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Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl By Harriet Jacobs

547 Words3 Pages

Harriet Jacobs recounts events in her life in her book Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl under the pseudonym Linda Brent. The autobiography shows her life as being born into slavery and experiencing hardships such as abusive and disloyal masters and mistresses and separation from her family. Despite being born into slavery, Linda is independent and strives to be autonomous. Her independence was caused from her parents refraining from telling her unfortunate circumstance of being born into slavery. Once she learns that she is a slave she had already developed a strong sense of autonomy and longs for a free life in the North with a family. During this time slaves were considered property of their masters but Linda never believed that and see herself and her body as anyone’s property but her own. …show more content…

Flint, and refused to let him have power over her sexuality, which he desired. She is tormented and sexually abused by Dr. Flint but never lets this cruel behavior towards her thwart her sense of independence. She has the option of becoming a concubine for Dr. Flint but refuses. She has sexual relations with another white slave owner, Mr. Sands, to further assert her own sexual independence. She does not love him and he does not love her, but she has two children with him. Her children are also property of Dr. Flint, and despite Mr. Sands promises to free their children, he fails and destroys any sort of trust Linda can have with a slave owner. Mr. Sands is described as being relatively kind to Linda and her brother William, who is also a slave, but his betrayal of her and disinterest in his own children who are slaves shows that there is no real kindness from slave owners to slaves. Because of this betrayal, Linda still must remain autonomous and put matters into her own hands to free her children and

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