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

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. By asking rhetorical questions to evoke guilt and making her audience think about Christianity and slavery as incompatible, she challenges her readers to think

One example of directly addressing her audience is through the use of rhetorical questions. This is seen in chapter 5 where Jacobs recounts her observation of two children playing together. One was white, and the other a black slave, and although they were sisters, their paths to the future would be very different. Jacobs states, “In view of these things, why are ye silent, ye free men and women of the north? Why do your tongues falter in maintenance of the right?” (Jacobs). This rhetorical question puts the responsibility on the reader to reflect on their inactivity against slavery. Although white women did not make up the majority of slave owners, they are just as guilty because of their silence. Rather than telling a story like many slave narratives do, Jacobs adds comments specifically directed to the readers.

These values are important for Christians, and Jacobs uses this fact to argue against slavery. Jacobs’ enslaved state did not allow her to keep her purity for long, and she makes this clear to the readers. After explaining that she had to seduce another man to escape her master, Jacobs states, “...ye happy women, whose purity has been sheltered from childhood, who have been free to choose the objects of your affection, whose homes are protected by law, do not judge the poor desolate slave girl too severely!” (Jacobs). She continues by saying that if slavery was abolished, she would’ve kept that purity and had a life similar to theirs, marrying a man she loved. However, that is not the case, and due to the horrible living conditions she was in, she knew the loss of her purity was inevitable. Franny Nudelman on Harriet Jacobs and the Sentimental Politics of Female Suffering also discusses Jacobs’ choice to challenge her readers with this topic. Nudelman states, “Recounting her decision to engage in an illicit sexual relationship in order to escape the abuse of her master, Jacobs asserts liberty and autonomy as alternative values for slave women, priorities that superseded chastity and submissiveness.” (Nudelman, 940). Nudelman reemphasizes the idea that the only autonomy enslaved people have is choosing when they lose their purity rather than choosing if they want to