Harriet Jacobs Life Of A Slave Girl Analysis

The institution of slavery in eighteenth and nineteenth century America produced a legacy which many historians continue to study, research, and analyse. Many experts concur that female slaves experienced more exploitation than their male counterparts. Two documents that prove female slaves were sexually exposed and experienced a higher level of brutality are; Harriet Jacobs’, Life of a Slave Girl and Lavinia Bell’s interview for a 1861 Canadian newspaper. Both these documents give the reader a deeper understanding of how female slaves truly suffered under their slave owner’s rule. Harriet Jacobs’ Life of a Slave Girl was written in 1861, the peak of slavery in America. Jacobs resided “in a town not so large that the inhabitants were ignorant …show more content…
Bell was born in Washington D.C. Unfortunately, Bell’s life took a dramatic turn for the worse when she was abducted as an infant and brought to Texas, where she was kept a slave. Up until the age of 13, Bell’s slave owner’s mistress encouraged her to be a “show girl”. To dance and sing, making an embarrassment of herself, by impersonating chickens, hens, and other birds. However, this drew in large crowds. From the time she turned 14, life as she knew it was not going to be the same. She was sent to work in the cotton fields, naked and exposed to the sun. This inhumane treatment and excessive exposure to the sun left Bell burnt extremely and covered in whiplashes from her slave owner. After Bell’s first attempt to escape, this was the turning point in which Bell would never forget. Her slave owner had both her ears slit, and then branded her multiple times. After multiple attempts at escape and multiple extreme punishments and forms of torture from her previous owner, Bell finally makes the ultimate escape to New York, where she was kept under treatment by Dr. Reddy, who helped heal her everlasting symptoms from the torture she endured. Although Harriet Jacobs and Lavinia Bell were both female slaves during the peak of slavery, Bell was treated much more harshly than Jacobs. Bell’s slave experience contains a large number of acts done to her by her slave owner. Bell’s experiences include but are not limited to; beatings, whippings, branding of her skin, and tortured in such ways that her body has since been distorted from the incidents. Many of these inhumane acts were enforced upon Bell after numerous attempts to escape her master’s brutal