The Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl

Douglass lived in the slave times. It was illegal to a slave to read and write. Any slave caught reading or writing would be severely punished or even killed. Slave owners felt that if they learn they will soon rebel and start to fight back. Douglass even grew up not even knowing his own age. His master’s wife is what

She emphasizes that the life of a slave woman is incomparable to the life of a slave man, in the sense that a woman’s sufferings are not only physical but also extremely mental and emotional. Whether or not a slave woman is beaten, starved to death, or made to work in unbearable circumstances on the fields, she suffers from and endures horrible mental torments. Unlike slave men, these women have to deal with sexual harassment from white men, most often their slave owners, as well as the loss of their children in some cases. Men often dwell on their sufferings of bodily pain and physical endurance as slaves, where as women not only deal with that but also the mental and emotional aspect of it. Men claim that their manhood and masculinity are stripped from them, but women deal with their loss of dignity and morality. Females deal with the emotional agony as mothers who lose their children or have to watch them get beaten, as well as being sexually victimized by white men who may or may not be the father of their children. For these women, their experiences seem unimaginable and are just as difficult as any physical punishment, if not more so.

The autobiography commences with the narrator explaining his place of birth: Tuckahoe, near Hillsborough, Talbot County, Maryland. One of his first inner struggles with which Douglass carried along throughout his life was the fact that had no knowledge of his birthday. The best estimate had been roughly 1818. Furthermore, he neither knew his father’s identity nor saw his mother as often as he would wish. Although he was separated from his mother at a tender age, Douglass narrates how she would sometimes sneak from a nearby plantation at night to sleep with him. His mother, Harriet Bailey, soon died but due to the lack of connection, her death did not have an emotional impact on him. On the other hand, it was widely speculated that his father was a white man and his captain’s first helper.

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, a slave narrative written by Harriet Ann Jacobs is highly commended for the portrayal of women during the excruciating times of slavery. Disregarding that the slave narrative was initially written for the audience of Caucasian women, “…, as white women constituted Jacobs’s primary audience at the time she wrote her narrative” (Larson,742) the struggles of being a female slave were emphasized throughout the narrative. Harriet Ann Jacobs elaborates on slave women’s worth being diminished. In the slave narrative Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, written by Harriet Ann Jacobs, the theme of the perils of slavery for women was portrayed by women being viewed

During the antebellum South, many Africans, who were forced migrants brought to America, were there to work for white-owners of tobacco and cotton plantations, manual labor as America expanded west, and as supplemental support of their owner’s families. Harriet Jacobs’s slave narrative supports the definition of slavery (in the South), discrimination (in the North), sexual gender as being influential to a slave’s role, the significant role of family support, and how the gender differences viewed and responded to life circumstances.

Throughout Harriet Jacobs biography of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, she brings up three arguments to support her views on anti-slavery: the moral conflict between slavery and Christianity, pain and suffering (physical and emotional) of being in slavery, and color prejudice. Throughout Jacobs biography, she also uses key themes such as power struggles and feministic views to portray slavery to persuade to the women in the north that slavery is indeed corrupt.

Frederick Douglass was born in Maryland in 1818 as a slave to a maritime captain, Captain Anthony. After decades of enslavement, Frederick Douglass escaped to the North and became one of the prominent members and drivers of the abolitionist movement. In an effort to provide an eye-opening account of the harsh treatment of slaves, Douglass wrote Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. In his autobiography, Frederick Douglass detailed his life beginning from his meager early years through his escape to the North. In writing his autobiography, Douglass utilized a variety of techniques including the use of the three rhetorical strategies: Ethos, Pathos and Logos to create a powerful and influential argument against the institution of

He spoke of his emotions later in the essay with “ I often found myself of regretting my own existence, and wishing myself dead;” Douglass values the ability to read and write with a full understanding, even though his slave owners didn’t allow him to do so. He believed that he would forever remain a slave, unlike the white children. “ I wished I could be as free as they would be when they got to be men.”

Born in 1818, the son of a Maryland slave woman and an unknown white father, he was separated from his mother almost immediately after his birth and remembered seeing her only four or five times before her death. Cared for by his maternal grandmother, an enslaved midwife, he suffered a cruel emotional blow when, at the age of six, he was taken from his home to work on one of the largest plantations on Maryland’s eastern shore. There, Douglass suffered chronic hunger and witnessed many of the cruelties that he later recorded in his autobiographies. He saw an aunt receive forty lashes and a cousin bleeding from her shoulders and neck after a flogging by a drunken

During the final years of legal slave ownership in the United States, the slave narrative became a popular way for literate enslaved people to express their anti-slavery stance through their own testimony. Two of the most influential writers on the slave narrative topic were the autobiographical authors Fredrick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs. Since Douglas and Jacobs were both born in a similar time period, there are many similarities found in their works. Douglass’s Narrative of the life of Fredrick Douglass, an American Slave is closely comparable to Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl when analyzing how they represented their enslavement in their autobiographies. The two authors have similar ideas when portraying their struggles with forced ignorance. Their writing also contains parallels with the corrupting power of slavery for the slave owners, as well as the parallels in pointing out the hypocrisies of using the bible to defend slavery. These similarities can be explained in part due to Douglass and Jacobs following the same basic slave narrative outline to maintain the shared goal of abolishing slavery in the United States.

With these tools, he would then educate others on the sufferings and wrong doings of the slaves in the South. In Chapter 6, paragraph 3, Douglass states “…I set out with high hope, and a fixed purpose, at whatever cost of trouble, to learn how to read” (410). As a man, he strongly looked at slavery and at freedom right in the eyes. In Chapter10, paragraph 9, Douglass states “You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man” (424). In this quote he is explaining how he defended and stood up for himself against his Master. This action changed the way by which his Master dealt with him in the future. He did not wait 7 long years hiding out as a frightened slave, hiding and being quiet. As a matter of fact, at the age of twelve, Douglass states in his autobiography “…and the thought of being a slave for life began to bear heavily upon my heart” (412). It took Douglass approximately 8 months of planning before attempting and succeeding in obtaining his freedom. In Chapter 11, paragraph 5, Douglass states “But I remained firm, and, according to my resolution, on the third day of September, 1838, I left my chains, and succeeded in reaching New York without the slightest interruption of any kind” (443). Most of his life, Douglass prepared for freedom. Through many ways, he educated himself so that he could use his knowledge to become free.

Slavery was a challenging and uncomfortable life for the slaves such as Jacobs. Her mistress watched over her when she was sleeping trying to provoke Jacobs into accuse herself of attempting to seduce the mistress’s husband. Slave narratives have gothic elements to it because Jacobs was fearful of her life and her mistress watched over her when Jacobs was variable from being asleep. Jacobs describes how she was in her grandmother’s attic for seven years and

Frederick Douglass’ biography revolves around the idea of freedom. After seeing a traumatizing incident as a child, Douglass slowly begins to realize that he is not a free human being, but is a slave owned by other people. He is surrounded by a society that devalues him and people like him, and systematically worked to keep them ignorant and submissive. In this society, it is made clear that no slave is special, and everyone is replaceable. Rather than accept this, Douglass struggles to maintain what little autonomy he was allowed to have. When his one of his masters, Thomas Auld, bans his mistress, Sophia, from teaching Douglass how to read, Douglass learned from the young boys on the street. His biography shows him transforming from an ignorant child into his older, more learned self.

In "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl", Harriet Jacobs writes, "Slavery is terrible for men; but it is far more terrible for women" (64). Jacobs' work presents the evils of slavery as being worse in a woman's case due to the tenets of gender identity. Jacobs elucidates the disparity between societal dictates of what the proper roles were for Nineteenth century women and the manner that slavery prevented a woman from fulfilling these roles. The book illustrates the double standard of for white women versus black women. Harriet Jacobs serves as an example of the female slave's desire to maintain the prescribed virtues but how her circumstances often prevented her from practicing.

No one in today’s society can even come close to the heartache, torment, anguish, and complete misery suffered by women in slavery. Many women endured this agony their entire lives, there only joy being there children and families, who were torn away from them and sold, never to be seen or heard from again.