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Slavery in the late nineteenth century
Critical analysis of the slave girl
Slavery in the late nineteenth century
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The novel Letter From a Slave Girl by Mary E. Lyons, is based on a slave named Harriet Ann Jacobs. Harriet Jacobs created a autobiography through letters in the time period to 1825, at age 12, to 1842. Her letters were about the tragedies and struggles slaves faced. Through her letters, Harriet, usually writes to someone who she misses or recently passed away. Such as wen the novel begins and she is writing to her mother about where all the slaves were going to go since Margret !!!.Many more people she loves are inside the novel such as her father who passed from the hard work of slavery and her old boyfriend R. pours out her story as letters to dear ones she has lost. She writes to her dead mother about the her master, Margret !!, dying.
In Harriett Jacobs’s book, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, she informs her readers of her life as a slave girl growing up in southern America. By doing this she hides her identity and is referred to as Linda Brent which she had a motive for her secrecy? In the beginning of her life she is sheltered as a child by her loving mistress where she lived a free blissful life. However after her mistress dies she is not freed from the bondage of slaver but given to her mistress sister and this is where Jacobs’s happiness dissolved. In her story, she reveals that slavery is terrible for men but, is more so dreadful for women. In addition woman bore being raped by their masters, as well as their children begin sold into slavery. All of this experience
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
Slavery in the middle of the 19th century was well known by every American in the country, but despite the acknowledgment of slavery the average citizen did not realize the severity of the lifestyle of the slave before slave narratives began to arise. In Incidents in the life of a slave girl, Harriet Jacobs uses an explicit tone to argue the general life of slave compared to a free person, as well as the hardships one endured on one’s path to freedom. Jacobs fought hard in order to expand the abolitionist movement with her narrative. She was able to draw in the readers by elements of slave culture that helped the slaves endure the hardships like religion and leisure and the middle class ideals of the women being “submissive, past, domestic,
Jacobs, Harriet, and Yellin, Jean. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press
Jacobs, Harriet A. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself. 1861. Ed.
Jacobs, Harriet. "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl." The Classic Slave Narratives. Ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. New York: Mentor, 1987.
Frederick Douglass's Narrative, first published in 1845, is an enlightening and incendiary text. Born into slavery, Douglass became the preeminent spokesman for his people during his life; his narrative is an unparalleled account of the inhumane effects of slavery and Douglass's own triumph over it. His use of vivid language depicts violence against slaves, his personal insights into the dynamics between slaves and slaveholders, and his naming of specific persons and places made his book an indictment against a society that continued to accept slavery as a social and economic institution. Like Douglass, Harriet Jacobs was born into slavery, and in 1853 she published Letter from a Fugitive Slave, now recognized as one of the most comprehensive antebellum slave narratives written by an African-American woman. Jacobs's account broke the silence on the exploitation of African American female slaves.
Jacobs, Harriet. Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl. 2nd Edition. Edited by Pine T. Joslyn. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, INC., 2001.
Jacobs, Harriet A. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Written by Herself. Ed. Jennifer Fleischner. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2010. Print.
In Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Jacobs recalls her experiences of being a slave through the eyes of Linda Brent. Linda held no knowledge of being a piece of property through her childhood. When she turned six, her childhood vanished. Although she was still a child, she had to mature at a much accelerated rate than children who were not slaves, or of color. Throughout Linda’s life of a slave girl, she depended on substantial family tethers as a source of perseverance, support, and aspirations for a superior life. In a few ways, these tethers can be perceived as a blessing in disguise. Even though Linda’s support system served as an extensive force ultimately leading her to
Jacobs, Harriet. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. New York, NY: W. W. Norton &
She portrays an important message in her narrative and I think people need to read it. I thought her life and text was inspiring and important for me to learn and read about, since I am so unaware of what went on in the South to the African men and women during this time period. When we read this author’s text in class, I felt intrigued to read it. Her style of reading was more interesting than any of the other authors we have read in class so far. I am personally interested, because I could understand what she was trying to get across in her narrative and what she is trying to tell her audience. I am interested in analyzing Harriet Jacobs slave novel, “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” and analyzing her life
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
Harriet Jacobs wanted to tell her story, but knew she lacked the skills to write the story herself. She had learned to read while young and enslaved, but, at the time of her escape to the North in 1842, she was not a proficient writer. She worked at it, though, in part by writing letters that were published by the New York Tribune, and with the help of her friend, Amy Post. Her writing skills improved, and by 1858, she had finished the manuscript of her book, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.
Today, we woke up at around 3:30 a.m. just to go eat and then go to work in the fields. Some days, the white people who owned us, liked to be nice and weren’t as harsh to us. But then some days, if we didn’t oink the amount of cotton or tobacco that they wanted, we would get lashed. But you see the number always changed. Some days they would want 40 pounds of cotton picked but other days, they would want 140 pounds. I am getting so tired of living my life like this, other blacks say that there is really nothing we can do, nut I believe there is. A lot of us, want to escape but don’t know how we could. We are always being watched, there is never a time when we are alone. They treat us like we are animals, like we are completely different but really we