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Summary Of Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl By Harriet Jacobs

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Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, by Harriet Jacobs, gives us a close view of her and others experiences in the institution of slavery. The opening of her autobiography, “READER, be assured this narrative is no fiction…...strictly true” (5), shows that she wants people to know that is a true recount of incidents in her life. A big part of her story not only exposed the inhumane and sadistic treatment of African-American slaves, especially the females, but also the sexual encounters by slave-owners in her case Dr. Flint. This book in mostly about experiences and hardships the author had to face, and it shows how she fought for her freedom. As she states in the end of her book “my story ends with freedom; not in the usual way, with marriage” …show more content…

Before reading this book, I had already read Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave written by Frederick Douglass, who also escaped from slavery. I came to learn about his slavery and what issues he faced. But as Harriet Jacobs pointed out in her book “Slavery is terrible for men; but it is far more terrible for women” (119), I came to understand the big difference between the two memoirs. Before reading this book, I knew that there was a big difference in what were the goals of men and women that forced them to escape slavery. Slave-owners did not want the slaves to be able to read or write, because that threatened the existence of slavery. Frederick Douglass came to realize that and used that as his main goal to escape slavery. On the other hand, this book showed that Jacobs focused more on relationship and family ties. I knew for a fact before that men slaves cared about freedom so they could form groups and raise their voices against slavery. From, this book I learned that there was a big difference in the two sexes. Women cared more about their families while men did not. This book opened my eyes to the views of women, and their main intentions towards escaping

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