Harriet Ann Jacobs Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl

Through the late 1700s and early to mid-1800s, most slave narratives written were done by men. It was not until 1861 when Harriet Ann Jacobs emerged with the first slave narrative that we got from the viewpoint of a woman. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, is Jacobs’ life story of how she escaped slavery and gained freedom for herself and her children. She detailed her life as a slave and how she hid in her grandmother’s attic for seven years to dodge her master’s avid, obsessive lust for her. We are given insight into the mistresses of the slave era and their role, the psychological and sexual abuses of slavery and the hypocritical Christian ties to it.
When we’re taught about slavery, we usually only consider the cruelty of the male slaveholders and their male overseers with the women basically pushed to the background. Jacobs brings about
Although they were considered superior to the slaves themselves, the ‘mistresses’, as they were called by the slaves as a sign of respect, were still seen as less than their male counterparts. We learn about a neighboring Mrs. Wade where “at no hour of the day was there cessation of the lash on her premises” and the slaves labor literally from dawn until long after the sun set. Mrs. Wade beat slaves herself with the strength of a man in her favorite place to torture them, her barn to the point that many of her slaves wanted to die. Linda also tells us of her own mistress, Mrs. Flint who hated her immensely with a great deal of jealousy due to her husband, Dr. Flint’s fondness of Linda. Linda details a sit-down she had with Mrs. Flint whom had become enraged