Harriet Jacobs Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Written by Herself, 1860. By Harriet Jacobs. Edited by Lydia Maria Child. (Digireads.com, 2016. Pp 160. Bibliography.)
You can never fully understand what kind of internal or external conflicts someone is going through until you take a walk in their shoes. That is exactly what it feels like when you read Harriet Jacobs’ autobiography titled, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, because she provides a detailed glimpse at her perspective of the events that occurred. Her statement in the preface represents the her purpose for writing this autobiography as a, “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, suffering what I suffered, and most of them far worse”. She later explains how she wanted to convince the people living in the free states about what slavery really entails.
After reading the autobiography of Harriet Ann Jacobs that highlights key points in her life as a slave girl for 27 years, readers will feel sympathetic and emotional. The fact that hundreds of thousands of living human beings around the country were enslaved and treated as property is blasphemous and

She had to adapt to so many new changes and never had enough time to adjust to her own life style. For instance, both of her parents passed away, she served under multiple slaveowners, relocated to new homes, and faced life-threatening challenges. These challenges forced her to make several tough decisions. She mentioned sexual abuse from one of her owners who was a local physician at the time and how she was able to prevent his advances and outwit him after several years. However, this was a costly counter move as she had a love affair and eventually 2 children with a white neighbor, identified as Mr.