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Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl: Slavery Exploitation
Slavery has becomed one of the first forms of explotations during many years. Slavery is when an slaved person becomes the property of an slave owner. During many years, many African Americans were brought to America, where they were sold to Americans in exchange for work in tobacco and cotton plantations. The book Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, describes the struggle for freedom by female slaves, all the issues they had to encounter, and the abuse they received. The author of the book Harriet Jacobs is the narrator of the book and describes her life as a slave. Jacobs uses the name Linda to narrate the story to. The book Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, has become a unique autobiography because Harriet Jacobs includes details that no other slave autobiographies include. One important issue that is addressed in the book is sexual exploitation of females and how mothers were separated from their children.
In the book, Linda was born into slavery, lived with both her mother and father. Her father was a carpenter and worked for his mistress. When Linda was six years old, her mother died and was sent to live with her father’s mistress which teaches her how to read and write. Years later, the mistress dies and she is sent to Dr. Flint which is cruel with her. He begins pressuring linda to have sexual relationships with her. After being pressured and threatened, Linda tries to find a way out of it and begins to have an affair with a white neighbor. Furthermore, slavery was much more worse for women because of all the things they had to go through. In a part of the reading, Jacobs says, “Slavery is terrible for men; but it is far more terrible for women. Superadded to the burden common to all, they have wrongs, and sufferings, and mortifications peculiarly their own.” (Jacobs 81) The quote demonstrates the pain Jacobs feels because her baby was born a female and she knows how hard it is to be an enslaved woman. Women who had children knew how bad it was going to be for their children. Whenever a slave had a baby, the baby automatically became a slave. It was very painful for women to see how their children were being sold and even see how their daughters were being abused by their owners. Men also suffered, however it was more physical abuses. It was mainly due to whippings. On the other hand, every woman suffered sexual harassment and on top of that many had to lose their babies. Several times in the book we can see how Jacobs mentions how women were seperated from their children and had to experience sexual assault by white men. In addition to this, they had to see their children experience the same as they did, especially girls.
Female slaves also were abused by their owners and were seen like objects. Accordlingling to Jacobs, “When he told me that I was made for his use, made to obey his command in every thing; that I was nothing but a slave, whose will must and should surrender to his, never before had my puny arm felt half so strong.” (Jacobs 18) This quote demonstrates how women were seen just as objects and seen less than men. They had no say in anything and always had to obey their owners. However, in this quote Linda realized that even though Dr Flint had legal authority over her that could not stop her from resisting him. At this moment, Linda gained strength and realized that she is not a sexual object for anyone. Back then, the bodies of women and girls were not their own and were seen as property of their owners. In addition to this, women had to tolerate sexual abuses and insults from their owners.
In the quote, “I do earnestly desire to arouse the women of the North to a realizing sense of the condition of two millions of women at the South, still in bondage, suffering what I suffered, and most of them far worse. ” (Jacobs 26) Jacobs is trying to get all the women wake up about all the terrible things they are doing to them. Throughout the book we can see how Harriet Jacobs is telling her story to relate to slave women who had similar experiences as well. Furthermore, she had to tell the story of female slaves to make people more aware of all the things they had to go through and their stories. She explained how slave owners were inhumane and explained how they were punished by the slave owners. However, sometimes female slaves had to do things they did not want to in order to find a way out of a situation. For instance, Linda had an affair with a white guy in order to get away Dr. Phil. She said, “For years, my master had done his utmost to pollute my mind with foul images, and to destroy the pure principles inculcated by my grandmother, and the good mistress of my childhood. The influences of slavery had had the same effect on me that they had on other young girls; they had made me prematurely knowing, concerning the evil ways of the world. I knew what I did, and I did it with deliberate calculation.” (Jacobs 57) In other ways, she is saying that women are obligated to lose their innocence as they grow up a slave because of all the abuses they have to go through.
The book Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, narrates the story of a slave woman by telling the problems female slaves faced and nobody else talked about. She discussed sexual abuse from their owners, mother seeing their children being seperated from them and sold, and how they to endure more issues. Harriet Jacobs gives examples of her life to show all the things women experienced in compared with me. She also tried to open the eyes of women, to stand up for themselves and stop being seen as objects, rather than another human being.
