Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl Analysis

Slave owners could completely ruin the lives of slave women and their children with such ease and that is disgusting. The actions that Dr. Flint took can speak for all slave owners. The mistress did not help either; in fact she made it worse for the slave women by displacing her anger towards her husband on the slaves. Whenever Mr. Flint would punish or put them to death, the mistress would mocks the mother. “The girl’s mother said, ‘The baby is dead, thank God; and I hope my poor child will soon be in heaven, too.’ ‘Heaven!’ retorted the mistress. ‘There is no such place for the like of her and her bastard’” (Jacobs 361).

acutely than the slave women. One among them, Harriet Jacobs, in her autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, shares the sufferings of an enslaved girl to free, female Northerners to prove that because of their circumstances, slave women should not be held to the same standard as others. Through the effective use of a variety of rhetorical devices, Jacobs crafts a narrative in which slave women are impermanent and more tightly controlled than any other demographic, then urges her audience to action to alleviate their suffering.

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

When slavery was present in the United States, life was very hard for many slaves. They would spend their days working in the fields or in the home, doing whatever their master called upon. Slaveholders also held the power over their slaves treating them however they pleased. Most slaveholders were cruel which led to the slaves to do anything they could to avoid their master’s treatment and hope for a better life in the North. The North was filled with freedom, hope, desire and equality for people. It sounded like paradise to most slaves which was the proper motivation they needed to escape from their masters. Many slaves had goals of making in up North

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.

The autobiography , Incidents in the Life of a Slave girl, was written by Harriet Ann Jacobs under the pseudonym name Linda Brendt. This book details the life of slavery and how Jacobs’ achieved freedom for her children and for herself. Jacobs’ detailed these painful, and intricate accounts through forty-one chapters. Harriet Jacobs unfortunate experiences as a slave were significantly shaped because of her gender. Jacobs did indeed endure struggles through her race, but her gender is of great significance during her time as a slave. Jacobs used herself as an example to show how enslaved women were manipulated by their masters, the difficulties of being a mother during slavery mother, and how the fight for freedom were all impacted by her gender.

Incident in the Life of a Slave Girl had a different explanation narrative story than any other slavery stories we had read, especially with male-authored narrative because Jacob was engaging the readers with the issue she had challenged in her time period. Jacob mentions that her family was the most important people in her life because she gave us an idea that her family were depended to her emotional support (153-155). In fact, family was the most important mechanism for many slaves because they were dependent on each other for friendship, especially to maintain their confidence no matter what the situation they are going through.

She described how some Masters would torture and killed their slaves and not be counted for such crime. All this because of their wealth and because the slaves were their property, so there was nothing that could be done. Linda described how cruel the torture of other slaves was and tells if they tried to run away just to avoid being whoop or tortured, the master would release the bloodhounds to catch the slave and rip the flesh of his bone (Page 77). The masters who did this were consider educated and

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.

In the book, Incidents in the Life of Slave Girl, Linda Brent tells a spectacular story of her twenty years spent in slavery with her master Dr. Flint, and her jealous Mistress. She speaks of her trials and triumphs as well as the harms done to other slaves. She takes you on the inside of slavery and shows you the Hell on Earth slavery really was. She tells you the love and

Speaking on the degradation of slaves, Howard Zinn wrote, “The slaves were taught discipline, were impressed again and again with the idea of their own inferiority to ‘know their place,’ to see blackness as a sign of subordination, to be awed by their master, to merge their interest with their master’s, destroying their own individual needs” (Zinn, 35). These tactics began as soon as slavery became widespread in America, a time when Africans were not yet seen as ethnically inferior to whites. However, as time went on and methods for keeping Africans under control stayed the same, the ideas slaveholders pushed into the minds of slaves made their way into the public opinion, and became accepted by society. This is certainly true in the case of Harriet’s mistress Mrs. Flint, who, Harriet says, “Seemed to think that slaves had no right to family ties of their own; that they were created merely to wait upon the family of the mistress” (Jacobs, 34). Mrs. Flint had most likely grown up in a household with slaves, and been around them her whole life. The way she treats her slaves would have developed from the way she saw her parents treat slaves, so she saw nothing wrong with the idea that they were only there to serve herself and her family. Thinking back on her experiences with Dr. Flint, Harriet remembers, “When

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.

159). No one cared to listen to the minority voices of the women in slavery, they were rarely thought of as people. Jennifer Hallam a researcher from pbs.org adds to the thought of the degradation of women saying, “Enslaved women were beaten mercilessly, separated from loved ones arbitrarily, and… treated as property in the eyes of the law (Hallam, 2002, p. 1). Linda (or Harriet Jacobs) did not experience physical abuse, she experienced psychological pain due to the fact that she was seen as nothing more than a piece of property from Dr. Flint. Most of the time, the women were considered property and nothing more. This idea pained the women because they knew that if they were just property, their children were too, and could be taken from them at any point. Emotional agony ran high between the mothers of slave children. The women knew their voice meant nothing, and that their pride and joy could be taken from them at any moment. Harriet Jacobs, a slave herself, decided to escape slavery after learning that her children were to be sent to the plantation in which she worked. Plantations were very physically tasking and Jacobs knew she had to do whatever she could to shelter her children from the brutal conditions of slavery. Many slave women believed that even “death was better than slavery” (Jacobs, 2001, p. 54). This