The Death Of Harriet 's Punishment

Living with the perpetual possibility of being separated from family was stressful and overwhelming. Slaves were sold to other plantation owners for various reasons. It could be to clear debt or because the former owners died or moved away. Slave owners did not care about separating families no matter how much the mother would beg and plead for her children or children crying because their mother is sold. This made it challenging for families to be stable because they could be separated at any moment. Although it was difficult for slaves to cope with the separation, some lived in nuclear families where the father would belong to one plantation and his family would belong to another, but the father would only have the chance to see his family on Wednesday nights and

Both Harriet and Rachel were young at the time and were vulnerable at to their master’s attempts to sexually persuade them. Both stories showed an apparent power dynamic between the master and the submissive, and Block used the same syntax and diction to display the similarities between both cases. However, the differences between these two stories are the outcome of the two cases. When Rachel’s father found out what transpired between Rachel and her master he initiated a rape prosecution against William [Rachel’s master], and he was sentenced to ten years in prison. However, Harriet’s is left with no escape because she is unable to go to court and testify. Block writes, “In 1835, Harriet became a runaway slave, and spent the next seven years a fugitive, hiding in her free grandmother’s attic crawlspace.” Left with no escape, Harriet is forced to extreme circumstances in order to escape her master’s grasp. Block intentionally uses diction and syntax to show several parallels between Harriet’s and Rachel’s cases, and the eventual differential, which is race. Block writes, “The parallels in these two stories, however, stopped at the courtroom door, where a racially based legal system ended the women’s comparable negotiation of personal interactions.” Since Harriet is African-American and a slave she is viewed as property and is unable to have the same opportunities as

Harriet Tubman was a poor slave girl who ran away from her plantation at the age of 28. Throughout the course of her life many people and many things challenged her. Each situation she was faced with tested either her mental or physical strength, usually both. She persevered through all of her trials stronger and wiser, and was willing to always help others through their own. Not one to instigate unless extremely necessary, Harriet was known for her quick thinking and her reactions to each ordeal she was faced with. She responded to them with a sharp mind, and strong faith in deliverance through the Lord.

From learning this we know Harriet is not in for a good future with this family. The way Jacobs describes the importance of the women in her life is inspiring, given that, at the time they had such little power and such few rights. “Mrs. Flint, like many southern women, was totally deficient in energy. She had not the strength to superintend her household affairs; but her nerves were so strong, that she could sit in her easy chair and see a woman whipped, till the blood trickled from every stroke of the lash” (Jacobs 360). The way she describes Mrs. Flint perfectly captures what all women in the south were like. This portrays an excellent example to Northern women how serious slavery can affect a person.

“I had reasoned this out in my mind, there was one of two things I had a right to, liberty or death; if I could not have one, I would have the other.” -Tubman

Harriet Tubman is well known for a successful role in freeing many slaves through the Underground Railroad. Not many know the major effect she had on the Union Army as a Scout and a spy during the Civil War. Her bravery while helping slaves escape through the Underground Railroad and her assistance in gathering Confederate troops intelligence as a spy changed the history and made a great impact on the on the United States National Defense. Even though Harriet Tubman was a very skillful spy, she had many indicators that were missed while she was spied for intelligence and reported the material which were compromised to her handler.

After a long day of working, slaves then had personal free time. This is the time that they used to make food and clothing for their families. Since slave owners last priority was their slave's comfort, they often provided the bare minimum for their slave's survival. They didn't want to waste money on luxuries, but they did want to keep them alive and well enough so that they could still work for them.

The narratives of Harriet Jacobs and Frederick Douglas were nothing short of powerful as their unique resilience reflected a gruesome upbringing that would then influence audiences everywhere. Immediately the reader is introduced to the gendered distinctions in narratives as Douglas has letters and statements of prominent men reinforce the validity of his work while Jacobs is forced to create a pleading tone for acknowledgement of her experience as a female slave. Although slavery was an excruciating experience that unjustly plagued millions of African Americans, gender roles and constructs allowed for distinct offenses that forced women to experience unique abuse relative to their male counterparts. The narratives of Harriet Jacobs and Frederick Douglas reinforced the trials of slavery with examples of educational hardship, physical trauma and differing aspirations of freedom. These factors and a few others such as motherhood and masculinity influenced their legacy in context of slavery as a gendered experience.

Harriet Hanson Robinson and Harriet Jacobs may have shared a name, however their lives as a whole were quite different from one another. Both born in the early 1800s, Robinson and Jacobs led very different lives; Robinson, who lived in the North, was a mill girl, Jacobs, who lived in the South, was a slave. Even just by simply reading this statement, it is quite obvious that although they were born roughly around the same time, their lives and experiences did not overlap much at all. Although there are some similarities in respects to early life and slightly later on in life, most of the experiences that Robinson and Jacobs lived through were specific to the time and location they lived during. Harriet Hanson Robinson and Harriet Jacobs lived lives that were slightly reminiscent of each other, however, overall, their lives were far more different than they were similar.

At the age of 13, Harriet became more rebellious; she disobeyed her masters as people watched. One day, another male slave was getting beat; the overseer wanted to punish him and he wanted Harriet to help but she refused to. Harriet was hit with a weight, which put a hole in her skull and pushed her skull against her brain. She described it as it “broke my skull and cut a piece of that shawl clean off and drove it into my head”. After the accident she didn’t get medical treatment and soon had to return to the fields. The experience of going back to the field was noted as “with blood and

Violence played a big part of life for Harriet. As a slave she was often repeatedly whipped, and

Separation and subjugation filled our country in the mid-nineteenth century. African Americans were segregated and seen as "property," not people. Having been conceived as a slave, Harriet Tubman was no more abnormal to the unforgiving reality of subjection. Tubman's youth included filling in as a house worker and later in the cotton fields. With the dread of being sold, Tubman chose to escape from a superior life. Harriet Tubman spent her life attempting to spare others from subjugation, getting to be a standout amongst the most well-known ladies of her opportunity who could impact the cancelation of servitude and impact the lives of numerous African Americans.

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.

‘Incidents in the life of a slave girl’ written by Harriet Jacobs and published by L.Maria Child (in 1831), is an autobiography by the author herself which documents Jacobs life as a slave and therefore

During their few hours of gratuitous time, most slaves did their own personal study. The diet supplied by slaveholders was generally short, and slaves often supplemented it by tending small plots of land or fishing. Many slave owners did not provide enough clothing, and slave mothers often worked to clothe their families at night later on long days of toil. One visitor to colonial North Carolina wrote that slaveholders rarely gave their slaves meat or fish, and that he witnessed many slaves wearing only rags. Although there were exceptions, the prevailing attitude among slave owners was to allot their slaves the bare minimum of food and clothing; anything beyond that was up to the slaves to gain during their very limited time off from employment.