Lydia Guerra
"Slavery is terrible for men," Harriet Jacobs wrote in 1861, "but it is far more terrible for women."[Jacobs1, Harriet. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (Dover Thrift Editions) (p. 66). Dover Publications. Kindle Edition. ] Comparing the lives of Harriet Jacobs and Benjamin Franklin it is easy to see the juxtaposed lives of the two. Franklin was a free white man and Jacobs an enslaved black woman, two very different walks of existence. Franklin lived a life that was guided by his own choosing and ever changing scenery, going wherever the wind blew him. On the contrary, Jacobs was confined most of her life to one place, her direction decided by the whims of those around her.
Jacobs’ …show more content…
As an enslaved black woman, the issues of class and race alter her experience of gender, the same as gender changes the life experiences of class and race. Black women in Jacobs’ time were overly 00000hypersexualized and as a consequence were defeminized and dehumanized by the standard women were upheld to in her time. Women in Jacobs time were regarded as pious, virtuous, and submissive and only when these things were met would they to be considered feminine and worthy of respect.["Gender Roles in Colonial America." Gender and Sexuality in Colonial America. Accessed November 23, 2017. http://public.gettysburg.edu/~tshannon/341/sites/Gender%20and%20Sexuality/Gender%20Roles.htm.] Slavery, as Jacobs recounts it, violates all of these principles. Female slaves were denied Christian education, violently torn and disjointed from their families, and turned into sexual objects. All of these aspects came as a shock to her readers, most of whom were free white women.[ ] To them, the dehumanization wasn’t the worst part, it was the defeminization that left them all riled up. White women in Harriet’s time were privileged but held no position, positioned but with as little power as
"Slavery is terrible for men," Harriet Jacobs wrote in 1861, "but it is far more terrible for women."[Jacobs1, Harriet. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (Dover Thrift Editions) (p. 66). Dover Publications. Kindle Edition. ] Comparing the lives of Harriet Jacobs and Benjamin Franklin it is easy to see the juxtaposed lives of the two. Franklin was a free white man and Jacobs an enslaved black woman, two very different walks of existence. Franklin lived a life that was guided by his own choosing and ever changing scenery, going wherever the wind blew him. On the contrary, Jacobs was confined most of her life to one place, her direction decided by the whims of those around her.
Jacobs’ …show more content…
As an enslaved black woman, the issues of class and race alter her experience of gender, the same as gender changes the life experiences of class and race. Black women in Jacobs’ time were overly 00000hypersexualized and as a consequence were defeminized and dehumanized by the standard women were upheld to in her time. Women in Jacobs time were regarded as pious, virtuous, and submissive and only when these things were met would they to be considered feminine and worthy of respect.["Gender Roles in Colonial America." Gender and Sexuality in Colonial America. Accessed November 23, 2017. http://public.gettysburg.edu/~tshannon/341/sites/Gender%20and%20Sexuality/Gender%20Roles.htm.] Slavery, as Jacobs recounts it, violates all of these principles. Female slaves were denied Christian education, violently torn and disjointed from their families, and turned into sexual objects. All of these aspects came as a shock to her readers, most of whom were free white women.[ ] To them, the dehumanization wasn’t the worst part, it was the defeminization that left them all riled up. White women in Harriet’s time were privileged but held no position, positioned but with as little power as