What is the theme of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl?
What is the theme of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl?
In Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs argues for abolition by detailing the impact of slavery on families in the Southern community where her alter-ego, Linda Brent, grows up.
Who can blame slaves for being cunning?
They are constantly compelled to resort to it. It is the only weapon of the weak and oppressed against the strength of their tyrants.”
What did Harriet Jacobs write about?
Harriet Jacobs’s autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861), is the most widely-read female antebellum slave narrative. In recounting her life experiences before she was freed, Jacobs offered her contemporary readers a startlingly realistic portrayal of her sexual history while a slave.
Who is the audience of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl?
Incidents is unique in that it addresses a specific audience — white women in the North — and speaks for black women still held in bondage.
Who is Mr Sands?
Sands Character Analysis. A slave owner who expresses sexual interest in Linda and whom she eventually accepts as her lover, in order to distance herself from Dr. Flint.
How did Harriet Jacobs fight slavery?
Harriet was actively involved with the abolition movement before the launch of the Civil War. During the war she used her celebrity to raise money for black refugees. After the war she worked to improve the conditions of the recently-freed slaves.
Why did Harriet Jacobs hide for seven years?
She was orphaned as a child and formed a bond with her maternal grandmother, Molly Horniblow, who had been freed from slavery. In an attempt to force the sale of her children (who were bought by their father and later sent to the North), Jacobs escaped and spent the next seven years in hiding.
Why did Harriet Jacobs write her autobiography?
Harriet Jacobs wanted to tell her story, but knew she lacked the skills to write the story herself. The subject matter of the book — sexual abuse of slave women — was taboo in the mid-19th century, and Harriet had struggled over whether or not to expose herself so publicly.
How old was Mr Sands?
He was 73 years old. Although an experienced stage actor, Mr. Sands was better known to television audiences as Seaman Harrison (Tinker) Bell on ”McHale’s Navy” and as Pvt.
Who is Dr Flint?
Dr. Flint is a manipulative, amoral old man who enjoys wielding control over others. He has complete control over Linda, who is 40 years younger than he is, but this is not enough for him. He tries to force Linda to surrender mentally and emotionally to his domination.
Why were slaves forbidden to learn to read and write?
DINSMORE DOCUMENTATION, CLASSICS ON AMERICAN SLAVERY. Fearing that black literacy would prove a threat to the slave system — which relied on slaves’ dependence on masters — whites in many colonies instituted laws forbidding slaves to learn to read or write and making it a crime for others to teach them.
How old was Harriet Jacobs when she had her first child?
Despised by the doctor’s suspicious wife and increasingly isolated by her situation, Jacobs in desperation formed a clandestine liaison with Samuel Tredwell Sawyer, a white attorney with whom Jacobs had two children, Joseph and Louisa, by the time she was twenty years old.