Harriet Jacobs And Sexual Harassment

In "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl", Harriet Jacobs writes, "Slavery is terrible for men; but it is far more terrible for women" (64). Jacobs' work shows the evils of slavery as being worse in a woman's case by the gender. Jacobs elucidates the disparity between societal dictates of what the proper roles were for Nineteenth century women and the manner that slavery prevented a woman from fulfilling these roles. The book illustrates the double standard of for white women versus black women. Harriet Jacobs serves as an example of the female slave's desire to maintain the prescribed virtues but how her circumstances often prevented her from practicing.

One of the reasons why Harriet Jacobs suffers more from psychological abuse was because she was treated as property. Upon the death of her generous mistress, Harriet Jacobs was later relocated into her mistress’ niece’s house. The mistress’ niece was only five years old which made Jacobs the property of her father, Dr. Flint who made Harriet Jacobs’ life a living hell while being a slave in his house. From the time that Jacobs and her brother William first walked into their new master’s home, they knew their lives were about to get worse: “When we entered our new home we encountered cold looks, cold words, and cold treatment," (Ch.2). From the start, Dr. Flint and his wife treated Jacobs as property. As Jacobs said in chapter four, he occasionally tried to sell her for high prices but said she wasn’t his property to sell: "She don't belong to me. She is my daughter's property, and I have no right to sell her.” Once Jacobs was 15 years old and Dr. Flint was 55, his sexual interest towards

The life of a slave woman is far more complex than that of a slave man, although understandably equal in hardships, the experience for a woman is incredibly different. The oppression that women have faced throughout their lives in the struggle to even be considered equal to men is more than evident in slavery, not only because they were thought of as lesser but in some ways many women actually believed it to be true. The experiences that Linda Brent, pseudonym for the author Harriet A. Jacobs, went through in her life story in Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl prove that the difficulties for slave women were more than significant in many different cases. For Linda Brent, her life had been a constant fight since she was six years old

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.

When Linda was a child, she was not treated like a normal slave. This was due to the help of a grandmother, who was once a slave but earned so much respect and was loved by her master and mistress that she

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

Women were perhaps naïve in the sense that they accepted that men were head of the universe. Instead Jacobs refuses to accept Dr. Flint, escapes and not with her benefit in mind but with the hope of freedom for her children. She knows that Dr. Flint would not sell her children if she were there for fear of her escape in search of them, but she figured that if she were no longer around her children would instead be a burden to the doctor and he would eventually consent to selling them. When her children are finally safely in the North and Jacobs is able to flee the south in search of them, her main concern was to find employment and being able to provide for them, she told her daughter Ellis “I had laid up a hundred dollars and before long I hoped to be able to give her and Benjamin a home, and send them to school.” A woman supporting her children, with no man as head of the household was not viewed as domestic; she was degraded for not marrying and having children out of wedlock. Jacobs gives a new definition of domestic, it may have been too futuristic to people of her era, but today a domestic person is devoted to home life or household affairs. Jacobs did not need to accept Dr. Flint’s attempt to domesticate her or need to conform to the domesticity expectations of needing to be married, she provided for her children even when she had the bare minimal for herself, she always thought of their welfare first even if it meant an anguished

Harriet Jacobs, in her narrative, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, was born into slavery in the south. While her youth contained “six years of happy childhood,” a few tragedies and mistresses later, Jacobs spent many years in pain under the possession of her cruel five-year-old mistress, Emily Flint, and Emily’s father, Dr. Flint. Once able to obtain freedom, Jacobs spent most of her life working for the Anti-Slavery office in New York, in hope that one day she could make a difference in the world. “She sought to win the respect and admiration of her readers for the courage with which she forestalled abuse and for the independence with which she chose a lover rather than having one forced on her” (Jacobs 921). Linda Brett, the pseudonym that Jacobs uses to narrate her life story, endures the harsh behavior women slaves were treated with in the south during the nineteenth century. The dominant theme of the corruptive power and psychological abuse of slavery, along with symbolism of good and evil, is demonstrated throughout her narrative to create a story that exposes the terrible captivity woman slaves suffered. The reality of slavery in the past, versus slavery today is used to reveal how the world has changed and grown in the idea of racism and neglect.

In "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl", Harriet Jacobs writes, "Slavery is terrible for men; but it is far more terrible for women" (64). Jacobs' work presents the evils of slavery as being worse in a woman's case due to the tenets of gender identity. Jacobs elucidates the disparity between societal dictates of what the proper roles were for Nineteenth century women and the manner that slavery prevented a woman from fulfilling these roles. The book illustrates the double standard of for white women versus black women. Harriet Jacobs serves as an example of the female slave's desire to maintain the prescribed virtues but how her circumstances often prevented her from practicing.

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.

“He told me that I was made for his use, made to obey his command in every thing; that I was nothing but a slave, whose will must and should surrender to his…” The treatment of slaves varied in their personal experiences as well as in the experiences of others they knew, but Harriet Jacobs phenomenally described the dynamics of the relationship between many female slaves and their superiors with these words from her personal narrative, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861). Before slavery was outlawed it was not uncommon for young female slaves to be sexually abused and exploited by their masters. Although many people know about the cruelty of the sexual assaults that made too many young girls victims of rape in the Antebellum South, most people are unaware of the complexity of the issue and how many different ways these women were abused.

. .(The woman screamed) Gone! All gone! Why don’t God kill me?" Linda explains that things like this happen daily, even hourly. This is only a small piece of the torture it was to be a woman in slavery. Linda’s master often made perverted comments to her in which she expressed as to filthy to tell. He began to fill her mind with awful thoughts and words. He often slapped Linda and kicked her around. He was constantly threatening her and her life explaining that he would never sell her and that she would be in their damily as long as he had an heir. When Linda became pregnant with the son of a white man, he became very angry and he constantly reminded her that her baby was to be his property, like a piece of land to be bought. When she had the boy she named Benjamin, he was premature and she became very ill. She refused to let anyone send for a doctor, because the only doctor that could treat her was Dr. Flint. Finally when they thought she would die they sent for her master. He treated her and she refused him as much as possible, but she lived and so did her little Benny, although sometimes she wished he would’ve died. Almost three years later she had a daughter who she called Ellen which angered him even more and when Benny began to run to cling to his mother when he was striking her, Dr. Flint knocked the child all the way across the room nearly killing him.

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

‘Incidents in the life of a slave girl’ written by Harriet Jacobs and published by L.Maria Child (in 1831), is an autobiography by the author herself which documents Jacobs life as a slave and therefore