ipl-logo

Analysis Of Harriet Jacobs Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl

1354 Words6 Pages

Harriet jacobs “Incidents in the life of a slave girl”, explores her story of slavery and the fight for motherhood and freedom. Her story explores the harsh brutality of slave owners both phsically, emotionally,and sexualy. “Slavery is terrible for men; but it is far more terrible for women. Superadded to the burden common to all, they have wrongs, and sufferings, and mortifications peculiarly their own”.(Jacobs, p. 86). She fights for years for the freedom of her family and the pursuit to live a family life. In Barbara Welters essay,”The Cult of True Womanhood”, she explains what a true woman is supposed to be. She speaks of the housewife appearance she must keep, and the duties that come with that. Both reading relate in the views of what …show more content…

At a young age she did not face these harsh acts but as she gets older in age she begins to experience the unwanted sexual attention from her slave master, Dr.Flint. As the book goes on she is vigorously pursued by Dr.Flint who does all he can to get her to have sex with him. She is then forced to have sex with another white man in hopes it will stop Dr.Flints advances and deny him her purity, yet it doesn't work and just infuriates him and increases his pursuit. She says she “felt as if she had been forsaken by God and man” (Jacobs, p. 54) This is something that often happened during slavery and didn't only affect the slaves but also the slave owners wives. the wives of the slave owners would often get jealous of these girls for having babies by their husbands and in turn the would be very harsh to the girls out of …show more content…

She says, "In view of these things, why are you silent, ye free men and women of the north? Why do your tongues falter in maintenance of the right?" (Jacobs,33) She uses a couple different strategies to show this. She writes deeply into the horrors of slavery, mainly based on women slaves, and the love these women had for their children to play on the readers sympathy and compassion. She keeps the readers engaged in the her intensive want to secure the safety of her children no matter what. She plays at the hero/heroine role that the slave goes through in their life to accomplish their goals of freedom while pulling a sympathetic emotion out of the reader. The thought of family is heavy within this story. There is a longer search in her life to have the family she once had as a child. The want for a husband that she loves, a father to her children that can have his last name, and a house that she can own with her family. Jacobs ends her story unlike most heroin style stories. She says that marriage isn't something she gets to experience at the end but freedom is instead the reward. The way she was forced to have children with a man that she didn't truly love just out of spite of Dr. Flint and the children she had couldn't even have the name of their father helped to express the harshness she had to face with being

Show More
Related

Harriet A. Jacobs Archetypes

127 Words | 1 Pages

Harriet A. Jacobs was born a slave in North Carolina in 1813 and became a fugitive in the 1830s. She recorded her triumphant struggle for freedom in an autobiography that was published pseudonymously in 1861. As Linda Brent, the book 's heroine and narrator, Jacobs recounts the history of her family: a remarkable grandmother who hid her from her master for seven years: a brother who escaped and spoke out for abolition; her two children, whom she rescued and sent north. She recalls the degradation of slavery and the special sexual oppression she found as a slave woman: the master who was determined to make her his concubine. With Frederick Douglass 's account of his life, it is one of the two archetypes in the genre of the slave

Read More

Summary Of Incidents In The Life Of Since Jacobs By Harriet Jacobs

695 Words | 3 Pages

When Jacobs escapes to New York, she is employed as a nurse to a white family and often accompanies them to dinners and events. This experience teaches Jacobs that even though most people in the North considered themselves abolitionists, they were still racist toward African Americans. While at a dinner with the family she is employed by, she is asked to “seat the little girl in the chair, and stand behind it and feed her,” (page 144) when she sits the child in her lap. She emphasizes the fact that no matter where she goes, slavery and racism will always follow

Read More

What Are The Similarities Between Frederick Douglass And Harriet Jacobs

666 Words | 3 Pages

Frederick Douglass & Harriet Jacobs Slavery has been noted as one of the biggest social issues in America. From the beginning of time, race has been seen as a barrier for some people despite their various attempts at equality none seem to yield any positive results. Frederick Douglas and Harriet Jacobs both have tried to be seen as equal to others but come up short due to the oppression of their skin color. But as a result of their power to not conform to being enslaved and treated like objects due to dehumanization is what leads them on their journey to becoming one of the few free slaves. “My natural elasticity was crushed, my intellect languished, the disposition to read departed, the cheerful spark that lingered about my eye died; the dark night of slavery closed in upon me; and behold a man transformed into a brute.”

Read More

Similarities Between Frederick Douglass And Harriet Jacobs

560 Words | 3 Pages

Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs are two well-known authors in American literature who have spoken out against slavery's atrocities and the fight for freedom. Both of them were subjected to slavery in the 19th century in the United States, and they utilized their literature to share their stories with other people. Despite the fact that they both experienced persecution in a similar way, their stories diverged significantly, especially when it came to gender. In order to determine if Jacobs and Douglass experienced and depicted the same kind of freedom, this essay will examine the various ways that gender influenced their experiences and writing styles. Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs both went through the horrors of slavery, but due to their gender, their experiences were drastically different.

Read More

Overview Of Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl By Harriet Jacobs

1154 Words | 5 Pages

Since these women were never exposed to this form of cruelty before, it would have been difficult for them to comprehend the problems that Jacobs faced as a slave. Her difficulties become evident when she starts working for Dr. Norcom at a very young age. Not only did he physically abuse her on a daily basis, but he also psychologically abused her with sexual threats regarding herself and her children. She goes into detail about the horrors of slavery when she

Read More

Harriet Jacobs Research Paper

188 Words | 1 Pages

Jacobs later began “to contribute her life story to the abolitionist cause in a way that would capture the attention of Northern white women in particular, to show how slavery debased and demoralized woman” (Baym, 921). Jacobs wrote an autobiography on her life as a slave little girl. In her book she described the kind of treatment African

Read More

Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl By Harriet Jacobs And Fredrick Douglas

1547 Words | 7 Pages

The horrors of slavery are discussed in both, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, by Harriet Jacobs and Fredrick Douglass’, Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass. Both narratives paint a more complex and complete image of the experiences of slaves than readers typically are exposed to. While there are many experiences that overlap between male and female slaves in both narratives, they also depict the disturbing differences between the genders in slavery. While Jacobs and Douglass discuss similar experiences with slave owners, beatings, and daily horrors, Jacobs brings up an additional horrifying reality in her narrative. In addition to the dehumanization and torture that all slaves faced, women were often subjected to additional torture

Read More

Harriet Jacobs Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl

1446 Words | 6 Pages

The first half of the book seems to send a strong message to the reader. The section asks why those who understand slavery and its implication fail to act on it. Jacobs seems to partly accuse those who inwardly condemn slavery but outwardly fail to act on the same for the situation in American during the time of the narrative’s authorship. The second part of the book tends to move away from these accusations and focuses on the lost trust among people especially among female slaves. Having being let down time and again by those they trusted, female slaves tended to shun any help.

Read More

Analysis Of Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl By Harriet Jacobs

1085 Words | 5 Pages

Slave narratives were commonly used among enslaved people in order to convince their target audience to abolish slavery. Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl takes a unique approach in persuading her audience to think about the abolition of slavery in a positive way. Jacobs challenges her readers to contemplate about the possibility of purity and chastity not being true among all women. Here, she makes the connection of her womanhood and desire for Christianity with her audience. She also talks to the reader directly and indirectly to strengthen her appeal for abolition.

Read More

Rhetorical Strategies In The Life Of A Slave Girl

512 Words | 3 Pages

In The Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Ann Jacobs chronicles her live as a slave. During this time, she would spend much of her time hiding in an attic compartment, with a small hole that let her look outside. In her writing, Jacobs uses many rhetorical strategies to communicate her ideas, and keeps the reader interested using her language and pacing. In the passage, Jacobs describes how she spends her days on the plantation.

Read More

Analysis Of Harriet Jacobs Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl

1193 Words | 5 Pages

No one in today's community can even exaggerate enough or imagine the grief, anguish, torment and the horrible misery endured by African American male and female slaves. Numerous of the African American slaves went through this anguish and misery for their whole lives and their children were most of the time born into servitude until they became free. Women slavery was a little different from that of a man. The sexual abuse, carrying a child by the master, and child care obligations influenced how they directed and lived their lives. Harriet Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, shows the distinctive roles that female slaves endured and the battles that were brought upon from coping with sexual abuse.

Read More

Fredrick Douglass And Harriet Jacobs Narrative Analysis

520 Words | 3 Pages

The emotional and sexual abuse was awful for Jacobs. In her narrative she talks about how horrible it really was for women "My master began to whisper foul words in my ear." Her master told her she was property "He told me I was his property; that I must be subject to his will in all things." She says how she had to give up their children "The children were sold to a slave-trader,

Read More

Narrative Of The Life Of A Slave Girl Rhetorical Analysis

2231 Words | 9 Pages

Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, both southern enslaved African Americans in antebellum America, shared their experiences through the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Both Douglass and Jacobs attempt to appeal to an audience much larger than the white northerners: those across the Atlantic living in free Europe. By documenting the horrors of slavery and exposing the underlying hypocrisy, Douglass and Jacobs argue that the institution of slavery should be abolished as it affects not only the enslaved, but everyone in the country. Douglass reveals the male experience of slavery through details of physical abuse, while Jacobs displays the female experience by uncovering the emotional

Read More

Biological Determinism In 19th Century America

725 Words | 3 Pages

Through an unwanted, forced rejection of Republican Motherhood due to slavery, Jacobs appeals to her audience to achieve her goal of denouncing slavery. If she were to criticize the patriarchal institutions outside of slavery, people would not be as sympathetic to the cause. This way, Jacobs is proving that freed African Americans, in a world without the institution of slavery, can add to the country in the same way

Read More

Summary Of Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl

2053 Words | 9 Pages

The beginning of the 17th Century marked the practice of slavery which continued till next 250 years by the colonies and states in America. Slaves, mostly from Africa, worked in the production of tobacco and cotton crops. Later , they were employed or ‘enslaved’ by the whites as for the job of care takers of their houses. The practice of slavery also led the beginning of racism among the people of America. The blacks were restricted for all the basic and legally privileged rights.

Read More

More about Analysis Of Harriet Jacobs Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl

Open Document