Essay about Slave Girl Incidents
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is a compelling novel written by Harriet Ann Jacobs, a former slave. Born as a slave in Edenton, North Carolina in 1813, the only life Harriet knew was that of a slave. Growing up in the south as a young African American girl caused Harriet a life of hardships that must be faced to find freedom. The time of 1836 to 1860 was often nicknamed the antebellum period. During the Antebellum period is was very much legal to hold African Americans as slaves to endlessly do work for their master with no pay.Slaves were treated like property, often only eating a piece of bread for the entire week and being whipped if they were to eat any more. Most of the young slave girls at the young age of 14 or 15 were sexually assaulted by their master, and many of them giving birth to more slaves. Hundreds of slaves would risk their lives and flee to the northern states in order to escape the morsel of a life they were actually given. The northern states during this time were not holders of slaves. In fact, numerous groups were formed of people called “abolitionists’. Abolitionists were citizens who were anti-slavery.
They would help refugees from the north, and they fought for freedom everywhere in America. When Harriet escaped to the north, an abolitionist essentially helped her find her brother John S. Jacobs. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girls shares the sad but true struggles a slave girl encountered on her journey to become a free woman. As Harriet Jacobs wrote her novel, she showed main-stream audiences, to look into her complicated life as a slave girl. She wrote this book so people everywhere can try to comprehend the inhuman way that any slave must have lived during the antebellum in southern states.
Harriet Jacobs wrote Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl to illustrate the corrupt, unjust, and crooked situations that slave girls encountered every day on the plantations. From a young age to adulthood, Harriet Jacobs shared her exploits with the audience chronologically from year to year. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl begins with the introduction of her family. Because Harriet did not want to be caught writing this novel, she made up fake names for her brother, herself, and other slaves and slaveholders in the book. Harriet went by ‘Linda’ in the book to conceal her real name.
Harriet had two parents, a grandmother, and a younger brother. Her father, Elijah, and mother, Delilah, both tried their hardest to prevent any knowledge that she could be a slave, so Harriet was happily unaware that she was a slave until the death of her mother. Harriet then moved in with her mother’s mistress, Margret Horniblow, who taught her how to read and write. Although she lived as a slave, her mistress promised her mother she would take good care of Harriet and her little brother.
However, her mistress soon...
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