Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl Analysis

She emphasizes that the life of a slave woman is incomparable to the life of a slave man, in the sense that a woman’s sufferings are not only physical but also extremely mental and emotional. Whether or not a slave woman is beaten, starved to death, or made to work in unbearable circumstances on the fields, she suffers from and endures horrible mental torments. Unlike slave men, these women have to deal with sexual harassment from white men, most often their slave owners, as well as the loss of their children in some cases. Men often dwell on their sufferings of bodily pain and physical endurance as slaves, where as women not only deal with that but also the mental and emotional aspect of it. Men claim that their manhood and masculinity are stripped from them, but women deal with their loss of dignity and morality. Females deal with the emotional agony as mothers who lose their children or have to watch them get beaten, as well as being sexually victimized by white men who may or may not be the father of their children. For these women, their experiences seem unimaginable and are just as difficult as any physical punishment, if not more so.

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 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.

Celia, a Slave was a truthful elucidation of one disengaged episode that delineated basic slave dread amid the prior to the war time of the United States. Melton A. McLaurin, utilized this record of a youthful slave lady 's battle through the undeserved hardships of assault and unfairness to disclose to today 's guileless society a superior delineation of what servitude could have been similar to. The tale of Celia delineates the base of racial issues Americans still face in their general public. In spite of the fact that not about as great, they keep on living in a white-male overwhelmed society that looks downward on African-Americans, particularly females. McLaurin takes a gander at the perspectives of the time, and conjectures the probabilities of this pre - Civil War time, the estimations of which still puncture every day life in the United States.

Slavery was a mental and physical degrading system keeping human beings such as Harriet Tubman in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl from gaining freedom. Tubman was born into slavery following the status of her enslaved mother; she recalls a wonderful childhood due to being naive about the slave system. However, as Tubman becomes old enough to work, she is under the power of her owner 's father, Mr. Flint, who does not let her out of his sight. Harriet Tubman becomes a victim of obsession as well as sexual harassment; she felt the perverted stares of her master, she received derogatory letters outlining his desires for her and made her feel worthless. Tubman tried to escape these perversions by telling her master 's wife, Mrs. Flint,

The 1700’s was a time of atrocious actions against slaves, and African-Americans in general. In Chains, by Laurie Halse Anderson, we see some of these crimes, (at the time these horrible acts were perfectly acceptable along with hitting you wife as seen when Mr. Lockton violently hit Madam), against slaves in the viewpoint of Isabel, a thirteen-year-old girl who had not experienced the tribulations most slaves had. One heinous crime in the novel when Madam beat harshly her many slaves with her hands, a chair, a poker, a broom, and even a riding crop throughout the book causing a great deal of suffering to all slaves who came into her possession. In fact, Madam beat one of her slaves so severally, the poor slave’s arm broke and withered out

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.

The book, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, is comparatively an autobiography of Harriet Jacobs’s alias Linda. Her early life is characterized by happiness, love and a promising future. She only discovers that she was born into slavery after her mother dies when she is six. Her mistress takes her and extends the love and freedom she had. She learns how to read, write, and sew from her. Unfortunately, at twelve years of age, her mistress dies and Jacobs' life takes a twist when she is bequeathed to the daughter of her mistress sister. Her "real" slavery begins in the house of a wealthy couple, Dr. Flint and Mrs. Flint. As a teenager, Jacobs is subjected to Dr. Flint's sexual harassment. To avert Dr. Flint’s advances, Young Jacobs engages in an affair with Mr. Sands, a white neighbor. This sexcapade results in two children with Mr. Sands, and instead of discouraging Flint’s affair, it enrages him and to punish her, he sends her to labor in his son's plantation.

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.

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.

. .(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.

Most commonly slave narratives were written by men compared to women, primarily focused on the physical pain and endurance they experienced. Narratives that were written by men included descriptions of whippings along with other punishments that were known to deprive male slaves of their masculinity. Even though both men and women were beaten, starved and forced to work in the fields, women slaves suffered horrible mental abuse such as sexual harassment and the loss of their children. Usually, one of the central themes of a slave narrative is violence which is present in both of these books however in slightly different ways. Even though the main motif in the Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is not violence, violence is still portrayed periodically throughout. For example, Linda heard other slaves not only being whipped but also being burned or frozen to death. The physiological, mental and emotional abuse that slaves experienced was not always fully illustrated in narratives like physical abuse was, however in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl it is a consistent theme.

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

She writes, "I can testify from my own experience and observation, that slavery is a curse to the whites as well as to the blacks. It makes the white fathers cruel and sensual; the sons violent and licentious; it contaminates the daughters, and makes the wives wretched. And as for the colored race, it needs an abler pen than mine to describe the extremity of their sufferings, the depth of their degradation." (54)She shows this by describing how she was a victim of Dr. Flint's sexual harassment and the measures she had to take out of desperation. She shows how Dr. Flint's wife was embittered by knowing that her husband was a philanderer, though there was nothing she could do to prevent him. Jacobs also writes that this is a recurring phenomenon because sons learn from seeing their father's actions, that abusing their female slaves is an acceptable norm. She also writes that the sanctity of marriage, a God-governed institution, is desecrated because of the adultery that slaveholders commit. As female slaves' lives are ruined by slavery, so too are the slaveholders' wives. Jacobs writes of slaveholder's wives, "the poor girls have romantic notions of a sunny clime, and of the flowering vines that all the year round shade a happy home. To what disappointments are they destined! The young wife soon learns that the husband in whose hands she has placed her happiness pays