Andrews, L. William "Harriet A. Jacobs (Harriet Ann), 1813-1897." Harriet A. Jacobs (Harriet Ann), 1813-1897. Web. 10 Oct. 2016. The main point of this source is to inform readers about the life of Harriet Jacobs’ and what she went through as a child and as an adult. The source talks about all the different types of work that Harriet Jacobs did. The audience for this article would be the general public and there was no information about the author of this source. His name was William L. Andrews. I think that this article is useful for me because it is very informative. The conclusion of this article is that Harriet Jacobs settled and died in Washington, D.C in the mid-1880s. The observation or conclusion that I have made is that this article was very well written and I would use this as a source for my research paper because the information in this article can relate to my research paper. One helpful thing from the article was reading about the different …show more content…
Written by Herself | Vivanco | Thirdspace: A Journal of Feminist Theory & Culture." Literary Influences on Harriet Jacobs 's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Written by Herself | Vivanco | Thirdspace: A Journal of Feminist Theory & Culture. Web. 10 Oct. 2016. The main purpose of this article is the different literacy authors talking about and analyzing Harriet Jacobs narrative and comparing to other authors work. They were comparing male and female slave narrative and that Harriet Jacobs’ narrative was sentimental. I think the intended audience for this article is females and that was stated in the article. One thing that I found interesting was that Harriet Jacobs’ was proved to be a trickster figure and that her narrative is associated with the picaresque novel. I think I will be using this article because it goes into great detail about literary genre about slave narratives. The conclusion that the author came up with was that Harriet Jacobs narrative has a combination of very different
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
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,
Jacobs, Harriet, and Yellin, Jean. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press
Jacobs, Harriet. Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl. 2nd Edition. Edited by Pine T. Joslyn. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, INC., 2001.
A recurring theme in, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, is Harriet Jacobs's reflections on what slavery meant to her as well as all women in bondage. Continuously, Jacobs expresses her deep hatred of slavery, and all of its implications. She dreads such an institution so much that she sometimes regards death as a better alternative than a life in bondage. For Harriet, slavery was different than many African Americans. She did not spend her life harvesting cotton on a large plantation. She was not flogged and beaten regularly like many slaves. She was not actively kept from illiteracy. Actually, Harriet always was treated relatively well. She performed most of her work inside and was rarely ever punished, at the request of her licentious master. Furthermore, she was taught to read and sew, and to perform other tasks associated with a ?ladies? work. Outwardly, it appeared that Harriet had it pretty good, in light of what many slaves had succumbed to. However, Ironically Harriet believes these fortunes were actually her curse. The fact that she was well kept and light skinned as well as being attractive lead to her victimization as a sexual object. Consequently, Harriet became a prospective concubine for Dr. Norcom. She points out that life under slavery was as bad as any slave could hope for. Harriet talks about her life as slave by saying, ?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 chattel, entirely subject to the will of another.? (Jacobs p. 55).
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl opens with an introduction in which the author, Harriet Jacobs, states her reasons for writing an autobiography. Her story is painful, and she would rather have kept it private, but she feels that making it public may help the antislavery movement. A preface by abolitionist Lydia Maria Child makes a similar case for the book and states that the events it records are true.
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.
In October of 1832, Harriet’s family moved to Cincinnati, Ohio. There, her father became director of the Lane Theological Seminary and her older sister, Catherine, opened her Western Female Institute. Harriet attended this school until she finished her studies in Latin and the romance languages. She also made
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
Slavery was a horrible institution that dehumanized a race of people. Female slave bondage was different from that of men. It wasn't less severe, but it was different. The sexual abuse, child bearing, and child care responsibilities affected the females's pattern of resistance and how they conducted their lives. Harriet Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, demonstrates the different role that women slaves had and the struggles that were caused from having to cope with sexual abuse.
Harriet Jacobs was literally a domestic in her employment as well as a slave mother with children to protect. At some point in time Jacobs aims her work towards upper class white women because she feels they will sympathize with her and treat her less harshly because she is female. Her narrative clearly portrays a code of behavior which demanded women to be meek, virtuous and submissive no matter the personal cost. Regardless of this, Jacobs’s relationship with her grandmother proved to be very beneficial during this times. This is another significant difference between her experience and that of Douglass. Throughout the text she expresses gratitude towards this family member who was constantly supportive of her and always met her with a smile. Even though they did not always agree, the importance of this family relation cannot be
As female slaves such as Harriet Jacob continually were fighting to protect their self respect, and purity. Harriet Jacob in her narrative, the readers get an understanding of she was trying to rebel against her aggressive master, who sexually harassed her at young age. She wasn’t protected by the law, and the slaveholders did as they pleased and were left unpunished. Jacobs knew that the social group,who were“the white women”, would see her not as a virtuous woman but hypersexual. She states “I wanted to keep myself pure, - and I tried hard to preserve my self-respect, but I was struggling alone in the grasp of the demon slavery.” (Harriet 290)The majority of the white women seemed to criticize her, but failed to understand her conditions and she did not have the free will. She simply did not have that freedom of choice. It was the institution of slavery that failed to recognize her and give her the basic freedoms of individual rights and basic protection. Harriet Jacobs was determined to reveal to the white Americans the sexual exploitations that female slaves constantly fa...
Motherhood, in its simplest definition is the state of being a mother; however, it isn't as clear cut and emotionless as the definition implies. Motherhood holds a different meaning for everyone. For some it is a positive experience, for others it's negative. Different situations change motherhood and the family unit. Slavery is an institution that twists those ideas into something hardly recognizable. The Master and the Mistress are parental figures. Slaves never became adults; they are called boy or girl no matter what their age. They are forced into a situation where biological parents have no say over their children. The slave owners control the slaves' lives and destroy the traditional idea of motherhood and family. Harriet Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl deals with the issues of being a woman in slavery. The mothers throughout the narrative are powerless in keeping their children from harm. They watch as their children are hurt or sold and can't do anything about it. The mothers use everything in their power to protect their children and succeed in their motherly duty.
Harriet Jacobs story clearly shows the pain she suffered as a female slave, but it also showed the strength she proved to have within herself. At such a young age she went through things that I have never experienced. Her way of surviving is what truly inspires. Imagine just having to watch your children grow up before your very eyes and not being able to give them a hug or kiss. The simple things that our parents do today for us, the things we take for granted, are what she hoped and prayed she could do one day. Jacobs died in 1897, but she continued to fight for the rights of African