The Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl

During the antebellum South, many Africans, who were forced migrants brought to America, were there to work for white-owners of tobacco and cotton plantations, manual labor as America expanded west, and as supplemental support of their owner’s families. Harriet Jacobs’s slave narrative supports the definition of slavery (in the South), discrimination (in the North), sexual gender as being influential to a slave’s role, the significant role of family support, and how the gender differences viewed and responded to life circumstances.

Although he was lucky enough to have a nice slave owner, he knew that many other slaves were not getting treated right from reading and learning from books he read. As Douglass learned more information about slaves and how slave owners treated the slaves, he began feeling sorrowful for all the slaves who were getting treated badly and started feeling that learning to read had been more of a curse than a blessing as said in this quote, “As I writhed under it, I would at times feel that learning how to read had been a curse rather than a blessing.” (Douglass,

Pathos is evident as he uses very strong feeling words to put the reader in his shoes. Douglass explained how he “... often found myself regretting my own existence and wishing myself dead... I should have killed myself, or done something for which I should have been killed.” (Douglass U2 10). Douglass explains how he felt very depressed and had suicidal thoughts when he was a slave.

He spoke of his emotions later in the essay with “ I often found myself of regretting my own existence, and wishing myself dead;” Douglass values the ability to read and write with a full understanding, even though his slave owners didn’t allow him to do so. He believed that he would forever remain a slave, unlike the white children. “ I wished I could be as free as they would be when they got to be men.”

During the final years of legal slave ownership in the United States, the slave narrative became a popular way for literate enslaved people to express their anti-slavery stance through their own testimony. Two of the most influential writers on the slave narrative topic were the autobiographical authors Fredrick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs. Since Douglas and Jacobs were both born in a similar time period, there are many similarities found in their works. Douglass’s Narrative of the life of Fredrick Douglass, an American Slave is closely comparable to Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl when analyzing how they represented their enslavement in their autobiographies. The two authors have similar ideas when portraying their struggles with forced ignorance. Their writing also contains parallels with the corrupting power of slavery for the slave owners, as well as the parallels in pointing out the hypocrisies of using the bible to defend slavery. These similarities can be explained in part due to Douglass and Jacobs following the same basic slave narrative outline to maintain the shared goal of abolishing slavery in the United States.

Primarily Douglass uses in his book contrasts, theological beliefs, and reiteration of certain words or phrases to bring home his main points. Douglass tries to show help the readers understand the terrible feelings of dread that slaves go through everyday of their lives and how much it pains them to stay enslaved. To slaves often death is preferable to continuing to be taken advantage of by slaveowners. Even after they are free, former slaves still will not be able to put down the trauma that came along with their

‘The Narrative Life of Frederick Douglass’ is an autobiography of Frederick Douglass, the slave who escaped and became one of renowned social reformers of his time. The book is a collection of actual experiences of the author during his time in slavery and experiences of fellow slaves. He describes brilliantly the oppressive conditions into which he was born, lived, as well as his struggles and triumphs. The author meant to make the reader comprehend life of the African Americans in slavery before the ending of slavery. He also meant to highlight the misuse of religion and to use it to control other people whom they deem inferior.

Born in 1818, the son of a Maryland slave woman and an unknown white father, he was separated from his mother almost immediately after his birth and remembered seeing her only four or five times before her death. Cared for by his maternal grandmother, an enslaved midwife, he suffered a cruel emotional blow when, at the age of six, he was taken from his home to work on one of the largest plantations on Maryland’s eastern shore. There, Douglass suffered chronic hunger and witnessed many of the cruelties that he later recorded in his autobiographies. He saw an aunt receive forty lashes and a cousin bleeding from her shoulders and neck after a flogging by a drunken

Throughout Harriet Jacobs biography of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, she brings up three arguments to support her views on anti-slavery: the moral conflict between slavery and Christianity, pain and suffering (physical and emotional) of being in slavery, and color prejudice. Throughout Jacobs biography, she also uses key themes such as power struggles and feministic views to portray slavery to persuade to the women in the north that slavery is indeed corrupt.

Douglass lived in the slave times. It was illegal to a slave to read and write. Any slave caught reading or writing would be severely punished or even killed. Slave owners felt that if they learn they will soon rebel and start to fight back. Douglass even grew up not even knowing his own age. His master’s wife is what

In "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl", Harriet Jacobs writes, "Slavery is terrible for men; but it is far more terrible for women" (64). Jacobs' work presents the evils of slavery as being worse in a woman's case due to the tenets of gender identity. Jacobs elucidates the disparity between societal dictates of what the proper roles were for Nineteenth century women and the manner that slavery prevented a woman from fulfilling these roles. The book illustrates the double standard of for white women versus black women. Harriet Jacobs serves as an example of the female slave's desire to maintain the prescribed virtues but how her circumstances often prevented her from practicing.

Frederick Douglass’ biography revolves around the idea of freedom. After seeing a traumatizing incident as a child, Douglass slowly begins to realize that he is not a free human being, but is a slave owned by other people. He is surrounded by a society that devalues him and people like him, and systematically worked to keep them ignorant and submissive. In this society, it is made clear that no slave is special, and everyone is replaceable. Rather than accept this, Douglass struggles to maintain what little autonomy he was allowed to have. When his one of his masters, Thomas Auld, bans his mistress, Sophia, from teaching Douglass how to read, Douglass learned from the young boys on the street. His biography shows him transforming from an ignorant child into his older, more learned self.

She emphasizes that the life of a slave woman is incomparable to the life of a slave man, in the sense that a woman’s sufferings are not only physical but also extremely mental and emotional. Whether or not a slave woman is beaten, starved to death, or made to work in unbearable circumstances on the fields, she suffers from and endures horrible mental torments. Unlike slave men, these women have to deal with sexual harassment from white men, most often their slave owners, as well as the loss of their children in some cases. Men often dwell on their sufferings of bodily pain and physical endurance as slaves, where as women not only deal with that but also the mental and emotional aspect of it. Men claim that their manhood and masculinity are stripped from them, but women deal with their loss of dignity and morality. Females deal with the emotional agony as mothers who lose their children or have to watch them get beaten, as well as being sexually victimized by white men who may or may not be the father of their children. For these women, their experiences seem unimaginable and are just as difficult as any physical punishment, if not more so.

Frederick Douglass was born in Maryland in 1818 as a slave to a maritime captain, Captain Anthony. After decades of enslavement, Frederick Douglass escaped to the North and became one of the prominent members and drivers of the abolitionist movement. In an effort to provide an eye-opening account of the harsh treatment of slaves, Douglass wrote Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. In his autobiography, Frederick Douglass detailed his life beginning from his meager early years through his escape to the North. In writing his autobiography, Douglass utilized a variety of techniques including the use of the three rhetorical strategies: Ethos, Pathos and Logos to create a powerful and influential argument against the institution of

Throughout Douglass’ narrative of his life, he is able to have this image that one day he will no longer be controlled by a master and no longer be a slave and is something Linda in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, cannot ever see because her family is restricting her from this idea. Douglass has no parents or