This paper reviews and analyzes the autobiography, “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” by Harriet Jacobs that seems too horrific to be true.
This paper discusses the book, written under the pen name Linda Brent, first published in 1861, in which Jacobs tells of her years as a house slave before the Civil War. The paper’s author describes the sexual exploitation and the incredible sacrifices Jacobs made to gain her freedom and that of her children. The author feels that it is difficult to think that anyone could read Jacobs’s description of slave owners and not feel utter shame that humans could treat humans in such manner.
“Jacobs’s description of New Years Day was heart wrenching. Mothers and children separated amid pleas for mercy. It was indeed a day of sorrow as slave mothers. Jacobs describes them, watching the children who may al be torn from her the next morning she wished that she and they might die before the day dawn. The desperation and helplessness these women felt, mother clinging to her child, when they fastened the iron upon his wrists, could you have heard her heart-rending groans pleading for mercy. Their pleas were in vain, for slaves were property and therefore undeserving of compassion.”