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Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Critical analysis of the life of a slave girl by Harriet Jacobs
Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
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The book The Classic Slave Narratives is a collection of narratives that includes the historical enslavement experiences in the lives of the former slaves Harriet Jacobs, Frederick Douglass, and Olaudah Equiano. They all find ways to advocate for themselves to protect them from some of the horrors of slavery, such as sexual abuse, verbal abuse, imprisonment, beatings, torturing, killings and the nonexistence of civil rights as Americans or rights as human beings. Also, their keen wit and intelligence leads them to their freedom from slavery, and their fight for freedom and justice for all oppressed people. In the autobiographical writings Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs’ reflects on the times that her master Dr. Flint consistently tried to molest her sexually. In spite of her fears of horrible repercussions such as beatings or torture if she refuses to submit to him, Harriet always manages to evade his proposals to become his mistress by out-smarting him. She defends herself from his numerous attempts to seduce her, by the power of her mental strength and intelligence, and her Christian morality. While she fears him each time he secretly approaches her with his sexual propositions when he caught her alone, she could always think of ways to protect herself. For example she protects herself from the dangers of his sexual advances by removing herself from the master’s presence any opportunity she gets. She sometimes stays with her grandmother or aunt at night to protect herself from him. They are both Dr. Flint’s former slaves too who live on the plantation where she lives. Even though he threatens to kill her if she tells anyone, she tells his wife about his sexual advances, and Mrs. Flint invites Harriet to sl... ... middle of paper ... ...ons thereafter. This book was very popular all over England and it ignited antislavery sentiment all over the country. Harriet, Frederick, and Olaudah were all slaves sharing their stories and experiences in their lives as slaves. All of their stories were similar as they spoke of the cruelty, brutality and utter inhumaneness of the overseers and masters that enslaved them. The most common threads and similarity to their stories is that they fought for themselves and for others to escape the horrors of this immoral institution called slavery. They all realized the importance of education in determining their destiny and the destiny of all people under the grasps of oppression. Their participation in the antislavery movement helped to fuel the sentimentality that supported the abolishment of slavery all over the world. Works Cited THE CLASSIC SLAVE NARRATIVES
Jacobs, Harriet, and Yellin, Jean. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press
Her readers, however, are still able to visualize the physical abuse that the enslaved are subject too. She offers a voice and brings life to those experiences. Jacobs also works through the physical dehumanization of black women as sexual assault and rape victims. She depicts to readers how she does not have power over her own body in the tyranny of Dr. Flint (Jacobs 231). Moreover, Jacobs also shares how there is not a “shadow of a law to protect her from insult, from violence, or even from death” (231). This is a pivotal moment in her writing because it alludes to that even in death, the dehumanization of the enslaved do not cease. It is preserved through each person continuously because the dehumanization of the enslaved is instituted in the structure of slavery. This is how the mental oppressiveness and lack of humanity through dehumanization continues to perpetuate.
Harriet Jacobs while in bondage contained a certain amount of leverage because of her strong will against Dr. Flint. She decided that her ultimatum to contribute her body to another white man instead of Flint because of her condition as a female slave. When she conceived and raised her two children for a while, Mr. Sands whom the father of the two children wanted to buy her children. Once her two children reached the age to be sold off at a young age, she decided to escape from the bondage of Dr. Flint. While she resided as a fugitive slave she stated, “… I asked her to go into my room as soon as it was light, and take all my clothes out of my trunk, and pack them in hers; for I knew Mr. Flint and the constable would be there early to search my room” (Jacobs 147). This statement displayed how clever Harriet existed as because of how much she examined the ways of Dr. Flint. Knowing that her grandmother planned on buying her children’s freedom, she wanted to take the opportunity the first chance she received to escaped
In her story Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs presents what life was like living as a female slave during the 19th century. Born into slavery, she exhibits, to people living in the North who thought slaves were treated fairly and well, how living as a slave, especially as a female slave during that time, was a heinous and horrible experience. Perhaps even harder than it was if one had been a male slave, as female slaves had to deal with issues, such as unwanted sexual attention, sexual victimization and for some the suffering of being separated from their children. Harriet Jacobs shows that despite all of the hardship that she struggled with, having a cause to fight for, that is trying to get your children a better life
felt that these books inspired many to think differently on slavery and know the horrors of life as
Harriet Jacobs, author of the narrative Incidents in The Life of a Slave Girl describes in vivid detail her own trials and tribulations growing up in slavery. One incident she depicts was the years she struggled under the ownership of Dr. and Mrs. Flint. Jacobs describes the foul and inappropriate actions Dr. Flint displays with the singular goal of forcing her into sexual submission. This was just one type of mental torture that she must endure for years, always having to evade his attempts but never being to aggressive in her effort to avoid his overtures for fear of physical retribution. This type of mental agony against a young girl can create emotional scars that never
Although there are now hundred of slave narratives, they all did not have the same experiences; each one is unique and inspiring in its own way. For example, Frederick Douglas’s story and Harriet Jacobs story, they both seem to have the same ultimate goal of freedom from enslavement and also how determined they were to achieve it. However, as to achieving it was different. Douglas’s narrative is about his journey to freedom and becoming an American Citizen. Jacobs’s narrative is about the sexual exploitation of being a female slave. He could physically fight his way to his freedom; but by being pregnant, Jacobs’s priorities change from being her own d...
Slavery was seen all around in the southern part of the United States in the 19th century. Many African Americans were slaves. Slaves had to do as their slave owner desired but most of the time the slave owners took advantage of their authority. In the personal slave narratives of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, slavery is in fact bad for men but far more terrible for women as Jacobs stated.
Through her autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs, under the pseudonym Linda Brent, documents her story under slavery and her escape to freedom for her and her children and is addressed to the “people of the Free States” (Jacobs 3) who do not fully comprehend the evils of slavery. She makes appeals to expand their knowledge of the matter and states “only by experience can any one realize how deep, and dark, and foul is that pit of abominations” (Jacobs 3). As she recounts, Jacobs was born into slavery and after the death of her parents at a young age, and was raised by her free colored grandmother. Jacobs then spends the next twenty years under her mistress’s father, Dr.
In The Incident in the Life of a Slave Girl, Jacobs wrote in her preface, “Reader, be assured this narrative is no fiction” (Preface). Jacob’s narrative was unlike no other narrative; not because her story explained the opportunity of escaping the shackles of slavery, but how a female was a major trope. Jacobs writes her experience in slavery to not only let people know the dangers and mistreatment, but to encourage white women abolitionists to stand up for African American women and women in general. Jacobs’s narrative displayed the relationship between mother and child, the balance of reading and writing, and the evils of white men. Harriet Jacobs truly describes a slave narrative through personal voice, through adventure, and through sympathy.
“The slave girl is reared in an atmosphere of licentiousness and fear”. Harriet Jacobs says this because she was subjected to unspeakable horrors and abuse from the time she was a young girl until the time she reached womanhood. Fear ruled her life; she was a slave to both her master and the ideology that she would never be more than a slave. Her fear was crippling, but luckily there was a remedy to this fear. Her children gave her the strength to break free from both the physical and mental slavery she endured at the hands of Dr. Flint. She longed to give them a home to call their own, and to provide a future for them that did not include any notion of slavery. This longing displayed Harriet’s desire for the maternal responsibilities that were normally expected of white women at this time. The ideology of domesticity was cleverly found within the pages of Harriet’s narrative to appeal to the young white women of America. Domesticity in this narrative can be seen as 1.) A paradise in regards to her longing for a home to call her own, and 2.), A prison for Harriet when she is isolated in Martha’s secret room just inches from her unsuspecting children. These divergent views of domesticity set the stage for abolition and antislavery acts because white women came to desire what the female slaves had in regards to the responsibilities of the home.
Slave-owners looked upon the African Americans as lesser people who were in desperate need of support. They were not capable of surviving on their own without white guidance (Boston). Dr. Flint, the master over the plantation where Harriet Jacobs lived showed a great example of paternalism. He cared for Harriet but in a possessive way to which he continuously sought the woman for his personal needs. For Dr. Flint, the slaves he owned should be grateful towards him and be willing to do what he asked with no rebuttal. This wasn’t the case with Harriet. She simply refused him at every chance which only angered the slaveholder. Jacobs resisted the doctor and his paternalistic ways. Harriet Jacobs sheds light onto the self-interest that drives the paternalism displayed by the masters. The slaves were property and who wanted to showcase poorly groomed property? If there was someone visiting, the slaves, except for those within the house, would be hidden away and those who worked within the master’s home would dawn nicer clothes and better meals would be prepared all in a show for the
Because of her desperate situation living on Dr. Flint’s property and fearing things would get worse, Harriet was forced to do something she wouldn’t have done under other circumstances. She had sex outside of marriage, and she conceived her first child. This did have the results she wanted. She also had to be very manipulating and cunning. Harriet would have never abandoned her children, but she was also forced to do that. This was ultimately for their own good, but it was very painful for her. She was concerned with how the community would judge her. She drew on the strength of her grandmother during these times.
Flint also presented as a controlling and dangerous character in the narrative as she became increasingly resentful towards Harriet. At one point in chapter five, she forces Harriet to swear on the bible and tell her everything that has happened with Dr. Flint (Jacobs 31). She initially promises to protect Harriet but soon uses her as a weapon against her husband. Mrs. Flint tells her husband that Harriet has confessed their affair to her in order to trick Dr. Flint into a false confession. Harriet is now in danger of Dr. Flint’s wrath at the accusations and Mrs. Flint’s wrath if she believes Harriet has lied about her innocence. This precarious situation is the product of Mrs. Flint’s conflicting views about Harriet and the Jezebel. On the one hand, she is sympathetic to Harriet’s plight as a woman and victim of Dr. Flint’s manipulation. As White points out, the wives of slave owners were unable “to defy the social and legal constraints that kept them bound to their husbands regardless of his transgressions” (White 41). On the other hand, she views Harriet as the instigator of Flint’s sexual advances since she is a slave woman. To Mrs. Flint, slave women were lewd temptresses determined to undermine the marriage vows of their more pure mistresses. As White points out, white mistress “felt stifled by the sexual straight jacket they were forced to wear…..they often became convinced that black women had unlimited sexual freedom” (White 41). Mrs. Flint represents the dichotomy of expectations put on slave women to adhere to the cult of true womanhood and the Jezebel archetype. Her interactions with Harriet and her treatment of her throughout the novel are shaped by these waring ideologies, therefore influencing Harriet’s experiences in
The greatest distress to a slave mother was realizing that her children would inevitably inherit her status as a slave. Jacobs writes of a mother who responded to the death of her infant by thanking "God for taking her away from the greatest bitterness of life (Jacobs 16). Furthermore, when Dr. Flint, her master, hurled her son Benjamin across a room Harriet experienced a fleeting moment of panic, believing that he could potentially dead; however, when she confirms that he is alive she could not determine whether she was happy that he son survived. Harriet experienced inadequacy and doubted her femininity in times that she could not protect her children from the harsh realities of the world in which they were born.