The two published narratives most often referenced and used in the classroom are Frederick Douglass' Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (Douglass, 1845) and Harriet Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (Jacobs, 1861), which together bring into stark contrast the experiences of men and women under slavery. Douglass' account revolves around three themes: his sudden awareness in childhood, after witnessing his Aunt Hester's brutal whipping, that he had passed through 'the blood-stained gate, the entrance to the hell of slavery' (Douglass, 1845, p. 5); his struggles to become literate; and his battle to assert his manhood in the face of a brutal overseer. Jacobs, on the other hand, sheds light on the particular trials endured by enslaved girls and women, pointing to their vulnerability to the daily sexual abuse: 'If God has bestowed beauty upon her, it will prove her greatest curse. That which commands admiration in the white woman only hastens the degradation of the female slave', her struggles to escape the predations of her master and the ire of her mistress (Jacobs, 1861, p. 46). Another difference between the two narratives is that one narrator (Douglass) relied on individual resistance and the other (Jacobs) on collective opposition to the brutalities of slavery: while Douglass appears to have been a self-propelled protagonist in his struggle to be free, Jacobs, throughout her story, counted on the support of a community of enslaved and free - hence black and white - people to sustain her through her seven years in hiding and, ultimately, her escape to the North.