Harriet Jacobs The Last Days Of Slavery

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.

Most authors use many effective strategies in order to persuade or inform their readers of a specific topic. In this case, Harriet Jacobs uses many rhetorical strategies to highlight the significance of slavery and how most slaveholders abused their slaves with lies and physical harm. In Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs uses rhetorical strategies such as rhetorical questions,vivid dictions, and euphemism to inform these white Christian women from the north about the struggles a female slave goes through. During the passage, Harriet Jacobs asks specific rhetorical questions in order to put more emphasis on her passage.

Two girls born into the same era of American history: despite their vast similarities, what makes these two independent and value-driven young women so different? Since they were living in the same country, many would think that their upbringings would be parallel. On the surface, the only differences between the two girls were their geographic location and their skin color, but during the nineteenth century these actually made a drastic difference in the every day lives of young women. The juxtaposition of the lifestyles of these two young women illuminate the differences which stem from factors such as family, work, education, and religion. These aspects of life were results of the experiences Harriet Jacobs faced as a Southern slave girl in contrast with Harriet Hanson Robinson’s presence in the industrial revolution as a mill girl in New England.

The document, “Harriet Jacobs Deplores Her Risks in Being a Female Slave, 1861,” describes how female slaves during her time period felt towards slavery and how it was like to grow up as a slave. According to Harriet Jacobs’ document, she started off as an innocent child, unaware of what happens around her and how harsh slavery actually can be. This changes as she grows up and her life becomes more and more miserable due to her status as a slave. By the time Jacobs reaches fifteen and starts to enter adulthood, her master would continuously harass her in numerous ways treating her as property. Being a slave, she had no way of defending herself from how she was treated and no means of running away from her master. Even when she feels hatred

Harriet A. Jacobs Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Jacobs’s construction of black female empowerment despite the limitations of slavery

The Cambridge Introduction to the 19th-Century American Novel, the traditional sentimental novel’s storyline focuses around a young woman finding her way through life, usually without the support of a conventional family. The women overcome life’s hardships, and “the key to these women’s triumphs lies in their achievement of self-mastery” (Cane 113). According to Gregg Cane, these didactic novels are targeted at young women to instill the idea that a domestic home, marriage, and family are what construct a morally good woman. The plot is used to extract an emotional reaction from the audience. Nina Baym describes all sentimental novels as having the same plot,

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, a black woman who escapes slavery, illustrates in her biography Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) that death is preferable to life as a slave due to the unbearable degradation of being regarded as property, the inevitable destruction of slave children’s innocence, and the emotional and physical pain inflicted by slave masters. Through numerous rhetorical strategies such as allusion, comparison, tone, irony, and paradoxical expression, she recounts her personal tragedies with brutal honesty. Jacobs’s purpose is to combat the deceptive positive portrayals of slavery spread by southern slave holders through revealing the true magnitude of its horrors. Her intended audience is uninvolved northerners, especially women, and she develops a personal and emotionally charged relationship with them.

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.

The nineteenth century was an age of male dominance as well as slavery; even white women were viewed more as property or a burden to men instead of an equal. In concur with male supremacy the cult of true womanhood was practiced, an ideology which was brought forth in the eighteen century stating four virtues which women should abide by, piety, purity, submissiveness and domesticity, in turn they would be grant happiness and power; hardly being the case of either, women were subjected to the control and dependency of their male counterparts. These virtues were taken mostly in attention of the elite white woman, not considering poor white women as well as slaves, who were thought to be less than women; African American women were excluded

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 Shaping of the Modern World, we are learning about political and cultural changes around the world. Slavery is a significant topic in Shaping of the Modern World, how our world change throughout slavery and how slavery changes over time. In the narrative writing, Incidents in the life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs, she talks about how her life changed while serving different and new masters and mistresses. I think that this narrative writing is an important text to help us understand the different perspectives of slavery in America. There are some slave owners that are kind and humane, and some slave owners that are cruel and abusive. Additionally, reading from a female slave’s perspectives teaches us that life on the plantations and life in the house is different. Especially as a female, they would get different treatment from their masters and mistresses. The text has changed my understanding of slavery that not all slave owners are harsh, and not all slaves are not intellectual.

society (97). Harriet Jacobs’ life revolved around slavery from birth to death. Jacobs was a

Harriet Jacobs was a slave for ten years. Then after she began writing in 1853. Jacob 's work reflected style, tone, and plot. It has been known as the nostalgic or household novel, prevalent fiction of the mid nineteenth century. It was composed for women that focused on home, family, womanly, unobtrusiveness, and marriage. Jacobs utilized nostalgic fiction to obtain white audiences. Jacob 's works typify the strain between the clashing intentions that produced personal histories of slave life. Jacobs shows the circumstances that slaves were faced with. The narrator described that they were able to read and write which most slaves could not do

Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: A Harrowing Escape from Abuse