Professor Hancock
Hist 1301 402
Nov 15, 2017
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Incidents in the life of a slave Girl, written by Harriet Jacobs under the pseudonym of Linda Brent is one of the few female slave narrative that is widely known for expressing the powerful and unflinching abuses of the white slave owners in the South during the nineteen century. In her story Jacobs appeals to her audience as a strong woman and loving mother by detailing her misfortunes and maltreat as a Negro slave in North Carolina and her subsequent escape. Conclusively her story is known as a triumph and a great testament of her forceful spirit.
Harriet Jacobs was born in Edenton, NC, in the year of 1813. Until the death of her mother Jacobs …show more content…
She endured the cruel treatments of the oppressed South to finally someday escape to the northern states and make a life on her own as a free independent woman alongside with her two children. She was a wise and intelligent person who stood up for herself and strove to be treated with equality even when the color of her skin forbade it. This book is an excellent guide to a better understanding of slavery in the former confederate states of the United States of America. This is why the instructor chose this piece of literature. She wanted her students to have a more throughout knowledge into what slavery looked like in the antebellum period. She wished for us to have a clearer image of the cruel living conditions of a female Negro slave at this time.
The author of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, died in Washington, D.C. on March 7, 1897. Later in her life she worked as a reformer and an abolitionist activist. Harriet Jacobs was the very first woman to write her own fugitive slave narrative in the United States. Presently Jacob’s autobiography remains as a unique piece of work in the history of American women’s literature as well as the African American women’s literature.
Work Cited
Andrews, William L. “Harriet A. Jacobs (Harriet Ann), 1813-1897.” Harriet A. Jacobs (Harriet Ann), 1813-1897, docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/jacobs/bio.html.
Jacobs, Harriet. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. 3rd ed. Stilwell, KS: Digiread.com, 2005. 121.