Jacobs Slave-Narrative Analysis

The emotional and sexual abuse was awful for Jacobs. In her narrative she talks about how horrible it really was for women "My master began to whisper foul words in my ear." Her master told her she was property "He told me I was his property; that I must be subject to his will in all things." She says how she had to give up their children "The children were sold to a slave-trader,

Knowing that in this time in history that not even white women were respected on the same level as men, how much greater then were women of color disrespected? Though she used a fake name—she still identified as an African American woman, which proves that not just any book would be published at the time if it were not of some truth. Jacobs’ life, a life of physical slavery, shows the parallels to the bondage humans have in

Although she did not receive any physical punishment by her master, she lived in a tight-knit community and was aware of the conditions of other slaves who received brutal punishments. For example, Jacobs notes that “every where men, women, and children were whipped till the blood stood in puddles at their feet.” (page 56). Female slaves lived in fear that they would be raped by their masters. Jacobs’ master, Dr. Flint, often made relentless sexual advances at her, and justified his behavior by saying that she was “made for his use.”

Jacobs later began “to contribute her life story to the abolitionist cause in a way that would capture the attention of Northern white women in particular, to show how slavery debased and demoralized woman” (Baym, 921). Jacobs wrote an autobiography on her life as a slave little girl. In her book she described the kind of treatment African

In Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs, writing under the pseudonym Linda Brent, writes autobiographically of the painful and tragic struggles faced by her and her family as slaves in the South during the 19th century. As Brent depicts the various obstacles and struggles she endured in her journey to freedom she shows how “slavery is terrible for men; but it is far more terrible for women” by giving insight to the sexual abuse female slaves were subject to and the aftermath of this sexual abuse. In the following review of Brent’s work, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, I will include a summary of the book’s contents along with an analysis of its major argument and purpose to give understanding to the atrocities face by

In this book, Jacobs’ describes the living conditions as a slave and her own personal experiences; her descriptions show how violent and poor her living conditions were. Harriet Jacobs wrote, “Various were the punishments resorted to. A favorite one was to tie a rope round a man’s body, and suspend him from the ground. A fire was kindled over him, from which was suspended a piece of fat pork,” (Jacobs 41) . This is one of the many examples of how poorly slaves were treated on plantations and by their owners.

Harriet Jacobs's autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861), is the most generally perused female before the war slave account. In relating her background before she was free, Jacobs offered her contemporary readers a startlingly sensible depiction of her sexual history while a slave. Although a few male creators of slave accounts had alluded to the exploitation of oppressed African American ladies by white men, none had tended to the subject as specifically as Jacobs at last decided to. She archived the sexual manhandle she endured, as well as clarified how she had conceived an approach to utilize her sexuality as a methods for staying away from misuse by her lord. Taking a chance with her notoriety in the revelation of such

Slavery was maybe a standout amongst the most horrifying tragedies in the history.. Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs were only two of the numerous slaves who write about their experiences as a salve. Each of the slaves had diverse encounters with slavery; however they all had one thing in like manner: they recount the abominable foundation of slavery and how enormously it influenced their lives. Harriet Jacobs and Frederick Douglas, both of whom were naturally introduced to slavery, portrayed their encounters in energetic, convincing accounts. As this short essay will illustrate, both imparted the vulnerabilities of the slave, the mistreatment gave out to these casualties of an unethical organization, and a feeling of being seen as sub-par

No one in today's community can even exaggerate enough or imagine the grief, anguish, torment and the horrible misery endured by African American male and female slaves. Numerous of the African American slaves went through this anguish and misery for their whole lives and their children were most of the time born into servitude until they became free. Women slavery was a little different from that of a man. The sexual abuse, carrying a child by the master, and child care obligations influenced how they directed and lived their lives. Harriet Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, shows the distinctive roles that female slaves endured and the battles that were brought upon from coping with sexual abuse.

Readers learn from Jacobs that slave women had to endure things such as jealous mistresses, perverted slaveholders, and the separation from their children, which proves that women are degraded in other ways than men.

Throughout American history, many sources display the era of slavery, but little of them exhibit slavery as well as a book called, “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.” This book represents an accurate first-hand account of slavery that allows historians to analyze the era of slavery today. According to this narrative, there were many dehumanizing aspects of slavery, which include physical torture and forcing inhumane lifestyle onto slaves. Many of these scenarios of torture were demonstrated in expansive, horrific detail throughout the narrative. Although slaves were immensely dehumanized, this historical piece humanizes Frederick Douglass along with African Americans as this narrative is a marvelous piece of literary art with many

Mary Rowlandson and Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl share is that both were written not as a journal but as a means to paint a picture of their enslavement. Rowlandson “wrote for her surviving children” (Gilbert and Gubar 175) and in turn illustrated the power and mercy of God. And Jacobs wrote for her “sisters who [were] still [suffering] in bondage” (Jacobs 620). In the beginning of Rowlandson’s and Jacobs’ books the oppressors are painted as “merciless enemies” (Rowlandson 175) and as a “hoary-headed miscreant” (Jacobs 624).

The institution of slavery not only brutalizes its victims, but also dehumanizes the practitioners of it. Slavery had warped and twisted the very essence of every person it encountered, from the slaves being subjected to the cruelty and sadism of their masters, to the masters themselves losing their very humanity to such barbaric degrees, some of whom even being previously persons of reputable morality. The Classic slave Narratives provides numerous examples of this, many of which being within the Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass, and The History of Mary Prince. The Narrative of Frederick Douglass is filled with these examples of brutalization of both slave and master.

Throughout the narrative, the author includes his personal stories about experiencing the violence of slavery first-hand. For example, on page 20, he writes about the first time he witnessed a slave, his own aunt, getting the whip. “The louder she screamed, the harder he whipped; and where the blood ran fastest, there he whipped longest…I remember the first time I ever witnessed this horrible exhibition… It struck me with awful force. It was the blood-stained gate, the entrance to the hell of slavery…” The author including his experience of his aunts whipping, in detail, appeals to the emotions of the reader.

Slaves faced extreme brutality and Morrison focuses on rape and sexual assault as the most terrifying form of abuse. It is because of this abuse that Morrison’s characters are trapped in their pasts, unable to move on from the psychological damages that they have endured. “Morrison revises the conventional slave narrative by insisting on the primacy of sexual assault over other experiences of brutality” (Barnett 420). For telling Mrs. Garner what they had done, she was badly beaten by them, leaving a “chokecherry tree” (16) on her back. But that was not the overriding issue.