level and high school level to use as a guide or framework in teaching the topic to students. The authors use a wide gamut of sources which consist of mostly secondary sources, but also some primary ones. Most notably, the sources point to the cross-disciplinary approach the authors use which intersect the fields of history, gender and