Just like any other narrative, “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl,” by Harriet Jacobs is a narrative telling about a slave 's story and what slaves go through as they execute the socioeconomic dictates of their masters. It is important to note that more than five thousand former slaves who were enslaved in North America had given an account of their slave life during the 18th and 19th centuries. Many of their narratives were published on books and newspaper articles. Most of the stories of these slaves were centered on the experiences of life in plantations, small farms owned by the middle class natives, mines and factories in the cities. It is undeniable that without those slave narratives, people today will not be able to know how slaves …show more content…
Through Jacobs’s narration which is in an objective tone, readers are able to understand how slaves were traded like goods. According to her, slaves were taken to the trading grounds with an expectation that those purchased were to go with their new masters (Jacobs, p. 25). If in any case a slaves resisted going with their new master, then a terrible and thorough beating ensued to the resisting slaves. Most slaves dreaded the New Year’s Day which was the hiring day for slaves in the Antebellum American South (Jacobs, p. 25). From Jacobs’s narration, it is very evident that she had negative feelings towards …show more content…
While it may have seemed to be detrimental to the blacks only, Jacobs asserts that slavery ruins the lives of many in the immediate environment including the slaves, the slave owners, their wives and their children. This was despite the wives of the slave owners releasing their infuriation on the women slaves (Jacobs, p. 49). To avoid marriage breaks due to the women slaves doubling as sex partners for the slave owners, the white women had no choice but hearken the pleas by Jacobs and join the slave abolitionist
...lusion the experiences that Jacobs and Douglass had were no different albeit the forms of their slavery were dissimilar. Abuse is abuse no matter how you slice it the desired effect is to break the spirit of the on being abused. One cannot say that their experience was worse than another because all they have is what they’ve been through. If the eyes are the windows of the soul than no one but the owner of those eyes can be able to perceive what they have been through and the severity of it. The most important thing to come from what they went through was that it turned these two into great minds of the generation. It took people like them to realize that the slavery was a microcosm of an ignorant world and the zeitgeist was changing. Douglass and Jacobs experiences with slavery were similar in the way that it took them knowledge to break free of their hindrances’.
In Harriet Jacobs book called; Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, she describes her life in an enthralling story that clearly reveals how complicated the lives of slaves were before the Civil War. As a result, she portrays the ruthless punishments, privation of food and sufficient clothing, severe labor and wrecked families.
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.
Linda Brent, Ms. Jacobs' pseudonym while writing "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl," became so entrenched in hatred of slaveholders and slavery that she lost sight of the possible good actions of slaveholders. When she "resolved never to be conquered" (p.17), she could no longer see any positive motivations or overtures made by slaveholders. Specifically, she could not see the good side of Mr. Flint, the father of her mistress. He showed his care for her in many ways, most notably in that he never allowed anyone to physically hurt her, he built a house for her, and he offered to take care of her and her bastard child even though it was not his.
Jacobs, Harriet. Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl. 2nd Edition. Edited by Pine T. Joslyn. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, INC., 2001.
In her essay, “Loopholes of Resistance,” Michelle Burnham argues that “Aunt Marthy’s garret does not offer a retreat from the oppressive conditions of slavery – as, one might argue, the communal life in Aunt Marthy’s house does – so much as it enacts a repetition of them…[Thus] Harriet Jacobs escapes reigning discourses in structures only in the very process of affirming them” (289). In order to support this, one must first agree that Aunt Marthy’s house provides a retreat from slavery. I do not. Burnham seems to view the life inside Aunt Marthy’s house as one outside of and apart from slavery where family structure can exist, the mind can find some rest, comfort can be given, and a sense of peace and humanity can be achieved. In contrast, Burnham views the garret as a physical embodiment of the horrors of slavery, a place where family can only dream about being together, the mind is subjected to psychological warfare, comfort is non-existent, and only the fear and apprehension of inhumanity can be found. It is true that Aunt Marthy’s house paints and entirely different, much less severe, picture of slavery than that of the garret, but still, it is a picture of slavery differing only in that it temporarily masks the harsh realities of slavery whereas the garret openly portrays them. The garret’s close proximity to the house is symbolic of the ever-lurking presence of slavery and its power to break down and destroy families and lives until there is nothing left. Throughout her novel, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs presents these and several other structures that suggest a possible retreat from slavery, may appear from the outside to provide such a retreat, but ideally never can. Among these structures are religion, literacy, family, self, and freedom.
Harriet Jacobs’ narrative is a powerful statement unveiling the impossibility and undesirability of achieving the ideal put forth by men and maintained by women. Jacobs directs her account of the afflictions a woman is subjected to in the chain of slavery to women of the north to gain sympathy for their sisters that were enslaved in the south. In showing this, Jacobs reveals the danger of such self disapprobation women maintained by accepting the idealized role that men have set a goal for which to strive. She suggests that slave women be judged by different standards than those applied to other women. Jacobs develops a moral code that apprises the specific social and historical position of captive black women. Jacobs’ will power and strength shown in her narrative are characteristics of womanly behavior being developed by the emerging feminist movement.
Harriet Jacobs wrote a moving slave narrative where she describes in great detail how her master constantly verbally and sexually harassed her. She was scared for her life many times when both her master, and his wife, threatened her. She tried many methods of escape, including becoming involved with a white lawyer who lived next door. Reading of her affair with a white man was completely shocking to northern white women. At the time, women were supposed to be pure by keeping their chastity. If you were pure, you had something to offer a future husband. By having this affair, Jacobs loses her purity, which was very important for women to have at the time; without it you weren't a woman. Jacobs appealed to her white readers saying, "You never knew what it is to be a slave; to be entirely unprotected by law or custom.... You never exhausted your ingenuity in avoiding the snares and eluding the power of a hated tyrant." (Jacobs 506) She couldn't find protection anywhere, from anyone. Her master was continually after her, finding new tricks to bother her, and attempt to seduce her. Not even the master's wife was willing to help. She was so lost in her jealousy, that she became blind to the fact ...
After the English had come and took over the land in the 1400’s , being a woman came with so many burdens and troubles, but the hardest part of being a woman, they never experienced freedom. As a woman, you had no sense of personal value to a man, you were expected to do as you were told and were severely punished if you did not. Being a woman meant you were property, and with owning property, a way for white land-owning men to make a profit. Along with making a profit, because they were considered property, they could be treated any way the “property owner” saw fit. Women were raped and beat with no freedom to speak up.
Jacobs recalls later the chapter the values of her mistress. She writes, “slaves had no right to any family ties of their own; that they were created merely to wait upon the family of the mistress” (925). Due to Jacobs being a slave, she realizes that she will never be able to truly be the domestic and maternal figure she wishes to be. After Jacobs reveals this truth about slavery she then writes about the painful separation from her first lover due to slavery. Jacobs wrote that she fell in love with a free young colored carpenter who she has known since her innocent childhood. The carpenter offered to buy her freedom leaving Jacobs very excited about her new future. However, due to the down falls of slavery, Jacobs soon realizes that the “hateful man who claimed a right to rule me, body and soul” (925) would never allow her to leave him so easily. When Dr. Flint is confronted with this news he retaliates against Jacobs striking her for the first time. This leaves Jacobs seeing the true violence and oppression of slavery. She writes that, “ for [the free man’s] sake, I felt that I ought not to link his fate with my own unhappy destiny” (928). With this newfound knowledge Jacobs pleads for him to leave and to never come back. Throughout this chapter Jacobs showed what it was like for her, as a slave, to love and experience
Jacobs’s own words tell us her feelings of betrayal. She says “But, alas! We all know that the memory of a faithful slave does not avail much to save her children from the auction block”(Jacobs 6). Jacobs’s fear came true as she was left to a niece of her former mistress, a five-year-old child. Societal norms of the male - dominated world dictated that the former mistress would bequeath her property and slaves to her family. In an article by Timothy Crumin entitled “Women and the Law in the Early Nineteenth Century” he
Almost every slave narrative details the ways the institution of slavery is detrimental to the black slaves, because those were the issues the writers experienced first hand. But a common goal of both writers was to expose to Northern Whites the damaging effects slavery had on all it touched. There was only so much sympathy the Whites could have for this foreign group, so the danger of slavery had to affect people the readers could better connect with. Douglass did this by saying that slavery and the power of slaves turned the slave owners morally corrupt, telling stories of slave owners committing adultery and rape with their slaves, ruining their white marriages from the biracial children their slave women birthed. Now Jacobs discussed this moral bankruptcy, but since she had personally suffered from these sexual abuses, the contempt she gave didn’t help achieve this goal. Probably the best example Douglass used concerning this issue didn’t have to due with sexual abuses. His childhood mistress Sophia Auld started off as a moral, idealistic women, who had never owned slaves before Douglass arrived, therefore had also always had to work herself to maintain the domestic sphere. But as Douglass explained, she soon became corrupted by power. “That cheerful eye, under the
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...
Through the story of a slave girl, the cruelty and horror of slavery is displayed. Linda Brent is a fortunate African American girl who is born into slavery. She experiences pain and humiliation by the hands of the whites but eventually, she makes it to her destiny.
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