Harriet A. Jacobs Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl
Honors U.S. Women’s History, Prof. Blythe Dana L. Shaw
An Analysis of “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Written by Herself” by Harriet A. Jacobs, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge Massachusetts, and London, England, 2009; Introduction by Jean Fagan Yellin
Harriet A. Jacobs, a former slave, in “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Written by Herself”, offers a poignant and unique perspective on women and mothers in slavery. One woman’s first-hand account of slave life and the trafficking of human beings as chattel illuminated this depraved and pervasive institution during the antebellum period of America. Slaves were considered as a piece of property for the use of their masters. It is clear in her statement “But I do earnestly desire to arouse the women of the North to realizing sense of the …show more content…
Lives filled with poverty, abuse, fear and desperation were and everyday state of being “yet few slaveholders seem to be aware of the widespread moral ruin occasioned by this wicked system” The raw reality of the heartfelt joys and sorrows cast a haunting light on slavery as a gendered experience in which women were sexually abused, degraded, coerced, and where they “considered of no value, unless they continually increase their owner’s stock” . The hypocrisy of slave holders, along with the failure to intercede by men and women of both the North and South, continued to perpetuate the atrocities of the slave trade. Incidents was both tragic, and compelling, in that bittersweet moment of freedom, Jacobs states “A human being sold in the free city of New York”, recognizing the irony that “women were articles of traffic in New York, late in the nineteenth century of the Christian religion” , it was important to make future generations aware of and learn from
An Analysis of “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Written by Herself” by Harriet A. Jacobs, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge Massachusetts, and London, England, 2009; Introduction by Jean Fagan Yellin
Harriet A. Jacobs, a former slave, in “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Written by Herself”, offers a poignant and unique perspective on women and mothers in slavery. One woman’s first-hand account of slave life and the trafficking of human beings as chattel illuminated this depraved and pervasive institution during the antebellum period of America. Slaves were considered as a piece of property for the use of their masters. It is clear in her statement “But I do earnestly desire to arouse the women of the North to realizing sense of the …show more content…
Lives filled with poverty, abuse, fear and desperation were and everyday state of being “yet few slaveholders seem to be aware of the widespread moral ruin occasioned by this wicked system” The raw reality of the heartfelt joys and sorrows cast a haunting light on slavery as a gendered experience in which women were sexually abused, degraded, coerced, and where they “considered of no value, unless they continually increase their owner’s stock” . The hypocrisy of slave holders, along with the failure to intercede by men and women of both the North and South, continued to perpetuate the atrocities of the slave trade. Incidents was both tragic, and compelling, in that bittersweet moment of freedom, Jacobs states “A human being sold in the free city of New York”, recognizing the irony that “women were articles of traffic in New York, late in the nineteenth century of the Christian religion” , it was important to make future generations aware of and learn from