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Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

The issue of slavery in the 1800’s had the means of being very brutal and carried dehumanizing factors that affected the lives of many men, women, and children who were colored. The autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, highly demonstrated the cruelty slaveowners exhibited towards their slaves, whom they saw as merely just property, and discussed the numerous hardships slaves were forced to endure. Even though she was born into slavery, Harriet Jacobs was fortunate enough to […]

American YAWP: Harriet Jacobs

Within the American Yawp Reader, we find an excerpt from Harriet Jacobs’ own autobiography titled “Harriet Jacobs on Rape and Slavery.” The author, Harriet Jacobs, was a black woman who was born into slavery in North Carolina. While she was enslaved, she was not only a victim of slavery, but also a victim of rape and oppression from her master. “After escaping to New York, Jacobs eventually wrote a narrative of her enslavement under the pseudonym of Linda Brent.” This […]

The Complex Identity of Harriet Jacobs’ Autobiography Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Written by herself

Harriet Jacobs, an African American slave woman who painstakingly fought to gain her freedom, held reservations against writing and publishing her story. Within the preface she expresses concerns of inadequacy and addresses her audience to ask for understanding regarding the background of her circumstances. Her fear stems from the prejudice she personally faced as an African American, a slave, and a woman. The combination of the three categories of identification is complex in each respect, however Jacobs skillfully articulates her […]

Harriet Tubman a Famous Political Activist

Harriet Tubman was an abolishment and political activist. She is known for beginning the underground railroad which provided fugitive slaves with food, and a bed. She made 19 trips into the South and escorted over 300 slaves to freedom and not once did she lose a passenger. Araminta Ross was born a slave in Maryland and because of slavery, at such a young age her siblings and she were separated despite her attempts to keep them together. Araminta changed her […]

Slave Narrative Comparison Essay

Did you know that some researchers have charged that the WPA interviewers edited out parts they found unimportant, but were critical to the enslaved person: religion, cruel plantation owners, lynching’s, runaways, punishment and stories about serving in the Union Army. The formerly enslaved were more open and honest when the interviewer recording their stories was African-American. However, WPA only hired a few. In addition, if the interviewer was a white woman, they were apt to be more open than with […]

Incidents of the Life of a Slave Girl

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 […]