Transforming Borders in William W. Brown’s “Narrative”

Abstract

Despite its being a best seller in nineteenth-century America, the Narrative of William W. Brown, A Fugitive Slave in contemporary times has largely been overshadowed by the work of his better-known compatriot, Frederick Douglass. As William L. Andrews has noted in his “Introduction” to From Fugitive Slave to Free Man: The Autobiographies of William Wells Brown, however, “Perhaps more than any other text of its kind, the Narrative of William W. Brown typifies in its subject matter and development the basic plot structure of the antebellum slave narrative” (5). Because Brown was remarkably well-traveled as a slave and, as the abolitionist Edmund Quincy reminds us in a prefatory letter, additionally had an unusual variety of assigned positions working in the house, in the field, and on the river, Brown, uniquely situation, can speak to a wider range of experiences and perspectives within slavery, and, in part for these reasons, his account merits more and closer examination. While a cursory reading allows one to recognize the conventions a slave narrator follows, an in-depth analysis of Brown's Narrative reveals that he not only writes to bolster the abolitionist movement but also works out his own freedom and his sense of self through tropes of distance and space.