Harriet Ann Jacobs Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs strongly speaks to its readers by describing the brutalities of slavery and the way slave owners can destroy peaceful lives. After reading and rereading the story have noticed certain things regarding how Jacobs tries to educate her readers and her intended audience which is the women of the North. As if we do not know enough about how terrible slavery is, this story gives detailed examples of the lives of slaves and provokes an incredible amount of emotions. She uses several tactics in her writing to reach her desired audience and does so very well.

For her safety, Jacobs changed the names of all the characters and she is represented by the name Linda. This was to help her steer clear from facing severe consequences for writing a story about her life. The publication can be classified as social history because it discusses the major issue of slavery, based off of personal stories mainly about the author but, also about the people that associated with her. In one of the chapters, Linda describes an incident in which a slave that she knew was tortured because he attempted to run away. For several days, he was locked up in a cotton gin and was kept in there till he died. A slave that was sent to bring him water found his body rotting away. This occurrence helped publicize and back up the atrocity of slavery that is a major issue. After Linda ran away, she sent letters to her master and her grandmother that appeared to be mailed from New York. This was to make her master believe that she was staying there and not laying low in her grandmother’s attic. Linda’s master was obsessed

Harriet Jacobs wrote, “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” using the pseudonym Linda Brent, and is among the most well-read female slave narratives in American history. Jacobs faces challenges as both a slave and as a mother. She was exposed to discrimination in numerous fronts including race, gender, and intelligence. Jacobs also appeals to the audience about the sexual harassment and abuse she encountered as well as her escape. Her story also presents the effectiveness of her spirit through fighting racism and showing the importance of women in the community.

First and foremost, she silences herself when she chooses to tell her story under the pseudonym “Linda Brent”. In this way, she uses someone else as a vessel of power to tell her own story. As a female African-American slave, Jacobs is a member of perhaps the most systemically silenced group of all. However, she learns to use the secrecy forced upon her as power. She lets her voice break the silence as she informs readers about the sexual and emotional abuse that often couples females’ experiences of slavery. As the story progresses, Jacobs begins illustrating silence as a way of loosening the shackles of slavery. She talks to and informs readers through her narrative and communicates the importance of silence through Linda Brent. Linda shares secrets with other slaves and they use their hushed whispers as a way to empower each other and share common experience as silence transforms from something forced upon them to something that forestalls the power of their masters and

In these two tales of brutal bondage, Harriet Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and Frederick Douglass' Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, the modern reader can decipher two vastly different experiences from circumstances that were not altogether that dissimilar. Both narratives tell the story of a slave gaining his or her freedom from cruel masters, yes, but that is where the most prominent similarities end. Not only are they factually different, these stories are entirely distinct in their themes.

In the Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs argues that her master had an undesirable obsession for her. An obsession she did not want, but could not escape. When Jacobs turned fifteen, life changed drastically; she had gained an unwanted eye of her master. Though her master was afraid to have his inappropriate behaviors and impure thoughts gossiped through town or reported to her grandmother, “he was a crafty man, and resorted to many means to accomplish his purpose” (Jacobs, 52). Despite the fact that Jacobs feared for herself, she felt as if she could not escape her unwanted fate. “My master met me at every turn, reminding me that I belonged to him, and swearing by heaven and earth the he would compel me to submit to him” (Jacobs, 53). Due to his undying

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, a slave narrative written by Harriet Ann Jacobs is highly commended for the portrayal of women during the excruciating times of slavery. Disregarding that the slave narrative was initially written for the audience of Caucasian women, “…, as white women constituted Jacobs’s primary audience at the time she wrote her narrative” (Larson,742) the struggles of being a female slave were emphasized throughout the narrative. Harriet Ann Jacobs elaborates on slave women’s worth being diminished. In the slave narrative Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, written by Harriet Ann Jacobs, the theme of the perils of slavery for women was portrayed by women being viewed

Harriet A. Jacobs Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is an autobiography written under the name of Linda Brent. This autobiography is a detailed account of her life or lack thereof. I use the term lack thereof because Harriet Jacobs was raised by her grandmother due to her mother dying at a young age. Harriet was taught to read and write as a young slave girl by her mistress.

The feminist movement sought to gain rights for women. Many feminist during the early nineteenth century fought for the abolition of slavery around the world. The slave narrative became a powerful feminist tool in the nineteenth century. Black and white women are fictionalized and objectified in the slave narrative. White women are idealized as pure, angelic, and chaste while black woman are idealized as exotic and contained an uncontrollable, savage sexuality. Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of A Slave Girl, brought the sexual oppression of captive black women into the public and political arena.

Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the life of a Slave Girl allows Harriet Jacobs, speaking through the narrator, Linda Brent, to reveal her reasons for making public her personal story of enslavement, degradation, and sexual exploitation. Although originally ignored by critics, who often dismissed Jacobs ' story as a fictional account of slavery, today it is reported as the first novel narrative by an ex-slave that reveals the unique brutalities inflicted on enslaved women. Gabby Reyes

Harriet Jacobs' words in Incidents in the Life of A Slave Girl clearly suggests that the life as a slave girl is harsh and unsatisfactory. In this Composition, Jacobs is born a slave, never to be freed. She struggles through life in many instances making life seem impossible. The author's purpose is to state to the people what happened during slavery times in the point of view of a slave. Her life is so harsh that she even hides from her master for 7 years in a cramped space in the top of a shed without any room to walk. The theme of the story is a statement on how slavery was a much harder way of life than many people may have thought. Many people during these times thought that slaves were happy where they were and that their lives

In Incidents of the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs shares a narrative of her troubling experiences throughout her life as she overcomes slavery and the many obstacles in her path in doing so. Not only does she discuss her struggles within her journey of becoming a free black person, but she also gives the readers insight to what the daily life was like as a women, apposed to the daily hardships of a black man. Within the narrative she discusses several different issues while she challenges our traditional beliefs on what may have happened during the process of the abolition of slavery and how we have gradually developed today’s government and attitude towards others.

In “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl”, Harriet Jacobs shares her experience as a slave, from sexual advances from her master to being safe by being trapped in a crawling space intending to evoke an emotional response from Northern free women. Jacobs writes specifically to this group in order to enlighten them on the specific suffering of female slaves, mainly abuse from masters, and gain their sympathy, so they will move to abolish slavery. In order to complete this, Jacobs is compelled to break the conventions of proper female behavior at the time. Harriet Jacobs demonstrates the suffering of female slaves by creating a feminine connection to her female audience with the intention of earning their sympathy, defying the cult of

After a quick escape from her master’s house ,she is taken by a white woman who then helps in getting her freedom till the book ends. The white woman is self-righteous, domestic and as Linda quotes her as ‘pure’. As the story continues , we see that Linda is caught twice by this master but the white woman defends her and do not lets Dr. Flint to take Linda away with him. A true woman would never get involved in a dispute, as it is not her place. Nor would she take a woman 's side, and especially not a slave 's, over a man.

To begin, Harriett Jacobs carefully formulates a narrative that depicts the lives of slave girls and women as it truly was lived. Rather than conform to the readers' tastes and avoid the horrible gruesome details of the lives of female slaves, Jacobs grasps these events and passionately depicts them to her readers in hopes of some form of compassion. She knows her readers are never going to completely understand what women in slavery went through (it would take living it to comprehend) but she feels to protect them from these truths is only greater blurring the understanding of these issues. Jacobs details her life in hopes that her audience will begin to understand the hardships undertaken by innocent black women in the south and no longer sit quietly by and watch. Jacobs states that slavery is far more appalling for women; "they have wrongs, and sufferings, and mortifications peculiarly their own" (825). In order to truly touch her intended audience, she brings up topics that all women, free or enslaved, can understand - adultery, family, love. She hopes that by creating a piece that touches the personal lives of women, she will make it difficult for them not to stand in her shoes, even if just for a moment.