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Harriet Jacobs

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At this point to the average American, it is rightfully believed that slavery or human trafficking is an abomination. However, most of us could never truly empathize with a slave or former slave, let alone a female slave. The short piece on page 27 of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is a vastly important look into the mind of Harriet Jacobs, because not only did it give us insight on how it felt to be a young, female slave, but she also provided a voice to the voiceless.
The focus of this excerpt from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is an African-American woman that was born into slavery, named Harriet Jacobs. According to Harriet, the protagonist of the story, she had just turned fifteen years old and describes this period in …show more content…

Because rumors swirled through town about her master, this man showed a great amount of sympathy for Harriet and often wrote letters to her. As Harriet was a young slave, she had never felt the genuine admiration of a member of the opposite sex and felt greatly flattered by this. Eventually, an idea popped into her mind, she would lay with this man and become an expectant mother. After all, she thought the ability to choose her own lover was much better than being forced to lay with someone else. After the deed was done, she was filled with a great amount of guilt and embarrassment, especially considering how often her family would talk her up to others about her high morality. However, even with all the guilt that was felt, if given the chance, she would not take anything back. To Harriet, anything was better than being in a “living hell”, which she said is what living in the house would be. Ultimately, when it came to tell Dr. Flint what happened, the joy she felt was short lived and in the end the feeling of remorse and humiliation overcame the

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When reading Harriet Jacobs/Linda Brent’s autobiography addressing her life as a slave who grew up in the deep south and who later fled to the North, two important characters make an impact on her life. Like many people, Jacobs/Brent’s life actions are heavily impacted by the people and the atmosphere around her, driving her decisions, wants, and desires. Although Jacob/Brent’s grandmother makes an impact on her life, Dr. Flint makes a greater impact on her life. With his pushing, he helps determine whom she has children with, controls her life through the livelihood of her children, and even impacts her life after he has passed away through his surviving daughter and son-in-law.

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Mary Rowlandson and Harriet Jacobs narratives Mary Rowlandson and Harriet Jacobs narration of their hard experience during captivity and slavery played a very significant role in revealing much about the conditions of women during that time. As most of the critics believe that telling a story from the point view of an oppressed group as women in a male dominant society, will guarantee a new framework of resistance and will break the typical image of women as being submissive and Marginalized. Moreover, these two writers, through their narration were able to endure all the difficulties and the hardships as loosing freedom and the sexual abuse, to seek the rights of all other women, and to fight for the elimination of both slavery and captivity. Harriet Jacobs in her narration of “Incidents in the life of a slave girl written by herself” decided to take the risk and to narrate her own experience as being slave and oppressed by the white system abuse. Although she is not the only one who wrote about slavery and its condition, but as William Andrews said “"Many of the ugly truths of the black woman's condition in slavery had been widely publicized

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1360 Words | 6 Pages

Harriet experience an internal match between wanting her child to live and wanting him to die so he’s not forced to experience the horror of slavery. As a slave mother, it’s impossible for Harriet to be able to protect her son because she’s considered as property. This is why she thinks in some ways it would be better for her children to die than rather experience the pain of slavery. Then, when her daughter, Ellen, is born, Harriet says, ““When they told me my new-born babe was a girl, my heart was heavier than it had ever been before. Slavery is terrible for men; but it is far more terrible for women.

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Harriet had a tough life for the fact that she lived in fear for ten years, because she didn’t want slave owners to find her once she escaped from slavery. She expressed her slavery life through a powerful book name Incident in the Life of a Slave Girl. In this book she spoke about her white owner who harassed her and on her life as a slavery

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829 Words | 4 Pages

Harriet Jacobs and Sojourner Truth are women who face adversity categorized in an invisible sub-group, making it difficult for black women to compete in the world. This sub-group is known as intersectionality. Black women struggle with the perception being inferior placing them at the bottom of the social class. Jacobs and Truth, however, share their experiences to other men and women allowing them to be aware of this invisible group. They willingly chose to speak out against this discrimination.

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718 Words | 3 Pages

Harriet Jacobs wrote about her experiences with slavery not to gain sympathy for her suffering, but to raise awareness towards the women of the North about the horrible conditions for slaves in the South. At the beginning stages of her life, Harriet is brought up in decent conditions making her unaware of her status as a slave. When her mother dies, she harshly finds out that she is a slave. Dr. Flint plays a crucial role in her life in a negative way. He believes that Harriet is entitled to him in a sexual manner because he is her master. After seven years of hiding in a cellar, Harriet is able to make her way up North but despite her escape, Dr. Flint keeps up his persistence to find her.

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Harriet was hit with a 2lb weight across the head where she sustained a horrible injury. This caused her to start having very bad headache, episodes of narcolepsy and sleep insomnia .Realizing at that very moment as the escapee was getting punished she knew one day she would attempt her run at freedom. At the age of eighteen Harriet was hired by Miss Susan as a nanny. Harriet didn’t know how to clean and take care of the new baby for that she was beaten.

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649 Words | 3 Pages

To slave a person is the most inhumane act one can commit, and unfortunately was very popular during the 18th century. However, have you ever wondered the different impacts slavery caused between men and women? Both Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs showcase, through their writings, the horrors of slavery, and contrast the many similarities and import differences between the experience of slavery between genders. One of the similarities of slavery for both genders was their allowances. Both men and women were only allowed a certain amount of food and clothing to survive throughout a year.

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1091 Words | 5 Pages

At age 15, still only a young teenage girl, she sends Dr. Flint into an outrage by falling in love and having two children with a white man, named Mr. Sands. The children are made slaves when they are born because the law states, children will follow the social standings of their mother. To protect her children, Harriet runs away and is hidden in the small attic space of her grandmother’s home for seven years. She held on to hope when she would very seldom catch a small glimpse of her children playing outside and listening to their voices. As she is hidden in the attic, she reads, sews, and prays to God to give her the strength to survive for the sake of her children and

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847 Words | 4 Pages

This type of manipulation from Dr. Flint was a huge impact on Harriet Jacobs decisions that led to her escaping from that home and leaving her children behind for their own sake. Jacobs fled to her grandmother’s house where she hid in the attic roof for 7 years to escape her masters mad lust towards her. She watched her children play and grow up through a peep hole with no way of communicating with them. That was the hardest challenge Harriet had to face because she was locked up in a small space with little food and no air to breathe. Harriet Jacobs wrote, “I feared the sight of my children would be too much for my full heart…I bent over the bed where lay my little Benny and baby Ellen.

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873 Words | 4 Pages

Her 8 siblings were separated no matter how hard she tried to keep the family together but at such an early age she only had the power to do so much. When Harriet Was around 5 years old, she was bought out for a Nursemaid. As a childcare helper at such a youthful age she was not only mentally and emotionally but physically scarred because when a baby cried or when she did something a higher established person did not approve of, she was beaten. At the age seven she was bought to be a Field hand and later said she preferred to do chores for others then to work out on the field. At 12, her desire for justice grew bigger as she risked protecting other slaves she worked with. "

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1492 Words | 6 Pages

Growing up as a child was hard for Harriet. When she was young, Harriet was “hired out” going from owner to owner who showed to be naughty and brutal to her. One of the owners that were in charge of her had

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620 Words | 3 Pages

Masters would often justify their actions of raping their slaves because they claimed that their slaves were seducing them, so they didn’t see it as raping them. Harriet’s master had often tried to find ways to get her to have sex with him and she tried

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1335 Words | 6 Pages

“Motherhood is somewhat difficult for a slave like Roxy because children of slave women were legally slaves, regardless of the status of their fathers” (Rasmussen 199). Although her love for her child is unceasing, it is her decisions that, eventually, bring him into

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The idea of republican motherhood and the cult of domesticity are two contrasting ideas of how women should be living their life around the times of the 1800s. The republican motherhood was a movement that women should be educated and are able to live individual lives without men providing for them. The cult of domesticity was a view that women should be stay-at-home wives, take care of the children, and provide comfort to the husband when he is home. The biggest difference of these two movements was the decision to educate women. Republican motherhood was all for the educating of women but the cult of domesticity wanted the opposite: no education for women.

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