Incidents in the life of a slave girl
Jacobs claimed that “slavery is a curse to the white as well as the black” population. According to Jacob’s thoughts, slavery caused cruelty in the families of both the blacks and the whites, and immensely impacted how the people related to, and treated each other. For instance, Jacob claimed that slavery, “makes the white fathers cruel…contaminate the daughter, Sons violent and makes the wives wretched” (Jacobs, pg. 46). In his claim, Jacob means that the fathers of the families owning slaves become cruel as they force the slaves to submit to them. As a result, their sons well understand the strain of securing slaves and know that they cannot inherit them from their fathers. They are also copying the cruel and barbaric behavior from their fathers, and thus become violent.
The daughters exposed and brought up in an environment so contaminated with cruelty and violence, deem the evil slavery practices as a norm, and groomed with high expectations of making good wives. Finally, the wives would become wretched by harboring feelings of jealousy, hatred, and anger when they helplessly sink to accepting their husbands’ promiscuity with the inferior slave women. Such actions by their husbands violate the sanctity of their marriage vows and end them feeling inadequate for their husbands. Jacobs claims that “…for the blacks it is unfathomable” (Jacobs. 46.) in an attempt to describe the anguish and humiliation. In slavery, people suffer a lot, for instance, being subjects of torture and cruel suffering.
Harriet and her companion, after seeing the sunrise over the northern land, they suppose themselves to be free. Jacobs means that, even though they have successfully fled from their slavery, they are not free, for they must maintain a low profile in all they do. The two are afraid that Dr. Flint would insist on his endeavors to pursue them. The insecurity Jacobs and her companion have related to her previous experience, when she hid for seven years and was informed of her former boss “Excursions to New York activities, “The insecurity feeling haunted her…the city was flocked with southerners” (Jacobs, pg. 143). Constant insecurity keeps haunting her mind, and that’s the reason she says that she is supposedly free since she has not yet attained her full freedom.
Jacobs claimed that “slavery is terrible for men but far terrible for women.” In her statement, Jacobs meant that men often got into brunt castigations and undeserved brutal treatments from their masters. However, by this, she did not mean that women faced less severe consequences of slavery or were in any way better placed than men. Actually, by her statement that women had “wrongs, sufferings, and mortifications peculiar to their own” (Jacobs. Pg. 66), denotes that slave women were harshly treated. First, slave women were often victims of rape by their masters. Since the law required that all the slaves must obey their masters, women had no chance to decline the sexual advances from their masters and could not report the matter to any authority. Slave women, also considered to be the master’s possessions, and thus he dealt with his property as he wished. Such actions resulted in the slave woman bearing an illegitimate child for their master, yet she would take the responsibility of caring for the child alone. Additionally, a slave woman had to live with the fear of her children being sold away. For instance, Jacob herself is in constant fear that Dr. Flint would sell away her children. A certain slave mother stated that “They’ve got all my children…God make my time short!.” (Jacobs. Pg. 61). Therefore, apart from the oppression experienced by all the slaves, slave women had to deal with a lot more.
Reference
Jacobs, H. A., & Jacobs, J. S. (2009). Incidents in the life of a slave girl: Written by herself (Vol. 119). Harvard University Press.