Harriet Jacobs Commentary

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Throughout Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, she consistently uses certain literary devices to encapsulate the struggles of slaves in order to create a strong anti-slavery argument. Harriet Jacobs takes on the voice of Linda, a slave girl who was exposed to the viciousness of man’s nature, and describes her own experiences as Linda’s. In this passage, Linda had just given birth to her first child -- a son she would later call Benjamin. She had gotten pregnant by her white friend Mr. Sands so that she could fend off her master’s advances. This passage occurs near the end of the sixth chapter, called “The New Tie to Life”. Linda is grappling with the idea that her son belongs to slavery and not to her while trying to understand her affection for her son. Through specific imagery, an awareness of her audience, and juxtaposing locution, Jacobs supports an abolitionist’s argument by outlining the contradictions slave mothers must struggle within the south.
Harriet Jacobs’ usage of metaphors and specific
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Jacobs uses powerful phrases like “I wished that he might die in infancy” which later clash with words of love like “my darling”. This displays the hypocrisy of slavery as it relates to a mother’s rights and love of her child while differing with the laws that state the child does not belong to the mother. This juxtaposition also reveals how slave mothers would weigh death and slavery. At the end of this passage, Jacobs writes, “Death is better than slavery”. The comparison of death and slavery speaks to the abolitionist’s argument, outlining the struggles that slave women must deal with as well as the hypocrisy in the laws that support the institution of slavery. Her adverse diction and hypocritical phrasing address the flaws in the pro-slavery argument and recapitulates the endeavors a slave woman must

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