Harriet Jacobs Racial and Gender Oppression
Harriet Jacobs was a little girl growing up during the time of slavery. She didn’t know how or why she had been put in these circumstances but she manage to become a successful woman later in life. These were hard times for African Americans, and to be a female just added to the challenges that they had to endure. Jacobs was exposed to discrimination in numerous fronts including race, gender, and intelligence. She later puts out an autobiography that explains the struggles and sacrifices encountered along the way throughout her rough journey. The story really helps the reader understand just how tough these times really were for Jacobs and her family and how she overcame them.
During this time gender roles were clear, men were the providers for the family while the women oversaw house hold chores such as cooking, cleaning and taking care of the children. If you were fortunate enough to own slaves, then slaves acted as your servants and took care of everything. In the autobiography, “Incidents in the life of a young slave girl” Jacobs opens with, I was born as slave; but I never knew it till six years of happy childhood had passed away (Levine 910). When her mother had passed away, her childhood was over and she encountered what slavery would be like for the rest of her life. She never knew her father, but was led to believe that herself and all the young slaves shared the same father, which was their master. Jacobs goes on
