An Analysis Of Harriet Jacobs 'Introduction By The Editor'

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1. What do we learn about Jacobs’s intended audience from her “Preface by the Author” and L. Maria Child’s “Introduction by the Editor”?

Harriet Jacob intended to reach white women, women of the north and make them understand the suffering and the pathetic life that women of the south or black women were living in during the slavery. She wasn 't interesting to share her story to get attention, in fact she preferred to remain silent and keep her suffering for herself. But after all, she wanted to help black women like her. Jacobs says “Neither do I care to excite sympathy for my own sufferings. But I do earnestly desire to arouse the women of the North to a realizing sense of the condition of two millions of women at the South, still in bondage, …show more content…

She asked her audience and readers to excuse her and not judge her choices without considering her sufferings. She also explained how the slavery system was not fair and didn 't give her any choice to make. She says “But, O, ye happy women, whose purity has been sheltered from childhood, who have been free to choose the objects of your affection, whose homes are protected by law, do not judge the poor decorate slave girl too severely! If slavery had been abolished, I, also could have married age man of my choice; I could have had a home shielded by the law; and I should have been spared the painful task of confessing what I am now about to relate; but all my prospects had been blighted by slavery”(p.48) Jacobs felt in shame of her choices and she felt that her reader will not understand the idea of taking a white man after all her the suffering from white masters. She explains “The remembrance fills me with sorrow and shame. It pains me to tell you of it; but I have promised to tell you the truth, and I will do it honestly, let it cost me what it may. I will not try to screen myself behind the plea of compulsion from a master; for it was not so. Neither can I plead ignore or …show more content…

Jacobs explains “Some will call it a dream, others a vision. I know not how to account for it, but I made a strong impression on my mind, and I felt certain something had happened to my little ones.”(p.91) Linda’s believed that by trusting her own heart and believing that someday her simple dream will come true, slavery will be worthless. After saving her children and the idea of simple dream came true, Jacobs says “Whatever slavery might do to me, it could not shackle my children. If I fell a sacrifice, my little ones were saved. It was well for me that my simple heart believed all that had been promised for their welfare. It is always better to trust than to

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