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.

The ability for an individual to withstand the crushing hand of slavery was nothing short of miraculous; to expect a slave family to remain together and unite despite distance, death, and sale is to expect the impossible. Through slave narratives and fictionalized accounts of life during and after slavery, as well as research based on real black families, the outstanding pressures on African American families are shown, and the visible effects of reducing humans to chattel give rise to debate on post-slavery black families. The slave narrative, made famous by African American writers like Frederick Douglass and Solomon Northup, is one such account of life for blacks during slavery that demonstrates the fragility of slave family life. The slave

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 unidentified mother in the poem may be suggestive of the African American women motivating their sons to fight for prosperity. This poem is compose in the shape of a considerable monologue in black dialect.  The idiomatic style of the tongue is cited in the context of the bravery, tolerance and sense of duty of the African American race. The tongue also gives a charged conversational component to the poem. The subject of the poem is persistence and determination.

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

       This essay examines Cora from The Last of the Mohicans, Frederick Douglass, and Harriet Ann Jacobs.     The American Renaissance marks a period of social injustice and the fight of the minority to bring about social change. Women and African-Americans (who were freed or escaped from slavery) begin to gain a voice through literacy, and use that voice to start the movement to abolish slavery and gain women rights. The development of literacy makes it impossible to ignore women and African-Americans because their writing provides a permanent record of the horrors of slavery and injustice of oppressing the minority groups. Furthermore, the gain in literacy by these groups makes

In Toni Morrison’s Beloved the power of motherhood is constantly pitted against the horrors of slavery. When Sethe escapes from Sweet Home she only makes it to Ohio through the determination to see her children and deliver Denver. Slavery doesn’t allow for motherhood. Slaves “were moved around like checkers” (Morrison 27), treated like objects to be controlled rather than given real care or dignity. Since it is so likely that a child will be ripped away from their mother, the concept of slavery prevents mothers from forming