Harriet Jacobs Quotes

Relevance to Today

Relevance to Today

Reward Notice for Harriet Jacobs

Harriet Jacobs faced many problems in her 27 years as a slave. Harriet Jacobs’s narrative, The Incidents Life of a Slave Girl is still relevant in today’s society because there were major matters that took place in her novel that are still being faced today. Jacobs allowed her readers to get an insight of what really took place during her years as a slave, mother, and mistress. Rape, leaving her children, and self-doubt are just a few of the problems Jacobs was forced to deal with. 

Harriet Jacobs was a slave for Dr. Flint, like many slave owners he raped and tortured. In today’s society there is still rape going on and also human trafficking which is relevant to what Jacobs went through. Jacobs was bought as a slave and forced to work and obey to the sexual tendencies Dr. Flint forced upon her. Human trafficking is essentially exactly what Jacobs went through. Dr. Flint would rape Jacobs and women, as well as males, are raped every day. In the Narrative Jacobs tells her readers how she has finally understands that yes she is a slave but she can stand up for herself and because of that she takes a stand, although she may regret it in time, she does what she thinks is best.

Harriet Jacobs had 2 children and thought the best way to protect them was to leave them. Parents are unfortunately faced with this issue all of the time in today’s society. It can be seen that if they leave the situation than their children will be protected from the danger. When children are involved in today’s society, sometimes it is seen as easier to leave them because of the harm that could be faced from abusive spouses, families that disapprove, financial problems, and any other difficult situation. So when Jacobs left her children in hopes to protect them and return home to them again it is relevant because many parents do this today.

When Harriet Jacobs had an affair with another white male, Mr. Sands while she was being raped by Dr. Flint she was dealing with many internal issues. When she was going through these issues she saw herself as being impure. Many women are faced with having self-doubt and seeing themselves as lesser because of society. Society is giving women the inclination that they have to be a certain way just like Jacobs, which is why women deal greatly with internal issues.

      Harriet Jacobs and women in today’s society are strangely interactive. It is amazing, but yet also unfortunate that the troubles Harriet Jacobs went through are still taking place today. Society should take what Jacobs has said and went through and put it to use by trying to stop what happened to her. The fact that what has happened in the 1800’s is still going on today in 2013. Women are still be rapped, leaving their families, and having incredible self-doubt. Society should take what has happened in our past, like Harriet Jacobs, and work from it.

Significance

Significance

Portrait of Harriet Jacobs

     Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl is a significant autobiography not only because it is the first slave narrative written by a female, but because of the style in which it was written. She wrote her autobiography as a slave narrative with major features of the domestic novel and sentimental text. Many of the previously written slave narratives, by men, focused on a male character and his struggles and longing for freedom (Stover 137). This created a more individualized story, while Jacobs wrote more about her family and community.

     By focusing her story on the points of family and community, Jacobs was able to combine her slave narrative with a domestic novel. Writing with the domestic novel style usually involves a more emotional appeal to the audience by portraying the struggles of womanhood. She is not necessarily trying to invoke an emotional response from her audience towards herself, but the slave community as a whole. Jacobs knew who her audience was and knew how to directly appeal to them.

     This is expressed in the preface as Jacobs states, “I have not written my experiences in order to attract attention to myself… But I do earnestly desire to arouse the women of the North to… the condition of two millions of women, ” (281). She isn’t doing this so readers have pity for her, she is doing this for the purpose of enlightening white Northern women on what slavery really is. Jacobs is able to appeal  to this audience of Northern white women by pleading her case as a woman and mother, attempting to unite all women in a bid for abolition (Emsley 146).

     Jacobs wrote about her struggles for freedom using the name Linda Brent. Linda, before she finally runs away, begins to think about the effects that her actions may have on her children. Jacobs explains, “and if I failed, O what would become of me and my poor children? They would be made to suffer for my fault,” (296). In other slave narratives, this awareness of family ties and community is not present. By including this motherly concern Jacobs was able to further her connection with her audience, the white Northern women.

     Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl was an innovative type of slave narrative. It combined the basic aspects of a slave narrative with the writing style of a domestic novel to effectively appeal to Jacobs’ intended audience. Harriet Jacobs writes with this domestic novel style to generate common ground between her and her audience in an attempt to transmit her political message (Emsley 160). Jacobs was able to use her status as a woman and a mother to relate to her audience. By relating to her audience, she is able to more effectively inspire her audience.

Team Perceptions

Team Perceptions

     While doing extensive research on the group’s author Harriet Jacobs, we have come to many conclusions about her. While reading “Harriet Jacobs and the Sentimental Politics of Female Offspring,” the author Franny Nudelman goes into detail as to why Jacobs is writing to appeal to her audience for sympathy. Going into reading the work Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl, my group thought of Harriet Jacobs as a brave and intelligent person that was able to become one of the first American females to successfully write a slave narrative. Not in order to encourage her audience to feel sympathy for her, but to educate those who are ignorant or oblivious to the horrors of being a female slave.

     After looking over Nudelman’s observation of Jacobs work we still look at Jacobs as a brave trailblazer for sharing her experiences with slavery. However we agree that she comes out with a pathos approach to try to appeal to the audience’s emotional feelings. Nudelman makes clear her view on Jacobs appeal when she claims “that her choice was made with ‘deliberate calculation’ and cannot be understood let alone judged by the audience that knows nothing of the slave experience,” (939). That quote to me flips my thought that Jacobs’s main purpose in her narrative was to educate. She claims that we cannot know the pain she deals with because we were not enslaved and female ourselves.

     At first glance reading Harriet Jacobs’ work my group was turned off by her actions after running away from Dr. Flint with Mr. Sands. We were in agreement with the wise grandmother that Jacobs should demonstrate more self-worth instead of running off with Mr. Sands and engaging in sex out of wedlock. Now as I look back on that first glance I ask myself who am I to judge a girl like Jacobs who has endured rape, slavery, and having to go into hiding for 7 years. I have not lived in her shoes or gone through the trials that she has.

     Reading through Jocelyn K. Moody’s “Biography of an Autobiographer,” I now understand more of what Harriet Jacobs wanted to accomplish other than writing a slave narrative, which were rising in popularity as of then. Moody says that post-Emancipation Jacobs worked with the relief activism of Elizabeth Keckley during and after the war and was inspired by Keckley (5). I was surprised to see Jacobs doing something to assist others without the notoriety. Let’s face it, there are people all around the world writing books for personal gain, selling their souls for a couple sales. But hearing of this behind the scenes work changed my outlook.

     There is something else that we noticed in the article “Biography of an Autobiographer.” Throughout Jacobs’ narrative there were plenty of thoughts in my head that because of her lighter skin tone and her relationship with a white man of political stature, that Jacobs would consider herself of a higher class system than most blacks. Midway through Moody’s article she proves my group’s perception of Jacobs from a far to be correct. Moody writes “… across a social divide. Keckley, a former slave who had maintained her own sewing business both before and after serving as modiste in the Lincoln White House, belonged to Washington DC’s ‘colored society’. Jacobs, in contrast, was always a much humbler social servant,” (5). Seeing this makes the group believe that because of her stature that being part of a color society would be a stoop down from what she has done in terms of writing her personal narrative. Now maybe her decision not to be a part of the color society is an attempt to do her good works behind the scenes like she did with post-Emancipation relief efforts. But my group begs to differ. 

Click Here for a timeline of Harriet Jacobs' Life

Works Cited

Works Cited

1. “About Harriet Jacobs - Timeline.” Harrietjacobs.org. Edenton-Chowan County Tourism Development Authority, n.d. Web. 24 Nov. 2013.

2. Crashdumi. “Harriet Jacobs 2.” Youtube. Youtube, 18 Jul. 2008. Web. 24 Nov. 2013.

3. Emsley, Sarah. “Harriet Jacobs And The Language of Autobiography.” Canadian Review Of American Studies 28.2 (1998): 145-162. Academic Search Complete. Web. 24 Nov. 2013.

4. Harriet Jacobs Reward. 1842. American History For Travelers. JPEG file.

5. Jacobs, Harriet. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. The Norton Anthology of African American Literature. 2^nd Ed. Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Nellie Y. McKay. New York: W.W. Norton, 2005. 280-315. Print.

6. Moody, Jocelyn K. “Biography of an Autobiographer.” The Women’s Review of Books 22.3 (2004): 4-5. Literature Resource Center. Web. 24 Nov. 2013.

7. Nudelman, Franny. “Harriet Jacobs And The Sentimental Politics Of Female Suffering.” ELH 59.4 (1992): 939-964. Print.

8. Portrait Of Harriet Jacobs. 1894. The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College. JPEG file.

9. Stover, Johnnie M. “Nineteenth-Century African American Women’s Autobiography as Social Discourse: The Example of Harriet Ann Jacobs.” College English 66.2 (2003): 133-154. JSTOR. Web. 24 Nov. 2013.

10. Washington, Margaret. ““Free Motives of Delicacy”: Sexuality And Morality In The Narratives Of Sojourner Truth And Harriet Jacobs.” Journal Of African American History 92.1 (2007): 57-73. Academic Search Complete. Web. 24 Nov. 2013.