Analysis Of Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl By Harriet Ann Jacobs

The story of a woman enslaved during the 19th century is told in the novel Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Ann Jacobs. Jacobs retells her personal experiences under the pseudonym Linda Brent. She begins her memoir with recollections of growing up as a slave but being completely unaware of it for the first 6 years of her life. She describes herself as a mulatto which is a slang term used to describe the offspring of an African American slave and white slaveholder. Her parents are slaves to a mistress who allows them to live in their own home and return daily to work in the house of their mistress. She describes her childhood at this point as happy and innocent. Like a childhood should be. When she begins to describe her family,

One major reason was the fact that they were able to raise and nurse children for their mistresses. The motherhood instinct of these African American women was useful to slaveholders. And although this was a blessing for the slaveholders’ wives, it was a curse to the slave, as their first duty was to be a servant to their masters/mistresses and possibly a human, mother and/or wife second. The child of the mistress took precedence over the child of the slave herself. We see this when Linda describes her mother being weaned at 3 months old, so that the child of the mistress would be able to obtain sufficient food. A motherly instinct is something that many women hold fast to. In this instance, it is not only disrespected but also denied. Another instance similar to this occurs when the author describes New Year’s traditions and shows the greatly contrasting experiences between the slaveholder wives in comparison to the female slaves. The issue of motherhood is again belittled. “But to the slave mother New Year’s Day comes laden with peculiar sorrows. She sits on her cold cabin floor, watching the children who may all be torn from her the next morning…” (Jacobs 2012.) This describes the sales that follow this holiday. At these auction sales, a mother was made to bring her children and relinquish any claim over them. They were sold to various slave traders and were made to leave their families with no promise of