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

Harriet Jacobs writes, “No pen can give an adequate description of all [the] pervading corruption of slavery.” In the book, Incidents in the Life a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs recounts her time as a slave before escaping the cruelties of slavery to freedom. This quote from the book outlines the intelligence Harriet Jacobs has about the torment in slavery. In the beginning of the book the preface and the editor’s introduction to the book outline Harriet Jacobs story. Both the preface and the author’s introduction give a realness to Harriet’s story before reading the text. When Harriet Jacobs writes under an anonymous name to hide the fact of who she is then she the editor of the book Child’s having to write the fact the events are real goes

In class, we discussed the concept of the “Plantation Family” as a myth among pro-slavery as an attempt to justify slavery. Harriet Jacobs talks about this when she talks about her Aunt Nancy and the Flint family. Aunt Nancy was always seen as part of the family and took care of the Flint’s children. Also, this “plantation family” is broken down when families are separated a by being sold to different families. Harriet talks about the Slaves New Years Day. Harriet Jacobs writes “But to the slave mother New Year’s Day comes laden with peculiar sorrows. She sits on her cold cabin floor, watching the children who may all be torn from her the next morning; and often does she wish that she and they might die before the day dawns.” Harriet Jacobs biggest fear is for her children to be sold and her never knowing where they were. Mr. Flint has a child with one of the slaves in the house before she moves in. Harriet Jacobs writes, “When the mother was delivered into the trader's

‘You promised to treat me well.’ To which he replied, ‘You have let your tongue run too far; damn you!’ She had forgotten that it was a crime for a slave to tell who was the father of her child.” In the book, Harriet Jacobs speaks on the slave master having children with the slaves, but never acknowledging they exist to him. Her mother and Aunt Nancy were to products of such a relationship, but they seemed to be acknowledged by their father and his wife. Harriet Jacobs talks about the fact she took control of her own life. Harriet Jacobs did something most slaves wish they could have done at this time. She took control of her sexuality and took a lover of her own. Slaves were seen as over sexualized objects for the master to take advantage of due to the fact the slave “wanted it”. Slaves that were always seen as property to the master. Once they got older and could no longer work they were either sold or given poor rations so they would eventually die. In the book, The History of Mary Prince, A West Indian Slave, she talks about her time as a slave in Grand Quay. She talks about a fellow slave named old Daniel who is “lame in the hip.” They beat him and flung salt into his wounds. He gets beaten because he cannot keep up with the rest of the group. In the book, Toward the Intellectual History of Black Women, they talk about a woman named Phillis Wheatley who was born a slave and became a great poet. They said another Phillis Wheatley could never be born, but a