Harriet Jacobs' Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl The feminist movement sought to gain rights for women. Many feminist during the early nineteenth century fought for the abolition of slavery around the world. The slave narrative became a powerful feminist tool in the nineteenth century. Black and white women are fictionalized and objectified in the slave narrative. White women are idealized as pure, angelic, and chaste while black woman are idealized as exotic and contained an uncontrollable, savage sexuality. Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of A Slave Girl, brought the sexual oppression of captive black women into the public and political arena. Harriet Jacobs takes a great risk writing her trials as a house servant in the south and a fugitive in the north. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl gives a true account of the brutality slavery held for women. A perspective that was relatively secretive during Jacobs’ time. Jacobs’ narrative focuses on subjugation due to race but it also portrays many women an strong and often open roles. Women in these roles were minimal and often suffered for their outspoken roles. Harriet Jacobs’ narrative is a powerful statement unveiling the impossibility and undesirability of achieving the ideal put forth by men and maintained by women. Jacobs directs her 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 disapprobation women maintained by accepting the idealized role that men have set a goal for which to strive. She suggests that slave women be judged by different standards than those applied to other women. Jacobs develops a moral code that apprises the specific social and historical position of captive black women. Jacobs’ will power and strength shown in her narrative are characteristics of womanly behavior being developed by the emerging feminist movement. In struggling against the brutal dynamics of a system that simultaneously set before her ideals of a true woman, but refused to acknowledge her as a human being, Jacobs emerges scarred but victorious. Her rational powers and will to action facilitate her efforts to find strategies for dealing with sexual harassment from her master, for maintaining family unity, and in estab... ... middle of paper ... ...denying society’s firm position for women by refusing to be owned, refusing to submit , and refusing to be bought out of her captivity. Linda rejects the notion of true womanhood that has been passes on for centuries and takes control of her future and her children’s future. Linda gains her peace by escaping to the north. Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is one of the few narratives depicting the degradation’s endured by female slaves at the hand of brutal masters. Jacobs’ narrative is sending a message to women to come together and end the unfair treatment all women are subjected to. By bringing images of slavery and the message of unity of women to the forefront, Jacobs is attempting to end the tyranny over women perpetrated by men and the tyranny over blacks perpetrated by whites. Integrity and agency are ideals that Americans have fought for over the years. Jacobs reshapes these ideas and makes decisions and takes full reposibilities for her actions to become the ideal and representative image of womanhood. Work Cited: Gates, Henry Louis Jr. and Nellie Y. McKay. The Norton Anthology of African American Literature. New York: W.W. Norton & Company
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
Many times readers lose interest in stories that they feel are not authentic. In addition, readers feel that fictitious novels and stories are for children and lack depth. Tim O’ Brien maintains that keeping readers of fiction entertained is a most daunting task, “The problem with unsuccessful stories is usually simple: they are boring, a consequence of the failure of imagination- to vividly imagine and to vividly render extraordinary human events, or sequences of events, is the hard-lifting, heavy-duty, day-by-day, unending labor of a fiction writer” (Tim O’ Brien 623). Tim O’ Brien’s “How to Tell a True War Story” examines the correlation between the real experiences of war and the art of storytelling. In O’Brien’s attempt to bridge the gap between fiction and non-fiction the narrator of the story uses language and acts of violence that may be offensive to some. However some readers agree that Tim O" Brien's "How to Tell a True War Story" would lack authenticity and power without the use of crude language and violence.
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.
The U.S. slave system has placed African American women at a disadvantage for hundreds of years. It's atrocious to think this kind of thing could ever be allowed to happen. Even worse is to the reality that it wouldn't be that way if people truly believed in equality. Women were owned in every aspect, not merely free labor. Their minds, bodies, and souls were pushed to the limits and Harriet Jacobs is an example of this being true.
A recurring theme in, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, is Harriet Jacobs's reflections on what slavery meant to her as well as all women in bondage. Continuously, Jacobs expresses her deep hatred of slavery, and all of its implications. She dreads such an institution so much that she sometimes regards death as a better alternative than a life in bondage. For Harriet, slavery was different than many African Americans. She did not spend her life harvesting cotton on a large plantation. She was not flogged and beaten regularly like many slaves. She was not actively kept from illiteracy. Actually, Harriet always was treated relatively well. She performed most of her work inside and was rarely ever punished, at the request of her licentious master. Furthermore, she was taught to read and sew, and to perform other tasks associated with a ?ladies? work. Outwardly, it appeared that Harriet had it pretty good, in light of what many slaves had succumbed to. However, Ironically Harriet believes these fortunes were actually her curse. The fact that she was well kept and light skinned as well as being attractive lead to her victimization as a sexual object. Consequently, Harriet became a prospective concubine for Dr. Norcom. She points out that life under slavery was as bad as any slave could hope for. Harriet talks about her life as slave by saying, ?You never knew what it is to be a slave; to be entirely unprotected by law or custom; to have the laws reduce you to the condition of chattel, entirely subject to the will of another.? (Jacobs p. 55).
Bonn, Maria S. "Can Stories Save Us? Tim O'Brien and the efficacy of the text (The Vietnam War)." CRITIQUE: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 36.1 (Fall 1994); 2-16.
3. What does O’Brien mean when he writes, “Thas is a true war story that never happened.”
...f Jacobs’s narrative is the sexual exploitation that she, as well as many other slave women, had to endure. Her narrative focuses on the domestic issues that faced African-American women, she even states, “Slavery is bad for men, but it is far more terrible for women”. Therefore, gender separated the two narratives, and gave each a distinct view toward slavery.
Jacobs, Harriet. Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl. 2nd Edition. Edited by Pine T. Joslyn. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, INC., 2001.
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 narration of real events blended with fictional additions, and vice versa, is inconsequential compared to how the moral of each story resonates with the reader. Plots and ideas get made up in order to “get at the real truth” (O’Brien 81). The ““story-truth” has little to do with the reality of war. Instead, the onus is on the reader to determine the value of the work in her own life, to make sense of the connections arising from intense conflict” (Smith 116). The stories become true depending on the varying emotional response of the reader, coming alive under the canopy of personal experience and individual reaction. It is dependent on the reader to tease out the moral of each vignette, “like the thread that makes the cloth, […] unraveling the deeper meaning” (O’Brien 74). A true war story, like those within The Things They Carried, cannot be taken at face value. They are far more profound than just being about war. “It’s about love and memory. It’s about sorrow” (O’Brien 81). A true war story is not true at all, unless, the reader is able to identify the different personal, emotional truths within them; the truth is fictionalized so that it can be accessible to vaster audience of readers, so that it could mean
O’Brien is reiterating the point that he is trying to make in the novel. In order to feel what he feels he needs to lie in a ‘Story-Truth’ to the reader to bring it all alive. What can be taken away is that in order to get a legitimate war story, there needs to be some sort of ‘Story-Truth’. The ‘Happening-Truth’ is usually saved for the end.
The latter work exposed what is was like to be a “slave girl.” Before this work came out no one really knew how these women were treated. The author, Harriet Ann Jacobs, pointed out that thes...
Sometimes a person needs to make up their own truth to survive a crisis situation, so long as the person does not reject other philosophies as Grendel does. This is often the case in war, when a person must distance themselves from the violence, the cruelty, the sheer disgust of the fighting. In The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien writes that he tells war stories that are not “happening truth,” but rather a “story truth” that feels more genuine. In other words, often the depiction of a single, real event cannot convey everything that a person feels. According to O’Brien, a story can reveal much more by emphasizing or recreating everything that conveys the essence of the truth into a
As female slaves such as Harriet Jacob continually were fighting to protect their self respect, and purity. Harriet Jacob in her narrative, the readers get an understanding of she was trying to rebel against her aggressive master, who sexually harassed her at young age. She wasn’t protected by the law, and the slaveholders did as they pleased and were left unpunished. Jacobs knew that the social group,who were“the white women”, would see her not as a virtuous woman but hypersexual. She states “I wanted to keep myself pure, - and I tried hard to preserve my self-respect, but I was struggling alone in the grasp of the demon slavery.” (Harriet 290)The majority of the white women seemed to criticize her, but failed to understand her conditions and she did not have the free will. She simply did not have that freedom of choice. It was the institution of slavery that failed to recognize her and give her the basic freedoms of individual rights and basic protection. Harriet Jacobs was determined to reveal to the white Americans the sexual exploitations that female slaves constantly fa...