Life Of A Slave Girl

Harriet Jacobs’ recounting of her life through Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl has not only exposed the great pains she suffered through during her time in slavery but has exposed deep rooted ideologies of black women in American society. Although the actions perpetuating these ideologies have since been abolished, the ideals themselves have been retained through multiple generations of teaching. Jacobs’ story has successfully exposed where the ideologies may have come from through her explanations of sexual corruption, mental manipulations, and power dynamics. Jacob’s made it clear that these struggles were not unique to her but were dealt with by all black women during slavery and in the ‘free world’. These struggles have been most notably re exposed through the Women’s Liberation movement which actively excluded black women. It is clear that although black women do not have to deal with the harsh tribulations of slavery, they still must deal with a society that was built on it and holds on to many of its archaic beliefs. One of the most prominent recurring aspects of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is …show more content…
When she is fourteen or fifteen, her owner...begins to bribe her with presents. If these fail...she is whipped or starved into submission to their will” (44). From a young age these black women are taught that all they are good for is pleasing their master or his sons and that to retain any sense of ‘freedom’ they must suffer and accept in silence. The Jim Crow Museum at Ferris State university backs this claim by stating, “ The slavery-era Jezebel, it was claimed, desired sexual relations with white men; therefore, white men did not have to rape black women” (Pilgrim 2002). This thought, that many people followed, placed the blame on the black women that were facing these problems rather than the people committing the