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Harriet Jacobs Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl

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In Harriet Jacobs's slave narrative “Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl” and “frederick douglass life of a slave narrative”, the traditions,customs, and standards of people in the patriarchal south differ from person to person. Patriarchal south is a society controlled by men. For example, in harriet's book the life of a slave was controlled mainly by a master which is usually a dominant male in the household. Harriet Jacobs and Frederick Douglass both wrote books in a specific genre. The genre that both Douglass and Jacobs wrote in is classified as a Slave Narrative. According to William Andrews A Slave Narrative is “an account of the life, or a major portion of the life, of a fugitive or former slave, either written or orally related …show more content…

In the slave narrative Douglass gives many examples of cruelty and suffering like Mistreatment of people, power struggle, and absence of kindness. For example in chapter 8 paragraph 2 Douglas states “we were all ranked together at the evaluation. Men and women, old and young, married and single… I saw more clearly than ever the brutalizing effect of slavery upon both slave and slaveholder.” this example from the text expresses slaves were treated no better than the animal maybe even worse. Another time in the slave narrative Douglass says “Mr. Severe was rightly named: he was a cruel man. I have seen him whip a woman, causing the blood to run half an hour at the time” (chapter 2 paragraph 3) There are two types of masters and mistress douglass describes in his narrative most of the time he talked about the cruel master or mistress, these slaveholders were especially cruel whether they were trying to make a name for themselves or just enjoyed beating people down. In chapter 4 paragraph 5 Douglass express how little slaves are thought of in his slave narrative he writes “I say this,--that killing a slave, or any colored person, in Talbot county, Maryland, is not treated as a crime, either by the courts or the community” this means it was okay to commit crimes as long as it was towards a slave no one cared if a slave was killed it was just swept under the rug so to speak. Lastly Douglass states in chapter 6 paragraph 5 “I used to be in Mr. Hamilton's house nearly every day. Mrs. Hamilton used to sit in a large chair in the middle of the room, with a heavy cowskin always by her side, and scarce an hour passed during the day but was marked by the blood of one of these slaves” this is an example of a cruel mistress he says that the slave girl mary would be badly

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