Analysis Of Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl By Harriet Ann Jacobs

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is a slave narrative written by Harriet Ann Jacobs in the time period of the 19th century in America. Jacobs uses a pseudonym to portray her first-hand accounts of the life of a slave to show people of the world the unglorified reality of slavery as a character in her novel. The main protagonist, Linda Brent, is a girl who is born into slavery and is faced with countless struggles in her formidable life. However, in Linda’s younger years, she is living a reasonable life with her mother and father until her mother dies when Linda is six years old. Linda is then sent to live with her mother’s mistress who teaches Linda to read, but a few years later, the mistress dies as well and Linda is then sent to live with neglectful and awful relatives of the mistress and Linda’s reasonable life begins to change for the worse. …show more content…
She says, “I do earnestly desire to arouse the women of the North to a realizing sense of the condition of two millions of women at the South, still in bondage, suffering what I suffered, and most of them far worse” (Jacobs 6). Jacobs’ describes that even though she is treated awfully, she wants to inform readers that some women, unfortunately, have it worse off and don’t get as lucky as Linda does. Courtney Marshall writes, “Jacobs hopes that by appealing to her readers as a mother they will find further commonalities” (Marshall). Due to Janie being a slave mother, she hopes to strike a chord with other mothers of the world who read her story and to bring her reality by comparing her situation with other mothers at