Bufalino
HIST 308
March 7, 2018
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Slavery gripped the United States by the throat throughout the 1800s. Although there were radical differences in the North and South the whole country fell guilty to the slave trade, resulting in the mistreatment of a countless number of slaves. Harriet Jacobs uses the pseudonym Linda Brent in her narrative, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Jacobs shares her experience of slavery to enlighten her audience, primarily white women in the North. Jacob’s narrative, directed at Northern women, argues that women in slavery face unfair disadvantages that make it impossible for them to live up to the widely accepted ideals of virtue and womanhood.
Jacobs directs her narrative to white women in the North in hopes she can exemplify the humanity of the slaves and in return receive the women’s empathy. Jacobs writes, “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” (26). Because of the strong male dominance in the slave trade Jacobs expands on the sexual assault, lust and target on female virtue in hopes the women can relate. Women in the North held a high regard for moral influence on the community, and encouraged a domestic lifestyle (HIST 308 …show more content…
However, slaves didn’t have the opportunity to stay home and educate or raise their own families. When they had children they were put back to work and those children were born into slavery. Welter also points out virtue includes beauty, but Jacobs says if you are beautiful you become the object of lust for your slave owner and their sons, which leads to the cycle of bribery, denial and