Though out her life time, Harriet Jacobs had to deal with many difficult situations, in her book she describes what slavery was like many years ago. This book proves that slaves were thought of as property and they were handed off to slaveholders, which tore families apart. Life for a colored person is nothing like what it is today. Changes needed to be made so that people could understand what really happened. Jacobs was an activist in the abolitionist movement who hoped that this book would help people understand that slavery is wrong and should not exist. She explained her childhood with her mother and how it changed after her mother and mother’s master died. This made her realize that she was a slave and not a normal girl.
Jacobs described how her life changed when she was forced to discover that everything is shown in a new light when the people that used to help you are no longer there. Linda starts the book talking about her childhood with her mother and her brother. However, soon Linda is separated from her family and moves to a new master who is younger than her. She has to listen to her master’s father who is Dr. Flint since her master is not old enough to make decisions on her own. She soon learns that Dr. Flint is trying to seduce her and she knew that he was “the father of eleven slaves” (p. 35) making her a target since no mother slave dared to say who the real father was. She had seen how families are broken apart never to see each other again since her family was one of them. Her father was also a free white man and she understood that she cannot be labeled as a white girl instead of a black slave. She was just like the eleven slaves that were brought into the world. She informs her audience that she knew what wa...
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...don’t have to explain to others. We are also allowed to be our own master and aren’t controlled by someone else for their benefit. Slaves in the past had to worry about their children being taken away from them and never to be seen again. Some parts of the book really made me think about what my life would have been if I was a slave in that time period, and to go through all the pain and suffering that slaves went through and stilled lived. I would never run away from my problem but rather face them. Linda on the other hand, could not have done the same thing. Linda’s is a very strong woman who puts her family before anything else in the world, unlike some people in this time.
Works Cited
Jacobs, Harriet A. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Written by Herself. Ed. Lydia Maria Child and Jean Fagan. Yellin. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987. Print.
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." The Classic Slave Narratives. Ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. New York: Penguin Books, 1987. 333-513.
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.
Linda Brent, Ms. Jacobs' pseudonym while writing "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl," became so entrenched in hatred of slaveholders and slavery that she lost sight of the possible good actions of slaveholders. When she "resolved never to be conquered" (p.17), she could no longer see any positive motivations or overtures made by slaveholders. Specifically, she could not see the good side of Mr. Flint, the father of her mistress. He showed his care for her in many ways, most notably in that he never allowed anyone to physically hurt her, he built a house for her, and he offered to take care of her and her bastard child even though it was not his.
Jacobs, Harriet A.. Incidents in the life of a slave girl. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988
Women slaves were subject to unusually cruel treatment such as rape and mental abuse from their master’s, their unique experience must have been different from the experience men slaves had. While it is no secret that the horrors of the institution of slavery were terrible and unimaginable; those same horrors were no big deal for southern plantation owners. Many engaged in cruelty towards their slaves. Some slave owners took particular interest in their young female slaves. Once caught in the grips of a master’s desire it would have been next to impossible to escape. In terms of actual escape from a plantation most women slaves had no reason to travel and consequentially had no knowledge of the land. Women slaves had the most unfortunate of situations; there were no laws that would protect them against rape or any injustices. Often the slave that became the object of the master’s desires would also become a victim of the mistress of the household. Jealousy played a detrimental role in the dynamic the enslaved women were placed within. Regardless of how the slave felt she could have done little to nothing to ease her suffering.
Jacobs, Harriet A. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Written by Herself. Ed. Jennifer Fleischner. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2010. Print.
Harriet Jacobs and Fredrick Douglass are both very incredible and powerful writers who narrated their enslavement encounters in a passionate and compelling manner. Jacob’s narrative describes the abuses she had to go through personally especially because of her gender. She describes how the women slaves were exploited not only for their productive capabilities but reproductive ones as well. This is why she remarked, “Slavery is terrible for men but is far more terrible for women”. This is a clear indication that in addition to being enslaved, Jacob’s had to overcome the hurdle of being a female as well.
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,
In Harriett Jacobs’s book, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, she informs her readers of her life as a slave girl growing up in southern America. By doing this she hides her identity and is referred to as Linda Brent which she had a motive for her secrecy? In the beginning of her life she is sheltered as a child by her loving mistress where she lived a free blissful life. However after her mistress dies she is not freed from the bondage of slaver but given to her mistress sister and this is where Jacobs’s happiness dissolved. In her story, she reveals that slavery is terrible for men but, is more so dreadful for women. In addition woman bore being raped by their masters, as well as their children begin sold into slavery. All of this experience
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.
...triumphs. Her responsibilities as a mother overpower anything that gets in her way. She wants a good life for her family, not a life in slavery with the possibility of losing her children. She doesn't only want freedom for her children; she wants a good life. Even when she is free Linda still needs more for her family; she wants a home of her own. Linda saw many families ripped apart by slavery. The pain she witnessed allowed her to persevere for the unity of her family. She overcomes many obstacles and endures a lot of pain and suffering to finally gain freedom for herself and her children. The reader can be sure that she will work hard to buy her own house for her family and continue to strive to provide the best for her children.
In conclusion, women were considered property and slave holders treated them as they pleased. We come to understand that there was no law that gave protection to female slaves. Harriet Jacob’s narrative shows the true face of how slaveholders treated young female slave. The female slaves were sexually exploited which damaged them physically and psychologically. Furthermore it details how the slave holder violated the most sacred commandment of nature by corrupting the self respect and virtue of the female slave. Harriet Jacob writes this narrative not to ask for pity or to be sympathized but rather to show the white people to be aware of how female slaves constantly faced sexual exploitation which damaged their body and soul.
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