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

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Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs is a story about a young slave named Linda and her personal experience trying to escape alive. Linda is a brilliant black slave that is constantly tormented mentally and physically by her master, Dr. Flint. For the sake of Linda’s two young children she had with a white man out of wedlock, Linda decides to escape until she or her children are bought by close friends or family, so that they may never experience the tribulations of slavery. While the South tried to convince northerners that the master-slave relationship was a good one, Jacobs goes on to convincingly prove that is not the case.
Although this book may seem fictitious to many during that time, it was later revealed that these …show more content…

Out of fear some would sometimes succumb to those advances, but if caught, would ignite a fire in their mistress that would never diminish and thus make life even more intolerable. This is evident when we read: “The mistress, who ought to protect the helpless victim, has no other feelings towards her but those of jealousy and rage (Jacobs, 26). This type of behavior and jealousy is emphasized many times through Jacobs’ own accounts as portrayed by Linda in the book. Her own master, Dr. Flint, tried many a time to convince Linda to be his mistress, even building a cottage just for her. Desperately, Linda gets pregnant by a white gentleman to avoid more calls from her master but is only met with jealousy and even greater affliction. After the birth of Linda’s second child, Dr. Flint’s obsession with Linda is limitless: “You are mine; and you shall be mine for life. There lives no human being that can take you out of slavery. I would have done it; but you rejected my kind offer (Jacobs,

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Linda is the name used to narrate Harriet Jacobs’s life story. Linda used to have a happy life with her parents and then was sent to live with her mother’s mistress when her mother died. Her mistress thought her how to read and treated her very well, but when she died Linda was sent to Dr. Flint’s house. Dr. Flint eventually tried to force Linda to have a sexual relationship with him but instead had an affair with Mr. Sanders in hopes it would disgust Dr. Flint and he would send her away to Mr. Sanders house. Instead, Dr. Flint sent her to a plantation to be a field hand and her children were soon to be sent to do the same.

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Parts of the book were confusing to read and it would have been easier if it had been told chronologically instead in flashbacks.

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Labor and slavery are central themes that are similar in both “Slave Girl in California” and “The Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass. However there are opposing themes such as liberty and

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The book Incidents in the life of a slave girl written by herself, Harriet Jacobs, we follow her life as a slave in North Carolina during the Antebellum period of the United States before the Civil War. This book describes Harriet’s life as a slave in detail, something we would not usually get from a book around this time. Some important insights we get from this book are, instability of life, difficulty to escape slavery, family life, and the struggles of female slaves. Harriet Jacobs was born in Edenton, North Carolina, in 1813. The first child of Delilah Horniblow and Elijah Jacobs.

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Carlos Lopez Mrs. Wilson/ Mr. Velasco AP Language and Composition 08/07/17 “Incidents in the life of a slave girl” Study guide 1)Linda's grandmother shames Dr. Flint by obtaining her freedom when Dr. Flint stated that he would deny her promise of being fre. 2) She states this because the free women have no idea of what the slaves have to go through on a new year compared to the free women.

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Which leads us to the second common theme that both the Slave Girl and the “Life story of Frederick Douglass” has in

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She regrets going against God’s words, but had to give away her purity in hopes of freedom. In reference to Welter, “Woman must preserve her virtue until marriage and marriage was necessary for her happiness. Yet marriage was, literally, an end to innocence” (Welter, 158). Not being able to live up to what the North had in mind for white womanhood, meant that she was deemed unworthy of happiness just for the fact she tried to free herself by giving up her virtue. Linda Brent was also prevented from the high expectations of preserving her purity due to Dr. Flint pressuring her countless times.

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The Slave Narratives, a total of four autobiography’s written by former slaves; Harriet Jacobs, Oldalf Equiano, Mary Prince and Fredrick Douglas, compiled by professor, historian and filmmaker, Henry Louis Gates Jr. These four authors were former slaves who wrote about their torment in slavery in order to display how slavery had a wretched evil and the poor treatment of African-American slaves with constant physical, mental and sexual abuse and lack of Civil Rights. Each story had some kind of white dominate horrific slave master who would abuse slaves constantly mentally, physically and sexually. The most wretched, and disgusting owner was Dr.Flint in, Incidents of a Slave Girl, written by Harriet Jacobs. Dr. Flint fits perfectly for

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Hello, I am Nina, in today’s Ted Talk I am going to talk about “The connection between harassment of slave women and nowadays Chilean girls”. During the course I have learned from the book “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” by Harriet A. Jacobs, how women, especially black slaves, have suffered from violence not just physical but psychological. Harassment from white masters in the 19th century towards theirs slaves was common and it was part of their society. Their white wives knew that as well as black women, they were at the mercy of the white patriarchal system, in which white men had complete control over them.

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It bothered Dr. Flint that his property was having an affair, so he then used aggression in an evil twisted way. Throughout the book, Dr. Flint torments Linda, “He rushed from the house, and returned with a pair of shears…he cut every hair close to my head, storming and swearing all the time… I replied to some abuse and he struck me (Jacobs 66).” Dr. Flint used aggression towards Linda with the possession of force he holds in society. Dr. Flint reaction to Linda’s pregnancy makes him become sick, where his intentions are to make her suffer, so she can crumble to weakness and obey his

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In Fredrick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs narrative they show how the institution of slavery dehumanizes an individual both physically and emotionally. In Jacobs narrative she talks about how women had it worse than men did in slavery. While men suffered, women had it worse due to sexual abuse. The emotional, physical, and sexual abuse was dehumanizing for anyone.

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Harriet Jacobs, referred to in the book as Linda Brent, was a strong, caring, Native American mother of two children Benny and Ellen. She wrote a book about her life as a slave and how she earned freedom for herself and her family. Throughout her book she also reveals countless examples of the limitations slavery can have on a mother. Her novel, also provides the readers a great amount of examples of how motherhood has been corrupted by slavery.

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By the early 1800s, African American literature appeared in a number of forms. White abolitionists encouraged the writing and publication of slave narratives, such as Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet A. Jacobs. Often, illiterate African American slaves were encouraged to tell their life stories to white writers who wrote them down. African American abolitionists produced nonfiction, such as Nat Turner’s pamphlet The Confessions of Nat Turner (1831), and drama, such as William Wells Brown’s The Escape, or a Leap for Freedom (1858), the first African American play.

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Harriet Ann Jacobs is the first Afro-American female writer to publish the detailed autobiography about the slavery, freedom and family ties. Jacobs used the pseudonym Linda Brent to keep the identity in secret. In the narrative, Jacobs appears as a strong and independent woman, who is not afraid to fight for her rights. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl was published in 1961, but was unveiled almost 10 years later due to the different slave narrative structure. Frequently, the slave narratives were written by men where they fight against the slavery through literacy by showing their education.

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All slaves were considered property and treated as such. They were to be obedient and submissive. Forced behind a façade, they were not allowed to freely express themselves and had to conceal their emotions. In the book, Linda’s brother, William is incarcerated for showing tears as Mr. Flint threatens and humiliates his sister. This repression and ill-treatment yielded psychological disorders such as depression, post-traumatic stress syndrome, and caused some slaves to harm themselves and others.

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