Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, is a perfect sentimental narrative. Sentimental lecture became popular with women in the 1850s. Sentimental themes shown in Jacobs’s work include the sacred bonds, separation, love, death, heartbreak, sacrifice, and emotional feelings and sympathy throughout the narrative. According to Nina Baym, in Harriet Jacobs autobiographical work, Jacobs sought to “capture the attention of Northern white women… to show them how slavery debased and demoralized women…[and] to create sympathy for her plight; she sought to win the respect and admiration of her readers for the courage with which she forestalled abuse and for the independence for which she chose a lover rather than having one forced on
Jacobs is terrified that she will be returned to the South due to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. According to the Encyclopedia of U.S. Labor and Working-Class History, “leaders of southern states were angered by northern states’ lack of cooperation in capturing escaped slaves and by the growth of the Underground Railroad… [This] resulted in the Fugitive slave Act of 1850” (Arnesen). The act created fear for slaves due to the increase in captures of slaves being returned to the South. While Jacobs is still in hiding her grandmother wrote her a note stating that Dr. Flint had died. Jacobs feels no sympathy for the man and is quickly reminded that, “I never should be free so long as a child of his survives” (937). Now living in fear, for herself and her children, Jacobs new owners Mr. and Mrs. Dodge are in search of them. Her new owners could not afford to lose a valuable slave. Jacobs confides in her friend, Mrs. Bruce, that she has been “chased during half [her] life and it seemed as if the chase was never to end” (939). Jacobs is aware that her new owners only want to sale Jacobs and the children for money. Her son is away while her daughter is on vacation of her house. Jacobs realizes the fear that her masters might find her daughter and her away. Jacobs writes, “I thought of what I had suffered in slavery at her age, and my heart was like a tiger’s when a hunter tries to seize her young” (939). This quote shows the true devotion of a mother and her children. Jacobs is willing to do anything possible to not have her children taken away from her. Seeing Jacobs’s sacrifices and struggles Mrs. Bruce offers to buy her and her children. Jacobs writes, “the more my mind had become enlightened, the more difficult it was for me to consider myself an article of property; and to pay money to those who had so grievously oppressed me seemed like taking from my sufferings
The story of Harriet Jacobs begins at 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. Douglass born February, 1818 in Maryland was born into slavery than taken at a young age, from his mother to live with his maternal grandmother. At age seven he was sent with his master, Aaron Anthony, to Wye House plantation until Anthony’s death. Douglass was given to Lucretia Auld than to Auld’s brother in law, Hugh, in Baltimore. Auld’s wife taught Douglass alphabet. These similarities between the two are where the line is drawn after this the experiences they had with slavery were poles apart.
It is well known that slavery was a horrible event in the history of the United States. However, what isn't as well known is the actual severity of slavery. The experiences of slave women presented by Angela Davis and the theories of black women presented by Patricia Hill Collins are evident in the life of Harriet Jacobs and show the severity of slavery for black women.
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...
Jacobs uses the pseudonym Linda Brent to narrate her first-person account. Born into slavery, Linda spends her early years in a happy home with her mother and father, who are relatively well-off slaves. When her mother dies, six-year-old Linda is sent to live with her mother's mistress, who treats her well and teaches her to read. After a few years, this mistress dies and bequeaths Linda to a relative. Her new masters are cruel and neglectful, and Dr. Flint, the father, soon begins pressuring Linda to have a sexual relationship with him. Linda struggles against Flint's overtures for several years. He pressures and threatens her, and she defies and outwits him. Knowing that Flint will eventually get his way, Linda consents to a love affair with a white neighbor, Mr. Sands, saying that she is ashamed of this illicit relationship but finds it preferable to being raped by the loathsome Dr. Flint. With Mr. Sands, she has two children, Benny and Ellen. Linda argues that a powerless slave girl cannot be held to the same standards of morality as a free woman. She also has practical reasons for agreeing to the affair: she hopes that when Flint finds out about it, he will sell her to Sands in disgust. Instead, the vengeful Flint sends Linda to his plantation to be broken in as a field hand.
Harriet Jacobs author of “Incidents of a Slave Girl” depicted the life of a women enslaved to white planation owners between the years 1819-1842. Harriet Jacobs escaped for enslavement and went on to become a pivotal figure for the African American culture with tales of cruelty from her owners and her need for freedom. Jacobs penned her story to persuade white people in the North to fight against the maltreatment of African Americans in the South. Jacobs highlighted for abolitionist and non-abolitionist alike the abuse slaves felt for many years and the obstacles they went through to secure their freedom. Harriet Jacobs asserted, “Slavery is bad for men, but it is far more terrible for women.” In contrast to Jacobs, slavery for women did not exceed or fall below that of men. The circumstances in which the different genders were treated did show some variations, however, the effects of slavery affected both men and women equally. Slave men and women all had one common goal and that was to enjoy the freedoms and rights as human beings amongst the Caucasian counterparts. Erik Foner, author of Give me Liberty! An American History, stated, “Black sought to make white Americans understand slavery as a concrete reality—the denial of all the essential elements of freedom—not merely as a metaphor for the loss of political self-determination.” African American fought collectively with both men and women against oppression from Caucasians.
Slaves are aware of their positions in society and have the choice to comply with their masters’ demands in order to gain a greater benefit to themselves often in the form of physical protection from abuse. Within the plantation hierarchy, the house slave was considered higher up than field slaves due to their close proximity to the master (Hall 566). The house slave’s position in the plantation microcosm evoked not only favor from the master, but jealousy from the field slaves. The fair-skinned, house slave woman and her master’s control over her mental psyche is a defining factor of her identity in relation to the other slaves on the plantation. Linda Brent in Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is an excellent model of the mental bondage endured by light-skinned house slave women because she makes a conscious choice to continue her mental bondage in order to gain physical freedoms. Although many house slaves, like Linda, were granted physical freedoms, they experienced an unfathomable level of mental bondage that defined their character and prompted them to pick their own place in society.
...f Jacobs’s narrative is the sexual exploitation that she, as well as many other slave women, had to endure. Her narrative focuses on the domestic issues that faced African-American women, she even states, “Slavery is bad for men, but it is far more terrible for women”. Therefore, gender separated the two narratives, and gave each a distinct view toward slavery.
Jacobs, Harriet. Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl. 2nd Edition. Edited by Pine T. Joslyn. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, INC., 2001.
numerous types of themes. Much of the work concentrates on the underlining ideas beneath the stories. In the narratives, fugitives and ex-slaves appealed to the humanity they shared with their readers during these times, men being lynched and marked all over and women being the subject of grueling rapes. "The slave narrative of Frederick Douglas" and "Harriet Jacobs: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" themes come from the existence of the slaves morality that they are forced compromise to live. Both narrators show slave narratives in the point of view of both "men and women slaves that had to deal with physical, mental, and moral abuse during the times of slavery." (Lee 44)
Each team will write and post a 500--700 word analysis that addresses the following question: How does Harriet Jacobs develop either the antislavery voice or the therapeutic voice in this chapter?
Jacobs’s narrative is mainly focused on family and the role of the woman. Once she became a mother, she knew she had developed permanent ties and her general concern for her children had to take precedence over everything else including her very own self-interests. Throughout the narrative, Jacobs is much more concerned with her own family. She cares about the well-being of her children and grandmother who depended on her. This clearly indicates that despite the fact that she was earnestly trying to pursue her freedom, she had other priorities such as securing a home for her
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,
Flint, his anger and lust toward is at a high but she is not well after her second child birth. He seemed to be completely obsessed with her. Jacobs after getting better decides to run away and she hides for seven years in a small shed that had been added to her grandmother’s house long ago. She stayed there sleeping uncomfortably with rats and mice, and no air or sunlight all to gt away from her life as a slave. In in circumstances she felt that “Slave woman ought not to be judged by the same standard as others” (Jacobs 234). Slaves endured much more cruelty of being raped, having their babies ripped from there wombs then sold into slavery child after another. They did all they could for themselves and children and tried to live a happy life but what life was a happy one with bitter slave masters and being a female slave of the
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.
For this very reason Jacobs uses the pseudonym Linda Brent to narrate her first-person experience, which I intend to use interchangeably throughout the essay, since I am referencing the same person. All throughout the narrative, Jacobs explores the struggles and sexual abuse that female slaves faced on plantations as well as their efforts to practice motherhood and protect their children from the horrors of the slave trade. Jacobs’ literary efforts are addressed to white women in the North who do not fully comprehend the evils of slavery. She makes direct appeals to their humanity to expand their knowledge and influence their thoughts about slavery as an institution, holding strong to the credo that the pen is mightier than the sword and is colorful enough to make a difference and change the the stereotypes of the black and white