Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl Essay

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, depicts the story of Harriet Jacobs and her journey through a horrific life of slavery. She chooses to tell her story through the eyes of a character named Linda Brent. Harriet tells her life story nearly from start to finish, opening with the depiction of her life as a very young girl born into slavery. Continuing into her young adult years, and ultimately ending with hope for a future free from slavery in her later years. The experiences Linda faces are unimaginable and heartbreaking. As the readers, we not only get to see the culture of the time period that came with Linda 's life, but we also witness what Linda learns about herself though this story. These realizations provide reflection on the

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.

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

In the statement “Enslaved women and their children could be separated at any time, and even if they belonged to the same owner, strict labor policies and plantation regulations severely limited the development of their relationships” (Li,14), it supports the idea of the acts of slavery disregarding a female slave and her young having a relationship. In the slave narrative, it shows that sometimes a punishment for not pleasing your master can be separated from your kid shown through “This poor woman endured many cruelties from her master and mistress; sometimes she was locked up, away from her nursing baby, for a whole day” (Jacobs,13). Dr. Flint, Linda as well as other slaves master, had a cook who was ordered to cook mush for their pet dog. The dog refused to eat what she was ordering to cook and died. The punishment for a dog dying was the poor lady being taken away from her infant. As can be seen, taking away the relationship between mother and child takes away the rights as a mother of a female slave. Sadly, it has to be remembered that a female slave is not looked at as a mother but her and her offspring are only viewed as a property and labor.

Thomas Jefferson is a man who really needs no introduction. He was recognized as a luminous writer who was appointed to draft the Declaration of Independence. Congress formally approved the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. Jefferson owned many slaves that worked for him. He would often even sell his slaves to buy others. Why then would he write in the Declaration of Independence, “all men are created equal”? Is it possible that Thomas Jefferson was a hypocrite and only wrote what the population wanted to see? Did Thomas Jefferson enjoy owning slaves just as his other wealthy peers did? Neither one of those is true. Thomas Jefferson thought slavery was morally wrong and he thought that it should be abolished. We will take a

During the antebellum South, many Africans, who were forced migrants brought to America, were there to work for white-owners of tobacco and cotton plantations, manual labor as America expanded west, and as supplemental support of their owner’s families. Harriet Jacobs’s slave narrative supports the definition of slavery (in the South), discrimination (in the North), sexual gender as being influential to a slave’s role, the significant role of family support, and how the gender differences viewed and responded to life circumstances.

The story I will be discussing is entitled Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Ann Jacobs. This book is relative to more than a few of previous topics that have been discussed in class during lectures. The book touches on the struggles that enslaved women faced on a day to day basis. It follows the life on author Harriet Ann Jacobs and does an excellent job demonstrating how women in bondage unlike their free white counterparts, had no male figure to protect them. At the same time it showed that black women were not the only ones who subject to unfair treatment. Although not as harsh her book does illustrate how white women too are victimized by the harsh reality of slavery. White women

Harriet Jacobs’ work, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is a powerful piece. In the slave narrative, she is battling to become a freed person which makes it didactic because Jacobs wants slavery to end. There is elements of gothic writings because it was something that truly happens.

Harriet Jacob was the first African American women to have authored a slave narrative in the United States and was instinctive into slavery in Edenton, North Carolina. Living a good life with her skilled carpentered father and her mother, Jacob didn’t much of being a slave. However, when her mother had passed away, Jacob and her father were reassigned to a different slave owner were her life as a women slave began. Because of this change, she fled to New York where she started working in the Anti-Slavery movement. During this period, she focused more on her family then she did the issue of slavery. Family is an emotional anchor in the Incident in the Life of a Slave Girl because Linda was devoted to her children. She uses symbolism, imagery, and allegory because she wants to demonstrate what families should be like.

she still offered her help to the members of the family in return for their

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.

The introductory line of Harriet Jacob’s preface to Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, “Reader, be assured this narrative is no fiction”, is short yet serving (Jacobs 224). Although brief in its nature, this statement manages to encompass two major aspects that characterize African-American literature: audience and truth. In all writing, understanding the target audience and how to arrange an argument or essay to appeal to that specific crowd is paramount. However, it is especially important for African-American authors, who typically need to expose injustices or call for social change in their works. In particular, two African-American authors who understood their audience and how to manipulate that understanding were Charles W. Chesnutt and Marcus Garvey. Although they were born only twenty-nine years apart, Chesnutt and Garvey technically wrote for different time periods. While Chesnutt’s work is associated with “Literature of the Reconstruction”, Garvey was grouped with authors and activists from the Harlem Renaissance (Gates and Smith 580 ). The separation of their literary epochs drove Chesnutt and Garvey to write for contradistinctive audiences that demanded unique written techniques and rhetorical strategies, but that both asked for utmost honesty.

No one in today’s society can even come close to the heartache, torment, anguish, and complete misery suffered by women in slavery. Many women endured this agony their entire lives, there only joy being there children and families, who were torn away from them and sold, never to be seen or heard from again.

I will be looking at the methods used by Jacobs and Anaya in attempting to generate respect from their readers regarding racial or ethnic minority groups, starting with Jacobs’ book Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. I feel as though the entire book is attempting to get the white reader to respect and understand what life as a slave was all about. This life is something that no white person will ever be able completely understand, nor to truly feel as though they have walked a mile in her shoes. Especially white women, and women who are mothers themselves. In Xenia Xayasene’s culture presentation, her opening line said it best; “Imagine growing up having no idea what is going to happen in the near future when all you dream of is being a regular kid.” Also imagine being the mother that must carry a baby for nine months, and give birth, to then proceed to watch them grow up, knowing what their future holds. We will never know what it’s like to be a black woman who has lived life as a slave, enduring the trials and tribulations that women of this era had to go through. “If God has bestowed beauty upon her, it will prove her greatest curse. That which commands admiration in the white woman only hastens the degradation of the female slave” (p 28). Yes, to some beauty is a curse no matter what race you are. But a person cannot help but to have some respect for those women who were beautiful enough to have their master force them into things that they did not want to be forced into. And then having to face their mistresses once the secret has been let out. These women had the strength and courage to carry on and live their lives every single day.

A comparison between Morgan and Jacobs can be seen, Dizard compares both My Place and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl in her article. One similarity would be the grandmother and granddaughter relationship and their struggles. They both go into hiding in order to protect their children. Jacobs did not want to reveal any names because she wanted to protect some people while Morgan, the author of My Place, revealed all the names. The author shows that Jacobs’ emphasizes on sexual abuse as a slave thus she needed sympathy when she was stumbling. She shows how even white women hated the black women who were slaves because female slaves had to be submissive to their masters. Her narrative was very unpredictable just like her life journey