Octavia Butler's Kindred vs. Harriet Jacobs' Incidents In The Life of a Slave Girl

The slaves in the novel seemed to adapt much better to their own slavery than the modern blacks such as Dana did. Slavery was the only life many of the blacks had ever known so it was much easier for them to accept their future than it was for Dana to accept her sudden loss of rights. For Dana to come from a world where the possibilities of African American?s futures were so broad to suddenly lose all of her rights and be viewed as property was almost enough to cause Dana a mental breakdown. Although the slaves did not want theirs lives the way they were, they had somewhat grown accustomed to the idea of slavery and accepted it as their future. It is much easier not

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.

As Dana soon discovers, the reality of slavery is even more disturbing than its portrayal in books, movies, and television programs. Before her journey into the past, Dana called the temp agency where she worked a "slave market," even though "the people who ran it couldn't have cared less whether or not you showed up to do the work they offered."

Lastly, violence in Kindred was used to show how the treatment of slaves was used to dehumanize and put down blacks. In a society where a slave owner had absolute power over its “property”, the importance of a slave’s life was greatly disregarded. Butler used this notion and violence to show how in the eyes of whites, slaves were subhuman. Thusly, they had no rights, and received extremely unlucky treatment. When traveling to the 1800’s as a black women, Dana stated that in that time “there was no shame in raping a black woman,

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

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.

Finally, Jacobs's narrative is distinguished by its sharp, specific focus on the sexual exploitation of slave women. Other narrators had touched on this issue to be sure, but none had explored it with the depth and passion of Jacobs. In this regard, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl was a political effort designed specifically to help ameliorate the condition of black women in slavery. To achieve this end, Jacobs had to break deliberately with the genteel Victorian literary and

In the novel Kindred, by Octavia Butler, the main character Dana is exposed to the brutality and exhausting existence inflicted on slaves in the 1800’s. Through intentionally suppressive measures, slave owners used a series of methods to control and manipulate an entire race of people into submission. Dana describes this process as dulling and her experiences haunt her as she is slowly broken down. “See how easily slave are made?” (Butler 177) her thoughts say; this is Butler attempting to illustrate how it was nearly impossible for the enslaved people to change their situation and fight for freedom. Contemporary people didn’t understand why the slaves didn’t rise up and revolt against the whites, so Butler puts Dana through conditions that eventually show her and the audience it wasn’t that easy. The slaves were too tired to revolt, too broken to fight back, and too connected to each other to leave; thus giving the repulsive entitled whites the ability to continue their disgraceful contempt for human decency. By means of labor and sensational punishment, family ties, surveillance that included slave hierarchy; dreams of revolutions and freedom were overpowered and even Dana becomes complacent accepting the role of slave.

Authors of fiction often write about the human condition as a way to connect with a broad range of readers. Unlike factual textbooks, fiction gives characters feeling and emotion, allowing us to see the story behind the basic details. In many cases, readers gain a new perspective on a period of time by examining a fiction novel. In Kindred, by Octavia Butler, the near death experiences of Rufus Weylin transports a 20th century African American woman named Dana to the ante bellum South to experience exactly what it’s like to be a slave. Through her day-to-day life on the Weylin plantation, the reader begins to understand just how complex slavery is and how it affects both the slaves and the plantation owners; thus, giving new

Jacobs is born to her mother in the southern states of America. She is born without freedom and rights as she is black, property to her master as a slave. Her mother is a slave to a man name Dr. Flint and so therefor she too is a slave of his property. On page 26, the first sentence of chapter 5, Jacobs states "During the first years of my service in Dr. Flint's family I was accustomed to share some indulgences with the children of my mistress. Thought this seemed to me no more than right, I was grateful for it, and tried to merit the kindness by the faithful discharge of my duties." Harriet shows gratefulness for a period of time that she is a slave. The next line says "But I now entered on my fifteenth year -- a sad epoch in the life of a slave." Harriet starts to show hatred for her slavery and sadness. As a fifteenth year slave she is getting tired of how she is being treated, many girls that are her age at this time would be very frustrated with this too.

Today's children learn and are influenced by their surrounding and environment. Children do not know any better; for them, it’s monkey see, monkey do. Today’s youth are taught to respect everyone of every race. However, back in the time of slaves, children were taught to despise blacks, and that's what most of them did. In the book Kindred, Dana Franklin journeys back and forth to the Antebellum South multiple times to see her past family who are slaves and the owner Rufus Weylin. On multiple occasions, Dana voyages back to the past to help Rufus when he is in danger, so her life does not become corrupt. Each time she goes back, different levels of danger await her. As Dana travels home and back to the past, she witnesses Rufus grow from

It was dangerous for Dana because she spoke as the educated women that she was, so when talking with someone new they would comment on her educated speech. “It was dangerous to educate slaves, they warned. Education made blacks dissatisfied with slavery. It spoiled them for field work. The Methodist minister said it made them disobedient, made them want more than the Lord intended them to have. “(Butler, 236). With the lack of education given to the slaves it is hard to know and understand just how bad things truly got. When Dana time- travels she is treated as one of the slaves because she doesn’t have papers saying that she is freewomen, considering she is living in the 1900s. Throughout the novel Dana protects Rufus from many things because she sees it as crucial for her to help because if he were to die then her life could be altered drastically. Those who helped free the slaves as Kevin did when he got taken back in time are also seemingly forgotten. With the risk of getting caught, whether it was teaching the slaves or assisting them to run away. Those whether black or white put their lives on the line to help those who couldn’t help

The book follows Dana who is thrown back in time to live in a plantation during the height of slavery. The story in part explores slavery through the eye of an observer. Dana and even Kevin may have been living in the past, but they were not active members. Initially, they were just strangers who seemed to have just landed in to an ongoing play. As Dana puts it, they "were observers watching a show. We were watching history happen around us. And we were actors." (Page 98). The author creates a scenario where a woman from modern times finds herself thrust into slavery by account of her being in a period where blacks could never be anything else but slaves. The author draws a picture of two parallel times. From this parallel setting based

Growing up as a slave Jacobs was constantly exposed to sexual abuse from her master. She was forced to learn what it meant to be a slave that was

Schiff’s article specifies on Butler’s use of fiction to expand the portrayal of slavery in order to give the audience a new perspective on colonialism from the oppressed view of Dana. Therefore, Schiff argues that Butler utilizes the expressive freedom of fictional ideas such as time travel to reveal the extent and harshness of slavery. Parallel to Schiff’s argument, Thelma Shinn Richard’s “Defining Kindred: Octavia Butler 's Postcolonial Perspective” underscores Butler’s ability to utilize the postcolonial perspective of an African-American woman to expose the reality of slavery. Richard argues that our current perspective is limited as we have not witnessed the extent of colonial racism, but have simply been educated from a historical standpoint. Richard’s article combines the focuses of both the other articles as she aims to educate her audience on the cruelty of slavery from the empowering perspective of a female slave in a society fueled by white patriarchy. Altogether, the articles aim to analyze Butler’s use of perspective and literary techniques in order to reveal the repressive extent of slavery in the past.