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Reflection on a slave narrative
History essay on harriet jacobs experience
History essay on harriet jacobs experience
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Feminism and Slavery Harriet Jacobs escaped from slavery and at great personal risk wrote of her trials as a house servant in the South and later fugitive in the North. Her slave narrative entitled Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl gave a true account of the evils slavery held for women, a perspective that has been kept relatively secret from the public. In writing her story, Jacobs, though focused on the subjugation due to race, gave voice subtly to a different kind of captivity, that which men impose on women regardless of color in the patriarchal society of the ninetenth century. This form of bondage is not only exacted from women by their husbands, fathers, brothers, and sons, but also is accepted and perpetuated by women themselves, who forge the cage that holds them captive. Jacobs directed her stirring account of the afflictions a woman is subjected to in the chain of slavery to women of the North to gain sympathy for their sisters that were enslaved in the South. In showing this, Jacobs reveals the danger of such self condemnation women maintain by accepting the idealized role that men have set as a goal for which to strive. Harriet Jacobs' slave epic is a powerful statement unveiling the impossibility and undesirability of achieving the ideal put forth by men and maintained by women. Her narrative is a strong feminist text. The idealized Woman that men and women alike propagated consists of four qualities. "The attributes of True Womanhood, by which a woman judged herself and was judged by her husband, her neighbors and society, could be divided into four cardinal virtues- piety, purity, submissiveness and domesticity."[1] Of all of the women that Jacobs' autobiographical character Linda Brent meets, not one ... ... middle of paper ... ... "Perilous Passages in Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" in The Discourse of Slavery: Aphra Behn to Toni Morrison. Plasa, Carl and Ring, Betty J., eds. New York: Routledge, 1994. McKay, Nellie Y. "The Girls Who Became Women: Childhood Memories in the Autobiographies of Harriet Jacobs, Mary Church Terrell, and Anne Moody" in Tradition and the Talents of Women. Howe, Florence, ed. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991. Smith, Valerie. Self-Discovery and Authority in Afro-American Narrative. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987. Starling, Marion Wilson. The Slave Narrative: Its Place in American History. Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1988. Welter, Barbara. "The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860" chap. in Dimity Convictions: The American Woman in the Nineteenth Century. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1976.
James, Edward, Janet James, and Paul Boyer. Notable American Women, 1607-1950. Volume III: P-Z. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971. Print.
Harriet Jacobs and Fanny Fern both display different kinds of writing styles that shed light on women who could stand up on their own. The stories of those two women vastly contrast each other, however, the women display hardships and overcome their difficulties in a similar manner. Jacobs who goes by a different persona-- a woman’s name Linda, who is a young slave. Fern did a similar thing to Jacobs by going by a different persona, a young woman named Ruth Hall. What the two women display with their books released to the public is to give another look at what women go through. The readers of the book would explore the hardship of what the two women have experienced, thus bringing more awareness and light to women’s rights and the anti-slavery
Slavery is a term that can create a whirlwind of emotions for everyone. During the hardships faced by the African Americans, hundreds of accounts were documented. Harriet Jacobs, Charles Ball and Kate Drumgoold each shared their perspectives of being caught up in the world of slavery. There were reoccurring themes throughout the books as well as varying angles that each author either left out or never experienced. Taking two women’s views as well as a man’s, we can begin to delve deeper into what their everyday lives would have been like. Charles Ball’s Fifty Years in Chains and Harriet Jacobs Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl were both published in the early 1860’s while Kate Drumgoold’s A Slave Girl’s Story came almost forty years later
Jacobs, Harriet, and Yellin, Jean. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press
Welter, Barbara. “The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860.” Nineteenth Century Literature March 1966: 102-106. Jstor. On-line. 10 Nov. 2002.
In Harriet Jacobs Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, the author subjects the reader to a dystopian slave narrative based on a true story of a woman’s struggle for self-identity, self-preservation and freedom. This non-fictional personal account chronicles the journey of Harriet Jacobs (1813-1897) life of servitude and degradation in the state of North Carolina to the shackle-free promise land of liberty in the North. The reoccurring theme throughout that I strive to exploit is how the women’s sphere, known as the Cult of True Womanhood (Domesticity), is a corrupt concept that is full of white bias and privilege that has been compromised by the harsh oppression of slavery’s racial barrier. Women and the female race are falling for man’s
The clone has many different meanings in the modern world. The past identified a clone as something that that was copied from an original item or product. The term “The real McCoy” is an allusion to a patented train system, which everyone wanted but they did not want to buy that specific one. Nowadays the clone is an animal that has an identical DNA sequence to the donor of the DNA. The reasons for cloning is as varied as there are definitions. Many people would like to have the perfect child. Others can only have a baby by using cloning processes. Some believe that clones should be raised for their organs thus eliminating waiting lines for transplants since you get a genetically identical organ. There are several examples of cloning today. Dolly was the most popular since she was the first publicly announced cloning success. She was “born” on February 23, 1997. Bacteria are another example of cloning. They reproduce asexually and are identical to the original cell. This is used to our advantage by splicing specific strands of DNA into such bacteria so they b...
Beginning in the early 1800’s men, their wives and children made the voyage across to America, yet women might as well have been viewed as not a wife but another piece of land, just in a new country considering women’s duties were the same in both the east and the west. In both locations men and women were believed to be apart of “different spheres.” Barbara Welter elaborates on these spheres through her essay “The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860” (1966). Welters describes the male sphere was focused around the world of the work force, ...
Even though cloning methods have been in use for an extended period of time, the idea of a clone was never thought to be realistic until recently. For thousands of years, humans have been cloning plants through asexual propagation. This is simply the process of stem cutting or grafting a mammal was performed in Switzerland nearly 20 years after the carrot plant where mice cells were cloned. Later, in 1997, Dolly the sheep’s mammary cells were cloned (Lee). This was a major success for science because it was the first time an adult cell was used in which results in a clone of the previous generation of the plant and is still a method used today. It wasn’t until 1958 when modern cloning began with a carrot and in 1964 when scientist John Gurdon started the beginning of animal cell cloning of toad tadpoles. The first successful clone of embryonic cell. After scientists gained a greater knowledge of the process of cloning, they realized that it could possibly be used to benefit the world. In 2001, the first endangered species, the bull gaur, was cloned, and in...
Herbert, Wray. The World After Cloning. U.S. News and World Report. March 10, 1997: 59-64.
In earlier times the subject of cloning human beings has been no more than just a fantastic idea to play around with in science-fiction books and movies. As time progresses though, more and more fantasies become realities. Such is the case with cloning. What has only been dreamt up before by artists on pen and paper can now be performed by scientists in laboratories. With the ability to clone humans now possible the question of whether such an act should even be carried out is raised. How far should cloning be allowed to go if it should even be allowed at all? The answer is that cloning should be allowed, but only in moderation.
In conclusion, women were considered property and slave holders treated them as they pleased. We come to understand that there was no law that gave protection to female slaves. Harriet Jacob’s narrative shows the true face of how slaveholders treated young female slave. The female slaves were sexually exploited which damaged them physically and psychologically. Furthermore it details how the slave holder violated the most sacred commandment of nature by corrupting the self respect and virtue of the female slave. Harriet Jacob writes this narrative not to ask for pity or to be sympathized but rather to show the white people to be aware of how female slaves constantly faced sexual exploitation which damaged their body and soul.
McKinnell, Robert G., and Marie A. Di Berardino. "The Biology of Cloning: History and Rationale."BioScience 49.11 (1999): 875-83. Print
Seidel, Jr., George E. "Cloning." World Book Student. World Book, 2014. Web. 13 Feb. 2014. source 19
Hurbert, Wray. "The World after Cloning." New and World Report, 10 March 1997. Newsbank: Cloning February 10 (1999).