Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

through the perspective of female slaves; for example, she wrote of how being pretty could be a slave girl's worst curse since just a jealous mistress is enough to make life miserable. The feminist tone that the book takes shows the tender and emotional side of slavery, how it ravages the innocence of young girls, and how it’s a poison to the perpetrators as well. Jacobs goes by the alias of Linda Brent in the book as she tells her story from when she was a naive little girl, not yet exposed to…

case is Linda and Mr. Sands from the slave narrative: Incidents of in the Life of a Slave Girl. Harriet Jacobs says that: "I knew nothing would enrage Dr. Flint so much as to know that I favored another; and it was something to triumph over my tyrant even in that small way" (Jacobs, 192). Linda (Harriet Jacobs) engaged in this sexual "relationship" with Mr. Sands as a way to express her liberty by "freely" choosing her sexual partner for the first time in her life. It was also a way to defeat…

Harriet Jacobs and Bronte present women or womanhood as an ideology which has to be questioned. However, since the two women lived in two different historical periods, the ways in which womanhood and sisterhood are brought forward in both texts differ from each other. Jane eyre is the protagonist of the novel and describes the women around her as either superficial and as a product of capitalism, or as those who demand understanding and a certain degree of pity. For instance, when she first…

adjectives used to describe the abuse and treatment that slaves endured. Men and women slaves did not have any rights or freedoms and were treated more like animals than people. They not only experienced physical abuse by means of punishment or torture, but also psychological abuse. Extreme measures were taken as forms of survival and many slaves lived under constant fear. While the anti-slavery movement became popular, testimonies from freed slaves were documented and shared to the public to…

both African American authors, narrated stories of their personal, yet compelling experiences as slaves in America. In the slave narratives, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and the Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, both authors recount the horrific experiences and the mutual yearn for freedom of the past they have now fled and showed how their experiences shaped who they become in their life after slavery. When most thinks of slavery, the first thing that comes to mind is…

literature witnessed the birth of a new genre by the name of the North American slave narrative. It has often been said that this genre was the byproduct of the pressure from white abolitionist to encourage former slaves to write a formulated narrative that would later be utilized as propaganda. This is important to note in respect to how writers often framed this notion of freedom that is commonly discussed among slave narratives, most notably done by Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs.…

One of the primary roles that a slave woman had was motherhood. After the child was old enough for labor, the slave mother was trained to labor in a domestic setting or work in the fields. Young enslaved women were expected to be maids, cleaners and some were employed as wet nurses and even breastfed the children of the slave master. There were more women then men working in the fields of the plantation especially at harvest time. Slave masters never considered slave woman as delicate human…

Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs: American Slave Narrators Being raised as slaves; both Harriet Jacobs and Frederick Douglass devoted their professional life for telling their true story based on their own experience. As a matter of fact, their works “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” (1861) and “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave” (1845) are considered the most important works in the genre of slave narrative or of enslavement. Thus, this paper will compare…

Establishing Identity Beyond Gender Roles: In “Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglass an American Slave” and “The Life Of A Slave Girl” Living under an oppressive system certainly creates a barrier between reaching a real identity rather than holding the values that encompass misconceived identities of gender. By applying the school of Psychoanalytical criticism and Feminist criticism to the narratives Incidents In “The Life Of A Slave Girl” by Harriet Jacobs and Frederick Douglass the…

In the narrative Incidents in the Life of a Save Girl the author Harriet Jacobs assumed the pseudonym Linda Brent, and wrote what has become one of the most powerful narratives of slavery from a female perspective. Jacobs was so determined to let the world know her dehumanizing experiences as a slave girl. In doing so, Jacobs’ female-oriented view limited her examination of slavery, because she was so fixated on herself as a slave girl that her narrative was more about her experience rather than…