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Recommended: The development of slavery in Colonial America
Jasmine Jones
Dr. S. Boyd
English 2180
24 September 2015
An Analysis of Sexual Abuse and Mistreatment of African American Female Slaves in Harriet Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and Sojourner Truth's "Ain't I a Woman"
Jacobs’ and Truth’s illustrate in their writings how unfathomably harsh American slavery was for both male and female slaves. However, they place emphasis on the sexual abuse and ridicule specific only to females. Each author describes in detail the abuse and unfair treatment they experience while enslaved and these descriptions exist to make the reader better understand just how horrible conditions were back in the 1800s for Black women. An analysis of their writings proves that conditions for women were far worse
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These four principles include piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity (Lavender, 1998). Both women include in their writings glaring examples of how the institution of slavery contradicts each of these principles. In order to be pious and domestic, a “true woman” must devote her time to religion and maintaining a spotless home. But how is this possible for a slave? Women who were enslaved didn’t have the option of staying home while their partners went to work and the home they were responsible for cleaning was not even the one in which they lived in. Even their purity was out of their control as "slaveholders had no legal obligation to respect the sanctity of the slave's marriage bed, and slave women...had no formal protection against their owners' sexual advances,” (UKEssays.com, …show more content…
This is significant not only because it’s unjust but also because it further emphasizes the impossible position that female slaves were in. How can a woman be expected to remain chaste or be submissive to the man she’ll marry if she’s denied the right to do so? Jacobs describes a similar situation in her own narrative when she mentions that a male slave once requested to marry her but Dr. Flint denied the request because he wanted Jacobs for himself though never planned to marry her. She eventually chooses Dr. Sands, another white male who had no intention to marry her, and has children with him but faces ridicule from her grandmother who calls her a “disgrace” and temporarily stops speaking to her. It is maddening trying to comprehend how female slaves must have felt mentally as they had no one to run to. Their owners abused them, their mistresses were jealous of them, and their own family expected them to model themselves after women with twice their level of
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
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.
It is well known that slavery was a horrible event in the history of the United States. However, what isn't as well known is the actual severity of slavery. The experiences of slave women presented by Angela Davis and the theories of black women presented by Patricia Hill Collins are evident in the life of Harriet Jacobs and show the severity of slavery for black women.
To understand the desperation of wanting to obtain freedom at any cost, it is necessary to take a look into what the conditions and lives were like of slaves. It is no secret that African-American slaves received cruel and inhumane treatment. Although she wrote of the horrific afflictions experienced by slaves, Linda Brent said, “No pen can give adequate description of the all-pervading corruption produced by slavery." The life of a slave was never a satisfactory one, but it all depended on the plantation that one lived on and the mast...
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.
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.
“Line of Color, Sex, and Service: Sexual Coercion in the Early Republic” is a publication that discusses two women, Rachel Davis and Harriet Jacobs. This story explains the lives of both Rachel and Harriet and their relationship between their masters. Rachel, a young white girl around the age of fourteen was an indentured servant who belonged to William and Becky Cress. Harriet, on the other hand, was born an enslaved African American and became the slave of James and Mary Norcom. This publication gives various accounts of their masters mistreating them and how it was dealt with.
Sojourner Truth’s speech entitled “Ain’t I A Woman?” became popular for its honest and raw confrontation on the injustices she experienced both as a woman and an African-American. The speech was given during a women’s rights convention held in Akron, Ohio in May 1851 and addressed many women’s rights activists present (Marable and Mullings, 66). Sojourner began her speech by pointing out the irrational expectations men have of women and contrasting them to her own experiences. She exclaims that a man in the corner claims women “needs to be helped into carriages and lifted ober ditches or to hab de best place everywhar,” yet no one extends that help to her (67). This is followed by her rhetorically asking “and ain’t I a woman?” (67) Here, Sojourner is calling out the social construction of gender difference that men use in order to subordinate women.
Slavery in the middle of the 19th century was well known by every American in the country, but despite the acknowledgment of slavery the average citizen did not realize the severity of the lifestyle of the slave before slave narratives began to arise. In Incidents in the life of a slave girl, Harriet Jacobs uses an explicit tone to argue the general life of slave compared to a free person, as well as the hardships one endured on one’s path to freedom. Jacobs fought hard in order to expand the abolitionist movement with her narrative. She was able to draw in the readers by elements of slave culture that helped the slaves endure the hardships like religion and leisure and the middle class ideals of the women being “submissive, past, domestic,
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
Deborah Gray White’s Ar’n’t I a Woman? details the grueling experiences of the African American female slaves on Southern plantations. White resented the fact that African American women were nearly invisible throughout historical text, because many historians failed to see them as important contributors to America’s social, economic, or political development (3). Despite limited historical sources, she was determined to establish the African American woman as an intricate part of American history, and thus, White first published her novel in 1985. However, the novel has since been revised to include newly revealed sources that have been worked into the novel. Ar’n’t I a Woman? presents African American females’ struggle with race and gender through the years of slavery and Reconstruction. The novel also depicts the courage behind the female slave resistance to the sexual, racial, and psychological subjugation they faced at the hands of slave masters and their wives. The study argues that “slave women were not submissive, subordinate, or prudish and that they were not expected to be (22).” Essentially, White declares the unique and complex nature of the prejudices endured by African American females, and contends that the oppression of their community were unlike those of the black male or white female communities.
The topic I choose to reflect on was the subject regarding transgender and intersex individuals in sports. Such a topic caught my attention the most because it really opened my eyes as to what these particular individuals have to go through just to compete in a sport they enjoy. I also enjoyed the reading by Pat Griffin “Ain’t I a Woman?” due to its detailed descriptions of occurrences between transgender individuals and sports. Griffin also includes the common misconceptions of transgender individuals playing in teams opposite to their birth gender and challenges them directly, without showing any sympathy.
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
In Mill’s analysis, he likens the subjection of women to the relationship between a master and a slave. Whereas the master commands the slave’s obedience through fear and force, according to Mill, men subject women through an institutionalized form of education. This system of education instills the idea that “all women are brought up from the very earliest years in the belief that their ideal of character is the very opposite of that of men; not self-will, and government by self-control, but submission and yielding to the control of others” (Mill 22). Furthermore, Mill mentions this method fulfills man’s desire to acquire the obedience of women through their willing disposition unlike the obedience found in a master-slave relationship. Mill’s analysis is further fueled from citations of examples of similar relationships throughout history such as plebian to patrician and serf to seigneur that solidifies the argument that men had subtly enslaved women’s min...