Incidents in the Life of A Slave Girl - Feminism
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. Harriet Jacobs takes a great risk writing her trials as a house servant in the south and a fugitive in the north. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl gives a true account of the brutality slavery held for women. A perspective that was relatively secretive during Jacobs' time. Jacobs' narrative focuses on subjugation due to race but it also portrays many women an strong and often open roles. Women in these roles were minimal and often suffered for their outspoken roles. Harriet Jacobs' narrative is a powerful statement unveiling the impossibility and undesirability of achieving the ideal put forth by men and maintained by wome
By choosing Sawyer as a lover and father to her children, Jacobs went against the ideal image of womanhood and showed independence. Linda rejects the notion of true womanhood that has been passes on for centuries and takes control of her future and her children's future. She suggests that slave women be judged by different standards than those applied to other women. Aunt Martha, Linda's Grandmother, is a free woman who owns her own home and supports herself by selling baked goods. Women have often not been treated as humans but as tokens or commodities. Jacobs directs her account of the afflictions a woman is subjected to in the chain of slavery to women of the north to gain sympathy for their sisters that were enslaved in the south. Her rational powers and will to action facilitate her efforts to find strategies for dealing with sexual harassment from her master, for maintaining family unity, and in establishing a moral code in harmony with her beliefs and situation. Linda creates her own image of a true women by creating a need for respect as an ideal of womanhood. In struggling against the brutal dynamics of a system that simultaneously set before her ideals of a true woman, but refused to acknowledge her as a human being, Jacobs emerges scarred but victorious. An action that is completely against traditional moral codes in her time. Jacobs' narrative is sending a message to women to come together and end the unfair treatment all women are subjected to. Since Flint denied Jacobs a marriage to a free black man and refused to sell her to anyone, Jacobs knew that she would never be allowed a traditional home and family. Flint lacked an aspect of true womanhood. Power is a commodity that no slave is allowed, but Linda gathers power form the moment she accepts she will not be a true woman.
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Acceptance Essays
