Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Feminism Essay

Words: 1369
Pages: 6
Open Document
The feminist movement sought to gain rights for women. Many feminist during the early nineteenth century fought for the abolition of slavery around the world. The slave narrative became a powerful feminist tool in the nineteenth century. Black and white women are fictionalized and objectified in the slave narrative. White women are idealized as pure, angelic, and chaste while black woman are idealized as exotic and contained an uncontrollable, savage sexuality. Harriet Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of A Slave Girl, brought the sexual oppression of captive black women into the public and political arena.
<br>
<br>Harriet Jacobs takes a great risk writing her trials as a house servant in the south and a fugitive in the north. Incidents in …show more content…
<br>
<br>Jacobs uses a pseudonym in the novel. She portrays herself as Linda Brent. Of all the women that Linda Brent meets, not one fits the mole of a true woman in slave times. Aunt Martha, Linda's Grandmother, is a free woman who owns her own home and supports herself by selling baked goods. These characteristics she displays are coherent with the domesticity that women are accustomed to but she does not show submissiveness. Aunt Martha counsels Linda to be submissive to her master and accept her fate as a slave but her words can not be effective because she is now on the outside. She can have the traditional family unlike Linda.
<br>
<br>After her escape, Linda is assisted by a slave holding white woman. The white woman is by all aspects a true woman, but due to her actions she lacks the submissiveness of women. She defies Linda's hunters by maintaining her silence as to Linda's location. Even though Linda is nearly found, the woman never turns her over to her master like a true woman should. A true woman would never get involved in a dispute because it is not her place, but the white woman does. Not only does she involve herself in the manner but she takes the side of a slave over a man of her own kind. The woman's domain was her home and her duty was to maintain and manage the household to the best of her ability. She was to provide comfort for her husband and her family, not aid in the dispensing of impartiality.
<br>
<br>Even Mrs. Flint lacked an
Show More

Related Documents: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Feminism Essay

Essay about Informative Speech- Women's Rights

if they had money and got married, the money became the property of their husbands. The Women's Right's Movement started because they were sick of the unfairness. Women's rights are the rights and elements and entitlement claimed for a woman and girls of many societies. Women(and some men) have asserted women's equality and the rights of women since ancient times, but without much success until the 19th and 20th century Women's Rights…

Words 1752 - Pages 8

Essay on Midterm Study Guide

labor market and little "stake in conformity"; "marginal classes" 3. slave codes From 1619 to 1865, constituted the criminal law and procedure applied against enslaved Africans. The codes regulated slave life from cradle to grave and were virtually uniform across the states in upholding the institutions of chattel slavery. Their primary purposes were to enumerate applicable laws and to prescribe the social boundaries for slaves: where they could go, what types of activity they could engage in, and…

Words 8778 - Pages 36