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Assignment about abolitionists
The effect of slavery on African Americans
Subject matter of the incidents of a slave girl
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Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Ann Jacobs Harriet Jacobs, an innocent-born African American girl, was born into the slavery-ridden North Carolina in 1813. Jacobs’ young years seemed to last forever, until it all took a complete turn. Harriet Ann Jacobs writes Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl in order to expose the life of a slave girl to Northerners. This primary source shows the Northerners, and now the world, the hardships of a slave girl, their everyday lives, the public’s view then, and their constant fight for survival. Harriet Ann Jacobs starts of her book by first painting the image of her life during her innocent childhood years. Jacobs carried on with her young days “with a heart as free from care as that of …show more content…
This was due to the brainwashing-lies by the slaveholders. According to Jacobs, in order to prevent runaway slaves, many slaveholders brainwashed their slaves into thinking the outside world was far worse than their slave plantation. “A slaveholder once told me that he had seen a runaway friend of mine in New York, and that she besought him to take her back to her master, for she was literally dying of starvation … He ended by saying to me, ‘This is the punishment she brought on herself for running away from a kind master.’” (Jacobs 67) Jacobs claims “this whole story was false” due to Jacobs’ friend herself claiming she never “thought of such a thing as wishing to go back to slavery.” (Jacobs 67) One of slave’s, including Jacobs, important and indirectly harsh hardships was the forbidden access to education. Education meant freedom. Freedom to express one’s self by writings. By denying access to education, slaveholders were able to keep slaves silent and voiceless. Access to education was virtually forbidden to all slaves, so it is quite surprising a slave was capable of writing as well as Jacobs could, but certain fortunate circumstances allowed for this to happen. Without knowledge of these certain circumstances, one would find very hard believing the life of Jacobs to be true. Jacobs initially learned to read and write around the age of twelve, taught by a …show more content…
Slavery in the North was mostly outlawed or just discouraged, meaning not all of America encouraged and supported slavery. Because of the outlawing of slavery in the North, the lives of Northern African-Americans were miles better than those of Southern African-American slaves. According to the Census of 1860, 95% of all African-Americans resided in the South, meaning there weren’t many African-Americans in the North. The idea of the antebellum North being egalitarian is untrue. During the 1800s, white supremacy raged throughout the nation. Whites viewed themselves superior to the ‘subhuman’ African-Americans. Racism and discrimination was very much alive. Because of this, Northern African-Americans were not treated equally to their white counterparts whatsoever. While fleeing to the North, Jacobs witnesses her first act of discrimination against African-Americans when she wasn’t allowed tickets for the first-class seats in a train, “Supposing I had not given him money enough, I offered more. ‘O, no,’ said he, ‘they could not be had for any money. They don't allow colored people to go in the first-class cars’." (Jacobs 247) While a fugitive slave, the one time Jacobs experienced true freedom, from slavery, racism, and discrimination, was during her trip to England, Jacobs wrote: “Ensconced in a pleasant room, with my dear little charge, I laid my head
The narratives were written by African Americans, but read overwhelmingly by white audiences and in these narratives there is evidence that show Bibb, Northup, and Jacobs had their white audience in their mind while creating their stories. In Henry Bibb 's passage he states that "Both parties are caught in the act by a white person, the slave is punished with the lash, while the white man is often punished with both lynched and common law," (209). "The slave holders are generally rich, artistic, overbearing; and they look with utter contempt upon a poor laboring man, who earns his bread by the "sweat of his brow," whether he be moral or immoral, honest or dishonest," (209). In these sentences Bibb 's had his mind on the white audience due to the way he was describing the slaveholders and how a white person was not punished with lashes. Solomon Northup "He fears he will be caught lagging through the day; he fears to approach the gin-house with his basket-load of cotton at night; he fears, when he lies down, that he will oversleep himself in the morning," (215). Northup wanted to describe to the white audience how slaves and himself were scared for there lives everyday being a slave while working for their masters, and how much pain the master 's caused slaves. In Harriet Jacobs passaged she says "O, what days and nights of fear and sorrow that man caused me! Reader, it is not to awaken sympathy for myself that I am telling you truthfully what I suffered in slavery. I do
The story of Harriet Jacobs begins in North Carolina. In 1813 she was born into slavery, though she didn’t realize that she was a slave, stating “I was born a slave; but I never knew it. ”(Jacobs 1809-1829). Jacobs was with her mother until her death in 1819, then she lived with Margaret Horniblow, her mother’s mistress. Horniblow taught Jacobs to read, write, and sew, then in 1825 she died and willed Jacobs to her five year old niece.
From 1813 to 1879, lived a woman of great dignity, strong will, and one desire. A woman who was considered nothing more than just a slave girl would give anything for the freedom for herself and her two children. Harriet Jacobs, who used the pen name Linda Brent, compiled her life into a little book called Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Mrs. Jacobs' story, once read, will leave nothing but pity and heart ache for her readers as they discover the life she had to endure. She however boldly states, "[I] 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, suffering what I suffered, and most of them far worse. I want to add my testimony to that of abler pens to convince the people of the Free States what Slavery really is."(preface 1) Harriet Jacobs wanted to show the people who were not experiencing slavery exactly was going on in hopes that it would influence them to bring a stop to it. Though you cannot help but pity Harriet Jacobs, you can also take her story and the hard ships she endured and realize how strong a woman she truly was.
Jacobs, Harriet, and Yellin, Jean. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press
Harriet Jacobs was born in 1813 into a slave family. Her father, a carpenter, was highly skilled in his trade. For the first few years of her life, Jacobs lived a happy, normal childhood. She was fortunate enough to live in the same household as her parents and her younger brother, William. When she turned six, her mother passed away, leaving her under the care of her grandmother. In her narrative, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet describes her life as a southern slave, calling herself Linda. She discusses the abuse she endured during servitude and how she managed to overcome it.
In the earliest part of Harriet?s life the whole idea of slavery was foreign to her. As all little girls she was born with a mind that only told her place in the world was that of a little girl. She had no capacity to understand the hardships that she inherited. She explains how her, ?heart was as free from care as that of any free-born white child.?(Jacobs p. 7) She explains this blissful ignorance by not understanding that she was condemned at birth to a life of the worst kind oppression. Even at six when she first became familiar with the realization that people regarded her as a slave, Harriet could not conceptualize the weight of what this meant. She say?s that her circumstances as slave girl were unusua...
As the United States grew, the institution of slavery became a way of life in the southern states, while northern states began to abolish it. While the majority of free blacks lived in poverty, some were able to establish successful businesses that helped the Black community. Racial discrimination often meant that Blacks were not welcome or would be mistreated in White businesses and other establishments. A comparison of the narratives of Douglass and Jacobs demonstrates the full range of demands and situations that slaves experienced, and the mistreatment that they experienced as well. Jacobs experienced the ongoing sexual harassment from James Norcom, just like numerous slave women experienced sexual abuse or harassment during the slave era.
Jacobs, Harriet. Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl. 2nd Edition. Edited by Pine T. Joslyn. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, INC., 2001.
Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is one of the few narratives depicting the degradation’s endured by female slaves at the hand of brutal masters. Jacobs’ narrative is sending a message to women to come together and end the unfair treatment all women are subjected to. By bringing images of slavery and the message of unity of women to the forefront, Jacobs is attempting to end the tyranny over women perpetrated by men and the tyranny over blacks perpetrated by whites. Integrity and agency are ideals that Americans have fought for over the years. Jacobs reshapes these ideas and makes decisions and takes full reposibilities for her actions to become the ideal and representative image of womanhood.
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
Jacobs, Harriet. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. New York, NY: W. W. Norton &
Jacobs, Harriet A. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself. 1861. Ed.
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
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