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Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is distinctive in that it brings together issues of slavery and gender
Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is distinctive in that it brings together issues of slavery and gender
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Like Douglass, Harriet Jacobs was determined to fight to the death for her freedom. Harriet Ann Jacobs was an astonishing slave woman whom over came many great obstacles in life. Harriet wrote an autobiography about her life called Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, under the pseudo name of Linda Brent. Her story talks about her struggles and achievements as a slave. Harriet used different names in the story to hind the identity of her fellow slaves and her masters.Yet while Douglass could show “how a slave became a man” in a physical fight with an overseer, Jacobs’s gender determined a different course. Pregnant with the child of a white lover of her own choosing, fifteen year old Jacobs reasoned (erroneously) that her condition would …show more content…
If on the one hand there is the pursuit and coercion of a female slave and her public regret of a loss of “purity,” there are also elements of the seduction novel and her use of sexuality to make a severely limited choice of partners and so frustrate her master. Yet the question remains obvious: is Harriet Jacobs’ choice a real choice, or is it self-defense? Jacobs turns a situation of duress to the best advantage possible. While she recognizes the Victorian code of domestic propriety, she recognizes too that this is a code meant for white women rather than black women. But Jacobs refuses to be consigned to the role of a kept woman; she demands equality. As the narrative continues, Incidents speaks to many readers due to its portrait of resilient motherhood under extreme duress. Jacobs is a woman caught in a dilemma between self-preservation and the emotional call and responsibilities of motherhood. She becomes a mother due to lack of free choice, but is a devoted mother nonetheless. In the end hiding is insufficient: a labor system that places capital value on each enslaved family member causes her separation from her children and the family’s …show more content…
Her book was adored in the late 1970s which was the period of white and black rise of feminism. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl focuses on a destiny of slave woman depicted as a victim of sexual abuse. Harriet Jacobs depicted her struggle to unwanted sexual attentions of her master and her escape by hiding for with her two children for seven years. This is one of the major slave narrative topics. Slave narratives contain very often a description of a cruel master or mistress who abuses their slaves, overseers whipping slaves, savage barbarity and injustice not being protected by law. Frequently repeated motives are separation from family, hard labor and starvation, sexual abuse and physical punishment. Ex-slaves described their quest for literacy and
In Harriet Jacobs’ autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, personal accounts that detail the ins-and-outs of the system of slavery show readers truly how monstrous and oppressive slavery is. Families are torn apart, lives are ruined, and slaves are tortured both physically and mentally. The white slaveholders of the South manipulate and take advantage of their slaves at every possible occasion. Nothing is left untouched by the gnarled claws of slavery: even God and religion become tainted. As Jacobs’ account reveals, whites control the religious institutions of the South, and in doing so, forge religion as a tool used to perpetuate slavery, the very system it ought to condemn. The irony exposed in Jacobs’ writings serves to show
Jacobs, Harriet, and Yellin, Jean. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press
A recurring theme in, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, is Harriet Jacobs's reflections on what slavery meant to her as well as all women in bondage. Continuously, Jacobs expresses her deep hatred of slavery, and all of its implications. She dreads such an institution so much that she sometimes regards death as a better alternative than a life in bondage. For Harriet, slavery was different than many African Americans. She did not spend her life harvesting cotton on a large plantation. She was not flogged and beaten regularly like many slaves. She was not actively kept from illiteracy. Actually, Harriet always was treated relatively well. She performed most of her work inside and was rarely ever punished, at the request of her licentious master. Furthermore, she was taught to read and sew, and to perform other tasks associated with a ?ladies? work. Outwardly, it appeared that Harriet had it pretty good, in light of what many slaves had succumbed to. However, Ironically Harriet believes these fortunes were actually her curse. The fact that she was well kept and light skinned as well as being attractive lead to her victimization as a sexual object. Consequently, Harriet became a prospective concubine for Dr. Norcom. She points out that life under slavery was as bad as any slave could hope for. Harriet talks about her life as slave by saying, ?You never knew what it is to be a slave; to be entirely unprotected by law or custom; to have the laws reduce you to the condition of chattel, entirely subject to the will of another.? (Jacobs p. 55).
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl opens with an introduction in which the author, Harriet Jacobs, states her reasons for writing an autobiography. Her story is painful, and she would rather have kept it private, but she feels that making it public may help the antislavery movement. A preface by abolitionist Lydia Maria Child makes a similar case for the book and states that the events it records are true.
Jacobs, Harriet A.. Incidents in the life of a slave girl. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988
Jacobs, Harriet A. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. New York: Oxford UP, 1988. Print.
Jacobs, Harriet. Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl. 2nd Edition. Edited by Pine T. Joslyn. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, INC., 2001.
Written by Herself | Vivanco | Thirdspace: A Journal of Feminist Theory & Culture." Literary Influences on Harriet Jacobs 's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Written by Herself | Vivanco | Thirdspace: A Journal of Feminist Theory & Culture. Web. 10 Oct. 2016. The main purpose of this article is the different literacy authors talking about and analyzing Harriet Jacobs narrative and comparing to other authors work. They were comparing male and female slave narrative and that Harriet Jacobs’ narrative was sentimental. I think the intended audience for this article is females and that was stated in the article. One thing that I found interesting was that Harriet Jacobs’ was proved to be a trickster figure and that her narrative is associated with the picaresque novel. I think I will be using this article because it goes into great detail about literary genre about slave narratives. The conclusion that the author came up with was that Harriet Jacobs narrative has a combination of very different
Many of life’s fantasies can resemble someone from our past or someone we care about. Every so often, a reader may come across a story that feels as if the narrator is telling the story through his or her own life experiences. The nonfictional story “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” is a convincing third person limited omniscient narration by Harriet Jacobs, and it shows a diverse use of extreme cruelty and hardship: slaves resisted in their condition and created their own ways of living, which allow the readers to learn how narrators can use their emotions and feelings to explain their life experiences. The story’s main purpose was to show how slaves created their own culture and ways of life through the Bible and their religion, Jacobs emphasizes culture diversity and the hardship that many slave women went through.
In Harriett Jacobs’s book, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, she informs her readers of her life as a slave girl growing up in southern America. By doing this she hides her identity and is referred to as Linda Brent which she had a motive for her secrecy? In the beginning of her life she is sheltered as a child by her loving mistress where she lived a free blissful life. However after her mistress dies she is not freed from the bondage of slaver but given to her mistress sister and this is where Jacobs’s happiness dissolved. In her story, she reveals that slavery is terrible for men but, is more so dreadful for women. In addition woman bore being raped by their masters, as well as their children begin sold into slavery. All of this experience
Slavery is a term that can create a whirlwind of emotions for everyone. During the hardships faced by the African Americans, hundreds of accounts were documented. Harriet Jacobs, Charles Ball and Kate Drumgoold each shared their perspectives of being caught up in the world of slavery. There were reoccurring themes throughout the books as well as varying angles that each author either left out or never experienced. Taking two women’s views as well as a man’s, we can begin to delve deeper into what their everyday lives would have been like. Charles Ball’s Fifty Years in Chains and Harriet Jacobs Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl were both published in the early 1860’s while Kate Drumgoold’s A Slave Girl’s Story came almost forty years later
Analyzing the narrative of Harriet Jacobs in the context of the writings of W.E.B. Du bois serves to demonstrate how slavery prompted the weary and self-denigrating attitudes of Negro Americans during the subsequent Reconstruction period. However, it is important to note that Harriet Jacobs does not embody the concept of double-consciousness because slavery effectively stripped away her sexuality and femininity, therefore reducing her to one identity--that of a
As female slaves such as Harriet Jacob continually were fighting to protect their self respect, and purity. Harriet Jacob in her narrative, the readers get an understanding of she was trying to rebel against her aggressive master, who sexually harassed her at young age. She wasn’t protected by the law, and the slaveholders did as they pleased and were left unpunished. Jacobs knew that the social group,who were“the white women”, would see her not as a virtuous woman but hypersexual. She states “I wanted to keep myself pure, - and I tried hard to preserve my self-respect, but I was struggling alone in the grasp of the demon slavery.” (Harriet 290)The majority of the white women seemed to criticize her, but failed to understand her conditions and she did not have the free will. She simply did not have that freedom of choice. It was the institution of slavery that failed to recognize her and give her the basic freedoms of individual rights and basic protection. Harriet Jacobs was determined to reveal to the white Americans the sexual exploitations that female slaves constantly fa...
Harriet Jacobs story clearly shows the pain she suffered as a female slave, but it also showed the strength she proved to have within herself. At such a young age she went through things that I have never experienced. Her way of surviving is what truly inspires. Imagine just having to watch your children grow up before your very eyes and not being able to give them a hug or kiss. The simple things that our parents do today for us, the things we take for granted, are what she hoped and prayed she could do one day. Jacobs died in 1897, but she continued to fight for the rights of African
In Harriet Jacobs Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, the author subjects the reader to a dystopian slave narrative based on a true story of a woman’s struggle for self-identity, self-preservation and freedom. This non-fictional personal account chronicles the journey of Harriet Jacobs (1813-1897) life of servitude and degradation in the state of North Carolina to the shackle-free promise land of liberty in the North. The reoccurring theme throughout that I strive to exploit is how the women’s sphere, known as the Cult of True Womanhood (Domesticity), is a corrupt concept that is full of white bias and privilege that has been compromised by the harsh oppression of slavery’s racial barrier. Women and the female race are falling for man’s