Harriet Jacobs Slavery Essay

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Slavery may have been in one of many forms, the best know describe it as completely degrading and slave being synonymous with an item of property, the other called for a system of bargaining between slaves and their masters. Although there is little evidence to pull from to dispute these claims, there is still evidence nonetheless. Therefore, Harriet Jacobs’s narrative on slavery provides a stance that slavery was completely degrading to all that were forced under its cruel reign. Jacobs begins to feel the oppression of slavery in her early childhood years, much like any other slave girl. Alike to Equiano, Harriet Jacobs is passed between owners as a child. Jacobs had one favorite master early in her life whereas Equiano had favorable owners for the entirety of his enslavement. Under her disliked master as a child, Jacobs remarks on not being allowed to mourn for her father’s passing, “What cared my owners for that? He was merely a piece of property. Moreover, they thought he had spoiled his children by teaching them to feel they were human beings” (Brent 451). At a very young age, Harriet Jacobs realized the demoralization of the African Americans down to being akin to property of a superior race. If there were a system of bargaining, she may …show more content…
However, it was for the purposes of intimidation to Harriet Jacobs so that she would conform to his will. Dr. Flint would brag to Harriet that her children would, “‘bring me a handsome sum of money one of these days’” (Brent 529). In contrast to the system of paternalism where the masters negotiated with their slaves for the better of both parties, this slaveholder uses intimidation tactics to keep one slave (if not others) from getting too much of an idea in her head. Dr. Flint was described by Harriet to love power even more than money. Either of which he possessed in the outcome of his interactions with the author in this

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Hawthorne HIS 14 FALL 2012 Essay Assignment Due: November 29, 2012 An analysis of the book Harriet Jacobs autobiography Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl reveals, in my opinion, that it is an accurate representation of the antebellum South under a slave system based on other published works such as Soujourner Truth, Address to the Womens’ Right’s Convention Akron, Ohio 1851 and Benjamin Drew, Narratives of Escaped Slaves 1855. The accounts described by Harriet Jacobs are consistent with these…

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AFAS 306essay

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