Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl Analysis

Slavery was a hugely inhumane practice that affected many people and their families. Slave women were especially subjected to even more hardships than men, such as being raped more often. Although there are many slave accounts that have been published, unless you lived through it, it is hard to imagine what life as a slave was like. No person today can come close to understanding the amount of emotional pain and suffering caused by the heartache, despair, and complete and utter misery that Harriet Jacobs, or Linda Brent as she goes by in her memoir Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, went through in her twenty years of slavery. Harriet was not the only woman to suffer; thousands of women were subjected to sexual advances and rape, all by their masters. African women lived on with the harsh treatment of the white man with the hope of freedom one day and to be with their families, but

Harriet fell into the cruel and manipulative grasps of her new twelve-year-old master’s father, Dr. Flint. Dr. Flint began showing a great liking towards Harriet, but she did not have a say in the way that Dr. Flint treated her, and his reasoning was that she “was his property” and that “I must be subject to his will in all things” (Jacobs, 1861, p. 34). Again, the harder mistreatment towards women is apparent here. Many times, Dr. Flint threatened to kill Harriet if she went to the comfort of her free grandmother. This proves that Harriet had no say as to what happens to her. African women had no right to even say no to the master when he tells the women to do things not only in the work place, but also in their bedrooms. Women began to fear the sound of their master’s voice because they know that he is calling on them for a specific reason. Since they were slaves, and not free women, there was nothing they could do to get justice for what was happening to