The Dead Analysis

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs is Jacobs life story under the pseudonym Linda Brent. Jacobs’ main focus or theme in the novel is motherhood and the effects of slavery on the female sex. She directs the novel to a female white middle class audience. She initially wrote the novel under a pseudonym to protect her identity and herself from cruelty because it was published in 1861, also the year the civil war started. She agreed to writing her story to expose the wretched life African American female slaves endured.

This quote is awful because how degrading bondage would turn anyone into a weak person, even in a physical sense. Also, this quote exposes the writer’s personal struggles under slavery and as a central theme throughout her narrative. In Jacobs’ narration, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl carries the reader through a chain of events of one woman’s birth into bondage, her sufferings under that corrupted system, and the manner in which she is eventually able to free herself and all her family members from slavery and make a new life in the North. Linda wants to liberate herself spiritually and

Born as Freda Josephine McDonald on June 3, 1906, in Saint Louis. Her mother had dreams of becoming a music-hall dancer, but gave them up to become a mother and washerwoman and her father abandoned them when she was an infant. Most of her time as a youth was spent in poverty. To help support her family, she started cleaning houses and babysitting at the age of eight often being mistreated. At the age of 13 she ran away from home, found work as a waitress at a club where she met her first husband Willie Wells, who she divorced only weeks later.

By using the female point of view in her work "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Written by Herself", Harriet Jacobs transformed the classic slave narrative. As Anne Bradford Warner points out in her essay, “Harriet Jacobs at Home in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl”, Harriet Jacobs is hard to categorize in terms of antebellum era writers because unlike most authors of slave narratives of the time, Jacobs is not male. In addition, she is southern

As Pearl faces the same shame as her parents, such as being called “an imp of evil, emblem and product of sin" (Hawthorne, 129), her need for care and attention grows larger. The final aspect of love in the novel is one of the importance and connection to family. The humiliation and contempt they all felt brought them closer together as they did not want to witness any of their suffering. Pearl’s reaction to her father’s death exemplifies the depth and strength of their connection. The narrator describes their final moments by saying “Pearl kissed his lips.

In the narrative Incidents in a life of a Slave girl, Brent not only exposes the hardships of being a slave, but also the struggle of being a woman in bondage. Brent, persistently asks the reader to not pity or judge her by the actions she has made, but grasp the understanding that being enslaved forces a person to better themselves at any cost. She also says “I do it to kindle a flame of compassion in your hearts for my sisters who are still in bondage” which causes

Living in colonial Virginia ascribed itself to be like living in a lawless land. Far from England and its traditions, a vacuum existed in Virginia that left gender, race, and power undefined. Many scrambled to fill its void, but it would take time before societal norms would be laid down. The women of the colony were most necessary in establishing the patriarchal society that would transform again into one of paternalism. A woman’s power in colonial Virginia depended entirely upon her race.

In the manuscript, Stewart thundered, “WE CLAIM OUR RIGHTS”, she prophesied to ominous white America: “Dark and dismal is the cloud that hangs over thee, for thy cruel wrongs and injuries to the fallen sons of Africa. The blood of her murdered ones cries to heaven for vengeance against thee.” This was her call for African Americans to stand up for their rights. Stewart was different from a lot of abolitionists during her time because of the role she established for black women. She believed that it was the women who could establish the “sure foundation” in this movement. Unlike what many believed at the time of the duties reserved for black women, which was the responsibilities of the home, Stewart upheld those beliefs and served as a standard of moral rectitude exemplary to man.

The narrator points out that Louise knows she will cry again for him when she sees his funeral, remembering his “kind, tender hands...the face that had never looked save with love upon her” (Chopin). Those sentiments show that her husband was not a cruel man but a kind one. With that information, it is still noted that “she had loved him—sometimes. Often she had not” (Chopin) which could mean her marriage was of convenience and not a choice. Even though this relationship may have been amicable Louise still struggles with this new emotion, that of

Walker’s essay shows the dehumanization and abuse that black women have endured for years. She talks about how their creativity was stifled due to slavery. She also tells how black women were treated more like objects than human beings. They entered loveless marriages and became prostitutes because of the injustice upon them. Walker uses her mother’s garden to express freedom, not only for her but for all the black women who had been wronged.