Slavery: Harriet Jacobs and Frederick Douglas

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Recommended: Harriet Jacobs’s slavery narrative next to Frederick Douglass’s slavery narrative:

Men and Women’s treatment has been different as long as the two have been around to notice the difference. Even in the realm of slavery women and men were not treated the same although both were treated in horrible ways. Harriet Jacobs and Fredrick Douglass’ story is very similar both were born into slavery and later rose above the oppression to become molders of minds. In time of subjugation to African Americans these two writers rose up and did great things especially with their writing. Both Douglass and Jacobs’ experienced different types of slavery, it shaped their perspective on everything and it also shows the importance of their freedom.

The story of Harriet Jacobs begins at North Carolina in 1813 she was born into slavery though she didn’t realize that she was a slave stating “I was born a slave; but I never knew it…”(Jacobs 1809-1829). Jacobs was with her mother until her death in 1819 then she lived with Margaret Horniblow, her mother’s mistress. Horniblow taught Jacobs to read, write, and sew then in 1825 she died and willed Jacobs to her five year old niece. Douglass born February, 1818 in Maryland was born into slavery than taken at a young age, from his mother to live with his maternal grandmother. At age seven he was sent with his master, Aaron Anthony, to Wye House plantation until Anthony’s death. Douglass was given to Lucretia Auld than to Auld’s brother in law, Hugh, in Baltimore. Auld’s wife taught Douglass alphabet. These similarities between the two are where the line is drawn after this the experiences they had with slavery were poles apart.

Douglass was taught the alphabet by his master’s wife he didn’t approve because “it is the wish of most masters within my knowledge to keep their slaves thus ignorant...

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...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’.

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