The Fifth Child

In Harriet Jacobs Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, the motives and goals of Linda Brent affected her self-image and her relationships with those around her. There were three important scenes in this selection that exemplified her motives and goals. One of these scenes was when she deteriorated her health in a crawl space in order for her to escape her wretched life. Linda feared that Dr. Flint would send her children to the plantations, because Mrs. Flint did not want her to leave the plantation. Mrs. Flint believed if she brought Linda’s children to the plantation Linda would never leave, and they would all be forced to engage in slavery for good. Linda could not bear the thought of her children being forced into such cruelty, therefore she created a plan that included her running away. She ended up in a crawl space attached to her grandmother’s house. That space allowed for little to no room, no warmth in the winter, no cool air in the summer, and no interaction with anyone, except for the grandmother at night. Her motive for living this way was her children. Her goals being to be with her kids and be free of Dr. Flint, and slavery. She wanted to be able to leave her crawl space, flee to the North, and be reunited with her children. She was granted such success and found companions with the Bruce family. “Linda . . . escaped to the North . . . was reunited with her children . . . and found work in the Bruce household” (2361, Note). Another scene is when she

Harriett was born in 1820 and died in 1913, Before she had started saving others her mission was to save her parents from their slavery homes. She had completed that mission, and that’s when she decided to save others. When she had started saving slaves, she ran fundraisers and spoke at meetings to raise money for the ability to go on the missions, after her first escapes she realized how helpful she was to the other slaves. That’s when she decided to do this full-time and left her husband just so that if she got caught they wouldn’t be lead back to him. Over the next few years she had saved over 1,000 slaves. That’s when she thought her mission was complete, when she went back to find her husband she found out that he had remarried. After she had stopped helping slaves escape slave owners were still constantly on the lookout for her and offered huge rewards for the finding of her. But she never got caught. People told the authorities that it was a man named Moses and not named a woman named Harriet which helped lead to her success. But, she still helped the union in the war by cooking and cleaning for the soldiers but she was in dept. with

After she gave birth to her children, Harriet escaped, drawing closer to obtaining self-determination. Harriet then took fate into her own hands by devising a plan to get Dr. Flint to unknowingly sell her children to Dr. Sands. Once this occurred,

Despite this continuous separation, Harriet managed to find ways to spend time with her family.” Even at the youthful age of six, Harriet still

Harriet meets a young attorney who was a born free man named Samuel Treadwell Sawyer and this causes confrontation between her and her jealous lover, Dr. Norcom. It isn’t until then that her master lays a hand on her and abuses her. She is shamed and is given strict orders not to come within contact of this man or she will suffer the consequences. She presents victimization of female slaves at the hands of their masters. Dr. Norcom exposes Jacobs to sexual harassment and mental abuse while his wife also directs frustration and anger towards Jacobs. In fact, Norcoms wife should have assisted the people but Jacobs’ states that Mrs. Norcom was even worse. Jacobs has had enough and looked to find a way out. This then drives Jacobs to encounter Sawyer again and she becomes pregnant in hopes of her freedom being bought, due to carrying another man’s child that isn’t Norcom’s. Rewriting the American Self states, Jacobs takes the “masculine” prerogative in choosing her lover as a way to prevent sexual oppression (11). Jacobs’ grandmother wanted to buy her freedom but Dr. Norcom refuses. Dr. Norcom continuously torments Jacobs and follows her even after she gave birth to Sawyers children.

The document, “Harriet Jacobs Deplores Her Risks in Being a Female Slave, 1861,” describes how female slaves during her time period felt towards slavery and how it was like to grow up as a slave. According to Harriet Jacobs’ document, she started off as an innocent child, unaware of what happens around her and how harsh slavery actually can be. This changes as she grows up and her life becomes more and more miserable due to her status as a slave. By the time Jacobs reaches fifteen and starts to enter adulthood, her master would continuously harass her in numerous ways treating her as property. Being a slave, she had no way of defending herself from how she was treated and no means of running away from her master. Even when she feels hatred

Harriet displayed this attitude in all that she did she stayed one step ahead of Dr. Flint. To talk of the brutality that was perpetrated by slave owners on slave girls and women was taboo.

When the person, Robert was trying to sell her he said that she was hardworking and that she was good at housecleaning. Harriet was also rented to people and her job was house

Harriet converted her life’s disadvantages into her strengths. As a slave, her life was full of deprivation. “Physical violence was a part of daily life for Tubman and her family. The violence she suffered early in life caused permanent physical injuries” (www.biography.com). The harsh scars were everlasting, but so were her dreams. As an adolescent, Harriet received a severe head injury. The head injury caused her to experience dream states, which gave her dreams and visions she considered a sign from God. Religion was a huge factor in why she decided to risk her life to guide others to freedom. “[Harriet Tubman] wanted freedom, freedom to live and move and labor as a human being and not as a chattel; and she wanted that freedom, not for herself alone, but for her people” (Eusebius 16). The events that Harriet had witnessed and experienced were events that she did not want others to experience. Harriet seeked freedom not only for herself, but for her people. Experiences like these are what drove Harriet to escape the harsh life of slavery. If she had not witnessed and experienced the violent outbreaks, she would not have had the desire to change the course of humanity. Harriet’s experiences early in life gave her the courage, strength, and determination to not only change her life, but the lives of further

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.

She would try to object to his cruelity but he would always demand her service seeing as how he was her master. And, growing up knowing that she was to obey her master, she didn't have much of a fight. Dr. Flint not only abused Harriet, but threatened her with her life if she did not keep quiet about all he had done. She, herself, felt dirty, and tainted. Like the life and joy she had once experinced as a child had vanished, and was replaced with a dull, gray, world of emptyness.

Many people describe the role as a mother and a wife as something that is to be welcomed, a natural stage for women. However for the narrator, it changed from something seemingly beautiful to “old foul, bad...” Motherhood to her is then what creative women were to other people during the 19th century. Creativity was natural for the narrator, unlike motherhood; it was part of her being. Motherhood however, was a prison of domestic

Education was available for them now, they had the option to pursue an education. Mary Livermore urged women to go after this opportunity of education and get degrees and become part of the work force. With women being able to go to school, she urged families to put their daughters in school and teach them they can work and do not have to play the role of a domestic

Harriet always loved to read. She read her favorite book, Sir Walter Scott’s Lvanhoe seven times in one month at age 12. She also loved to write. Harriet believed that the purpose in life was to write. In 1852, Harriet wrote the bestseller “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”. This book was about the injustices of slavery. It was first published in an antislavery newspaper in 40 installments. The first day it appeared in book form, it sold 3,000 copies also in 1852. By the outbreak of the Civil War, Harriet’s book sold over $3,000,000. Still to this day she has been the most famous Beecher in her family. Some more interesting facts I have about her family are that Harriet worked at her sister’s school. It was there that she met a handsome man named Calvin E. Stowe. He was a college professor and Harriet ended up falling in love with him. They married and had seven children. Prior to her children she wrote short stories to earn money for her and her husband. After the kids were born she still went on writing novels, essays, children’s books, biographies and more. When Harriet would write, she would write at the kitchen table while the kids ran in and out of the

An example that gives an even deeper look into Harriet’s archetypal character is when Roy is finally at his hotel. A mysterious thing Harriet did was when she called Roy’s room and then told him to come up to her room. But since Roy didn’t see anything wrong with that at the time he went on up to her room without a second