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

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It all started in 1916, in the North American colony of Jamestown, Virginia. European settlers in North America found African slaves as a cheaper, more plentiful labor source than indentured servants. In Harriet Jacobs’ book, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Jacobs gives us an insight into slavery in the first person. Using the pseudonym, Linda Brent, Ms. Jacobs details the corrosive treatment of women in the antebellum south. Considered chattel by their masters, enslaved black women underwent incessant physical exploitation, psychological abuse, and were denied their right to education.

During a time where human worth was based upon the amount of melanin produced within one’s skin cells, women got the short end of the stick. As Jacobs …show more content…

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. There are even accounts of mothers killing their own children to save them from being separated and enslaved. In order to cut costs and prevent rebellion, slave families were separated at the whim of their slaveholder. The possibility of separation was an ever-present threat to any and all slaves. The principle of partus sequitur ventrem meant that any child born to a slave woman would be also be a slave, regardless of who the father was. Jacobs describes how one mother, watched in horror as her seven children were sold: "She begged the trader to tell her where he intended to take them; this he refused to do. How could he, when he knew he would sell them, one by one, wherever he could command the highest price? I met that mother in the street, and her wild, haggard face lives to-day in my mind. She wrung her hands in anguish, and exclaimed, 'Gone! All gone! Why don 't God kill me? ' I had no words wherewith to comfort

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" The author tells how sad is the life of a slave girl and how, as soon as she is old enough, and against her will, she would learn about the malice of the world. Meanwhile, male slaves rarely suffered from such abuse, and different from women, slavery mostly affected their manliness. As Douglas says while describing one of the oversees: "It was enough to chill the blood and stiffen the hair of an ordinary man to hear him talk. " By saying so, he proved how, at a very patriarchal time, male slaves completely lost the bravery and "superiority" often used to describe white men.

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She'll get it whether I give it to her or not.” This shows his obvious disregard to see her as a human being. To him, she's hardly even human and doesn’t even deserve a second thought. Another example of a slave being treated inhumanely would be in the part of the story describing a slave, “Weylin called her a good breeder, and he never whipped her.

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Analogous in form to the spiritual autobiography, the slave narrative emphasizes the difficulty of upholding moral goodness under the weight of slavery. By revealing herself as a “fallen woman” Jacobs creates a hazardous problem, capable of eliminating the sympathies of a primarily white audience. Moreover, Jacobs risks portraying herself as an impure woman, whose virtuousness departs from the piousness and gracefulness typically exemplified by the ideal woman or “angel in the house,” according to the “Cult of True Womanhood.” Therefore, in an effort to preserve the ethos of her argument, Jacobs attributes her unchaste condition to the systemic effects of American slavery. Hoping to destroy the ideology of benign paternalism, Jacobs reveals her consequential ethical dilemma through a faint description of her master’s, Dr. Flint’s, licentious behavior.

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