Humanities Explication Essay Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl offers a uniquely approachable form of the antebellum slave narrative. While many slave narratives appeal to abolitionists or those looking for entertainment, this narrative broadens the appeal to people who did not believe as strongly in equality for African Americans or who were more conservative. Jacobs makes the antebellum slave narrative accessible to white people by showing sympathy and understanding for slaveholders struggles and motives and by showing care for their emotions and opinion. Jacobs makes the slave narrative less threatening by expressing personal interest in the emotions and opinions of her white and slaveholder audience. Linda’s sympathy …show more content…
She felt that her marriage vows were desecrated, her dignity insulted; but she had no compassion for the poor victim of her husband’s perfidy” (Jacobs 31). Through explaining that her mistress’ emotions are arising from “anger and wounded pride”, Linda shows understanding of her mistress’ lack of compassion. Linda shows sympathy for both her own feelings and those of her white and slaveholding audience, allowing Jacobs book to connect with the white majority. Later in the narrative, Linda speaks further to the struggles of white women. She asserts, “The young wife soon learns that the husband in whose hands she has placed her happiness pays no regard to his marriage vows. Children of every shade of complexion play with her own fair babies, and too well she knows that they are born unto him of his own household. Jealousy and hatred enter the flowery home, and it is ravaged of its loveliness” (Jacobs 33). Linda sympathizes with the burdens of slaveholder’s wives due to slavery itself by discussing how the how …show more content…
This directly appeals to white slaveholder’s wives experiences and creates a more relatable and therefore, compelling narrative. Later in the book, while discussing the cruelties that she has witnessed, Linda reminds the reader, “I could tell of more slaveholders as cruel as those I have described. They are not exceptions to the general rule. I do not say there are not humane slaveholders” (Jacobs 44). While standing strong on her point that these brutal acts are a regular occurrence, Jacobs includes descriptions of ‘humane slaveholders’. While staying true to the experiences of a slave, Jacobs offers the white reader an opportunity to feel unattacked. Linda further sympathizes with a white audience when she states “slavery is a curse to the whites as well as to the blacks. It makes the white fathers cruel and sensual; the sons violent and licentious; it contaminates the daughters, and makes the wives wretched” (Jacobs 46). Linda displays care for negative behaviors that white people
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.
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
The setting of the narrative Incidents is vaguely described but we get the notion that Linda’s family exists in a state where even though they are enslaved, they have some kind of freedom. The setting thus tries to remind us that there are many different kinds of slavery. However upon arriving in England, Linda disperses the widely spread idea that American slaves were better off than the poor people in other countries. She says: “I repeat that the most ignorant and the most destitute of these peasants was a thousand fold better off than the most pampered American slave” (37) In some ways we can say that Linda was a pampered slave – she was able to live with her family and she was never raped or whipped (which was not the case in Douglass...
As slavery became more and more a part of Linda’s life began to soon change as she learned that she was owned by a white master and his mistress and that she was to do exactly what they asked of her without exception or question. Black slaves were not seen as humans but merely as property who served as servants. They could not accumulate property or belongings or authority because they too were property often compared to “chattel”. No man or woman had any value except for the price tag placed on them when they entered the bidding block. However, the destiny was different for a man than for a woman in slavery. For a black man, slavery meant long hours everyday, having a family
This dual interest explains how slavery was particularly terrible for slave women than for slave men. While slave women’s lives were “dictated by their masters’ economic stake in labor,” they were kept as breeders, supplying more labor to the domestic slave trade and sustaining the system that oppressed them (Roberts, 1998: 22-24). Furthermore, slave masters’ dual interest interfered with slave women’s ability to experience motherhood the same way free women experienced motherhood. Slave women’s children weren’t their own. Slave parents had no legal claim to their children. Linda’s grandmother had to buy the freedom of her children from their masters, and could raise Benny and Ellen only because Mr. Sands bought them from Dr. Flint. In a similar fashion, slaves’ surnames were typically their master’s surnames, not their parents’ surnames. (Although it is true that many slave masters fathered slave children.) Unlike free women, slave women had no authority over their children. Many parents and children were physically separated after the slave masters sold the children. Even in instances where mothers and children were kept together, slave masters had complete control of the children. As soon as they were of old enough, they were put to work and vulnerable to the same harsh conditions that their mothers faced. Slave women, more than free women, experienced the woes of losing children. Infant mortality was exceedingly high in slave populations because of the harsh conditions that the mother experienced during pregnancy (Roberts, 1998: 14). The slave women’s personal well-being often conflicted with their role as mothers. Additionally, a slave woman’s children were usually weaknesses that the slave owners would exploit. “[C]hildren tied mothers to their masters,” prevented them from running away, lured escaped women back to the slave owners, or pushed women into greater submission
However, identical to Linda’s grandmother, her children served as a disincentive from securing her own immunity from slavery for years. When Linda’s daughter, Ellen was born, that was the stage in Linda’s life that she committed herself to gaining freedom, not only for herself, but also Benny and Ellen. Linda states, “When they told me my new-born babe was a girl, my heart was heavier than it had ever been before. Slavery is terrible for men; but it is far more terrible for women.”(pg 66) This instance, carries two perks, although it is a burden for Linda to have birthed children as a slave. The first of the two perks represents itself in the moment where Linda comprehends the possible outcomes for her newly born daughter. Linda understands that she has brought someone into this world that will go under the same conditions that she had been living in. Due to this thought process, Linda develops a new determination to strive for freedom. Apart from her newfound determination, Linda also gains immunity from Dr. Flint’s physical violence. Amidst the benefits gained through Linda’s children, further in the future, her tether with them restrained her. As Linda secretly watches her children, from her grandmother’s attic, she experiences harsh living conditions. Linda recounts her living conditions in her grandmother’s attic by conveying, “But for weeks I was tormented by
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 Reflection of Harriet Jacobs and the Documentary “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl”
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is a book by Harriet Jacob, and it is a book filled with many emotions from the author where she narrates her story using a fictional name. Its story revolves around the main character which is Linda Brent. As we read, we see the experiences she had to undergo as slave. From being threatened because she denied to have sexual relationships to hearing a slave being whipped, all of this things made Linda turn into the person she would ultimately become. Experiences like Linda’s are important to remember because they play a very important role in United States History in which slave masters treated their slaves like mere objects for their own personal use. In Linda Brent’s case, everything she underwent was
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
Like Douglass, Harriet Jacobs was determined to fight to the death for her freedom. Harriet Ann Jacobs was an astonishing slave woman whom over came many great obstacles in life. Harriet wrote an autobiography about her life called Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, under the pseudo name of Linda Brent. Her story talks about her struggles and achievements as a slave. Harriet used different names in the story to hind the identity of her fellow slaves and her masters.Yet while Douglass could show “how a slave became a man” in a physical fight with an overseer, Jacobs’s gender determined a different course. Pregnant with the child of a white lover of her own choosing, fifteen year old Jacobs reasoned (erroneously) that her condition would
Harriet Jacobs and Fanny Fern both display different kinds of writing styles that shed light on women who could stand up on their own. The stories of those two women vastly contrast each other, however, the women display hardships and overcome their difficulties in a similar manner. Jacobs who goes by a different persona-- a woman’s name Linda, who is a young slave. Fern did a similar thing to Jacobs by going by a different persona, a young woman named Ruth Hall. What the two women display with their books released to the public is to give another look at what women go through. The readers of the book would explore the hardship of what the two women have experienced, thus bringing more awareness and light to women’s rights and the anti-slavery
Because she writes to a white northern audience, Jacobs must be careful not to offend the sensibilities of her readers and thereby reduce the credibility she has gained with the slave narrative. She wants to explain why slaveowners are not to be trusted, and why slaves might be inherently distrustful of white people, without making it sound as if she thinks all white people are untrustworthy. She writes, “Slaveholders pride themselves upon being honorable men; but if you were to hear the enormous lies they tell their slaves, you would have small respect for their veracity. I have spoken plain English. Pardon me. I cannot use a milder term” (67). Here Jacobs invites the reader to empathize with the slave mind, to recognize that if they were in the same situation, they would equally mistrust the slaveowner. In this passage in particular, the two genres of the book seem to flow in and out of each other: Jacobs is certainly speaking from a slave point of view, but with the particular aim of appealing to the readers ' better qualities through two particular appeals. The first, “If you were to hear the enormous lies they tell their slaves, you would have small respect for their veracity,” asks for the readers understanding and humanistic connection, while
Despite Flint’s overtures, Linda is able to avoid being by the grace of her own intellect. Although her actions may seem illicit and ill-advised, like her love affair with Mr. Sands to fend off Dr. Flint, so are the repercussions if she cooperates and does nothing. Jacobs predicates that slaves suffer from the influence of the slave system on their moral development. In the text, it is evident that Linda does not condemn slaves for illegal or immoral acts such as theft or adultery, but rather saying that they usually have no other option but to behave this way. However, she also points out that slaves have no reason to develop a strong ethical sense, as they are given no ownership of themselves or final control over their actions. This is not their fault, but the fault of the slavery system that dehumanizes them. “Pity me, and pardon me, O virtuous reader! You never knew what it is to be a slave; to be entirely unprotected by law or custom; to have the laws reduce you to the condition of a chattel, entirely subject to the will of another” (Jacobs 49). Slaves are not evil like their masters, but important parts of their personalities are left undeveloped. She argues that a powerless slave girl cannot be held to the same standards of morality as a free