Incidents in the Life of Slave Girl Term Paper

I want to tell you my opinion about the book “Incidents in the Life of Slave Girl” by Harriet Jacobs. On my opinion many themes from this book disturbed people for a long time, especially topic of slavery can’t leave my heart cold and many emotions were caused by this book. I can’t say that it was easy to read and be calm during the reading. Sometimes I become angry and every minute and every second I thought that it is very wrongly that slavery had a place in many countries and big amount of people suffered from this situation. I want to talk about this book from the position of slave powerless within the Southern system of slavery and show that every person should be free and that’s why antislavery actions were so popular all over the country.

Saying about the author of the book I want to mention that Harriet Jacobs was born as a slave girl in North Carolina.  Her owner taught Harriet to read and write. After her death Jacobs was sold to a white owner which tried by force to compel her to enter with him into connection. She resisted to her owner and found other white lover from which had two children. “Seems less disgraceful to refuse from the own “I”, then to submit violence”, – she wrote frankly. Jacobs hurried from the proprietor and floated a talk that she left country and went to the North.

In horror from the one idea that her last owner can catch her, punish and again turn in slavery, she conducted almost seven years in town of the owner, sitting locked up in a tiny room on her grandmother’s house. On the favorite children Harriet could look only through holes which were drilled in the floor. Finally, she was able to leave to the North and settled in Rochstere, the state of New York. Here Frederic Douglas published antislavery newspaper “North star”, and not far away convention of women, struggled for their rights passed recently.

There Jacobs made friends with Amy Post, a feminist and abolitionist, which convinced her to write a story about the life, her own life. In such a way appeared the book “Incidents in the Life of Slave Girl” which went out to the world under a pseudonym “Linda Brent” in 1861.

You can see that in paragraph above I tried to describe the book appearance rather detailed, because it is a narrative story and the life situations of an author’s life was reflected in her book. If to be short I can to say that the book frankly described and reprobated sexual exploitation of black-skinned slave girls. But it only a little part of questions which were raised in the book and which were disturbed my heart.

I want to say that this book really expressed me and after its reading I want to know how this book influenced on other people. I begin to looking for different opinions and understand that question of slavery can’t leave people’s hearts cold and during book reading many people like I were suffering together with a main character and were afraid for the slavery girl life.

Southern system was very strict for the slavers and this book show us the all true about slavery. And as I understand even people, who live in South didn’t know all true before they read this book. For the acknowledgement of my work I have words by a person, who also read this book. “Maybe it’s because I’m a Southerner that I find this book so interesting, I don’t know. I only know that reading this book as made me look at my beloved South, of which I am so proud, in a much less prideful light. I was raised to believe that slavery was wrong, and yet”¦ I was also raised on that “Gone with the Wind” image of the south where faithful black slaves were treated like family and the Yankees were the bad guys, and even though I saw the “Gone with the Wind” antithesis “Roots” as a kid, that one for some reason never really sank in.

Harriet has made me think. She’s made me realize just how horrible the institution of slavery was. Reading about her life and the daily lives of other slave men and women, reading about what she personally endured to be free, her seven year wait for escape in a crawlspace so small and short she couldn’t even stand up, has forever changed my opinion of the antebellum South, “Gone with the Wind” is really, truly”¦ gone.

Reading this book was an act of homage. Homage to a brave woman, who 150 years after the publication of her book is still making us think.” ”“ I think that this woman’s opinion is very right and I think in this way too.

Do you agree that this book is important to the question of slavery best understanding? I think the answer can be only yes. “Slavery is terrible for men, but it is far more terrible for women,” – wrote Harriet Jacobs in her story. It is harder even for independent woman to live among the world’s cruelty and it is nothing to say about slaves. Every slave dreamed to be free, but not every of them found a possibility and internal power to run away and be free. I’m really proud for this woman and think that her narrative story is important and can greatly influence on people’s minds and world perception.