Gender Criticism In The Loophole Of Retreat By Harriet Ann Jacobs

In the time of Slavery, Harriet Ann Jacobs expresses the life of a slave girl through a personal narrative. We know this because there are no insights of anyone else’s motivations, only Linda’s, the main character. Even though Jacobs is the main character of the story, she uses a retrospective narrator to play herself, and she looks back to her life to offer understanding and reflection. This allows Jacobs to foreshadow what will happen. Though this is a personal narrative about the author, Jacobs is writing/telling it as if she were telling someone else’s story, because in some sort of way, she is. Yes, most of the incidents described throughout the story did happen to Jacobs, but she turns her character, Linda, into an archetypal symbol of …show more content…
Owner? Yes owner. This was a time where people of color were considered property to the white man. “A man ought to have what belongs to him,” which was said when Linda’s owner was in search of her (Jacobs 834). This is an examination of the historical events and conditions of life as a slave. This entry of the story can also fall under gender criticism because of the reject of Linda’s social norms because of her sexual identity. The reason behind her hiding is that she has grown an irrational fear of master, who is also the father of her newborn. This is another example of gender criticism in that time …show more content…
During this time, Linda previous owner has died and left Linda to be owned by his wife, who gave off her rights to their daughter and new son-in-law, who, in this chapter, travel to New England in search of Linda. These actions fall under sociological criticism because of the political context. By law, if Mr. and Mrs. Dodge were to have found Linda, they would have been able to force her back into slavery because of the few rights that blacks