Frances E. W. Harper's The Slave Mother

In the 1800’s, slaves and slave-holders had relationships that ranged anywhere from the highest at having the closest friend to the lowest at being master and pet. No matter the relationship all of these slaves held by people during this time all deserved their chance at freedom just like any slave-holder that owned them. Harriet Jacobs, writer of the autobiography Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, experiences slavery in a way that hundreds of others could have experienced. Although others may have seen and felt situations like that of Jacobs , the other slaves were not given the chance to express their emotions and skills through the possible writings, existing talents, or freedom.

The cruelest separation is that of a mother from her child. Not only does it destroy the emotional stability of the child, but it removes the God-given purpose of the mother. Unfortunately, this was a common practice used by slave owners in the United States. Several authors in the American Literary tradition have written about this subject in an attempt to prevent the horrific practice. Some such authors are, Harriet Beacher Stowe, Harriet Jacobs, and Frederick Douglass. In their writings, Stowe, Jacobs, and Douglass endeavor to portray the mental and emotional wounds created by separating a mother and child in order to combat the dispassionate destruction of human lives. While each author discusses this topic of mother-child separation, they argue for the removal of the practice in different ways. Influenced by their race, gender, and chosen genre, each author tackles this broad subject through a limited focus on the damages of it. In order to show the successes of their separate approaches, each text must be discussed independently.

“Incidents in the Life of a Slave” by Harriet Jacobs is an autobiographical narrative. It gives us a look inside in how the lives of slave women were, the troubles they faced and how they met them, especially the sexual abuses they suffered by their masters. She tells us how her master had the “right” to impregnate the slave and then that child would have to follow in its mother’s life as a slave. It took a lot of courage to stand

The Slave Mother was a poem written by a prominent African American poet and abolitionist, Frances E.W. Harper. The poem protests the institution of slavery and is attempting to promote social change in an era where slavery was viewed as acceptable. It illustrates the cruelty and sorrow that comes with slavery and separating a child from their mother. Harper uses vivid imagery and tone to evoke a strong emotional reaction in the reader, allowing them to understand the pain slavery brings and depict the era in which it was written.

According to the dictionary, the word “Mother” is defined as a woman in relation to a child whom she has given birth to showing maternal tenderness or affection. The definition clearly defines a stage in woman's life that should be a pleasant and happy experience, but that's not the case for everybody. The dehumanizing acts of slavery are eminent in many novels, such as Incidents in the Life of Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs and Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe. In these novels, slave women were not suppose to enjoy the role of mother. It was either physically taken away or their mother instincts were brutally effected. Slave mothers had to face many consequences and sacrifices for their life and the life of their loved ones.

One of the greatest examples of Harper’s works is “The Slave Mother.” The poem gives the reader a first hand experience of the

The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and The Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl are both nineteenth-century narratives about Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs’s experiences born into slavery and as escaped slaves. The concept of gender makes each narrative have distinct perspectives’ of their version of what they endure during slavery and how it shapes their freedom. Even though both narratives have many similarities of educating the complexity of being a vulnerable slave, Harriet Jacobs’ narrative provides more reason that slavery is far worse for women than it is for men.

(Jacobs 282). Until she was six, she had both a father and a mother, which was an uncommon situation among slave families, as well as an extended network of blood relatives, who were so “intelligent” and “faithful” to their masters, as Jacobs describes them, that they were not mistreated (Jacobs 281). Even after the sudden death of her mother and her new life as a house slave, Jacobs finds that her working life is not entirely disagreeable, in stark contrast to Douglass’ harsh working days and frequent beatings. Jacobs, who worked as a servant to the mistress of the house, grew close to her masters, describing the mistress as “like a mother” to her after the woman’s sudden death (Jacobs 283). The pointed contrast between Douglass’ and Jacobs’ slave narratives shows an obvious trend in the early familial situations of slaves; rather than the close-knit kin network that Jacobs describes, the more commonplace arrangement for a slave child was that of an absent father and a mother who was forced to separate from her child shortly after birth.

Slavery, in my eyes, is an institution that has always been ridiculed on behalf of the physical demands of the practice, but few know the extreme mental hardships that all slaves faced. In Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs writes autobiographically about her families ' and her personal struggles as a maturing "mullatto" child in the South. Throughout this engulfing memoir of Harriet Jacobs life, this brave woman tells of many trying times to keep dignity, family, and religion above all else.

Linda Brent shares the recount of her life in slavery in first person. She begins her autobiography with this forward statement, “Reader, be assured this narrative is no fiction… I have not exaggerated the wrongs inflicted by Slavery; on the contrary, my descriptions fall far short of the facts.” Brent directly speaks to her readers telling them to “be assured” by doing this she asserts herself as a real and confident narrator. Although Brent is taking control of her readers, she also creates an intimate bond by directly addressing them. By creating a realistic narrator, she lowers the likelihood of the readers to instinctively interpret her story as implausible or debauched. It is well known that the white women of the 1800’s were often very

It is the most dehumanizing and intrusive aspect of every human’s life that it touches. Slavery is the very institution that affects the social, economic, and cultural aspects of every person’s life. Although many people viewed slavery as a necessity, others have strong critiques of the institution. We are able to gain knowledge of these very critiques by the first-hand accounts of Mary Prince in the narrative The History of Mary Prince and From the Darkness Cometh the Light by Lucy Delaney. In the narratives, Prince and Delany communicate to the reader a plethora of critiques to slavery. The most powerful critiques that Prince and Delaney agree upon are the destruction of family, the condition of the slaves, and the moral that it creates

The use of symbolism and imagery is beautifully orchestrated in a magnificent dance of emotion that is resonated throughout the poem. The two main ideas that are keen to resurface are that of personal growth and freedom. Furthermore, at first glimpse this can be seen as a simple poem about a women’s struggle with her counterpart. However, this meaning can be interpreted more profoundly than just the causality of a bad relationship.

Shielded from the atrocities of slavery during her childhood, Jacobs depicts family life among slaves as one that remains intact in a “comfortable home” (29) through the example of her own family. Each member held limited rights along with the ability to work and the privilege to use their earnings as they pleased. It is not until the death of her mistress where she finally begins to feel the effects of slavery in the sudden separation of her family who are “all distributed among her [mistress’s] relatives” (Jacobs 33). The separation of family is one of the most integral subjects of her narrative since “motherhood [plays a great role] in her life” (Wolfe 518). Jacobs appeals to the emotions of her female audiences by contrasting a slave mother’s agonies in her separation from her children with the “happy free women” (40) whose children remain with her since “no hand” (40) has the right to take them away. The separation of families in Douglass’s narrative does call for some pity but the event is not as tragic in comparison to

Frederick Douglass, having lived through the hardships of slavery for a large portion of his life, gives many examples of the damage it did to himself and fellow slaves. He explains how slavery broke up families for the purpose of stripping slaves of their basic human rights. “I never saw my mother, to know her as such, more than four or five times in my life; and each of these times was very short in duration, and at night” (Douglass 2). He was never granted the opportunity to become close with his mother, denying him of the normal love and attention a

Slavery has always been the most dreadful phenomena of our world. Slavery, by itself looks so unusual and provokes mixed feelings from the heart of each person. In other words, slavery change a human being into a “thing” or even some type of consumer item. However, a fugitive slave, Frederick Douglass writes the novel called “The Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass” to reveal how the slavery system works. Douglass’ narrative resembles not so much an autobiography as a memoir. If we read this novel closely, women often appear not in a primary plot, but in a short passage and as a vivid images; specifically, an image of abused bodies. Douglass associates women with suffering. Also, he gives an understanding