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

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We the People In the Harriet Jacobs book, “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Jacobs shows the unique perspective of life through the eyes of a slave in the south. Jacobs shows the varying perspective on what having the “right” morals is during this time by highlighting severity of what would happen to slaves that tried to escape and showing how slaves lived their daily lives as compared to their white counterparts. Even without reading this book, having knowledge about how slaves were treated and the laws that surrounded the slavery era and post slavery times isn’t something that is taboo in our society today. In the book Jacobs was born into slavery and once her mom died when she was six, she was taken in by her mistress Margaret Horniblow …show more content…

Even if you happen to have master that wasn’t as cruel to you, you were still a prisoner. Running away wasn’t simply an act of rebellion of a slave who wanted to get out of a bad job, it was the act of escaping a terrible, wrongfully gained lifestyle. They were fleeing for their lives and the lives of those who were closest to them. Jacobs has a two children that she was trying to get back to and who she didn’t want to end up working out in the fields as she had to. Her children were mixed raced, or “mulatto” which was the term that was coined back then for people who were interracial, but not to digress. As a result of this, many bi-racial slaves, were the ones who worked in the house and not out in the fields. Having her children work out in the fields as opposed to working in the house, not only subjected them to the daily trials of being a slave, but also might have caused them to be ostracized by other slaves for being bi-racial, because of the stigma that followed with being mixed race. Jacobs wanted to save her family, be reunited with them. Many slaves didn’t even have the right to have a family. They couldn’t legally marry, and although slaves may have had children and families, they were often separated and sold off. Jacobs, as well as many other slaves were just trying to hold on to their little bit of

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