A recurring theme in, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, is Harriet Jacobs's reflections on what slavery
             meant to her as well as all women in bondage. Continuously, Jacobs expresses her deep hatred of
             slavery, and all of its implications. She dreads such an institution so much that she sometimes regards
             death as a better alternative than a life in bondage. For Harriet, slavery was different than many African
             Americans. She did not spend her life harvesting cotton on a large plantation. She was not flogged and
             beaten with regular accurance like many slaves. She was not actively kept from illiteracy. Actually,
             Harriet always was treated relatively well. She performed most of her work inside and was rarely ever
             punished, at the request of her licentious master. Furthermore, she was taught to read and sew, and to
             perform other tasks associated with a "ladies" work. Outwardly, it appeared that Harriet had it pretty
             good, in light of what many slaves had succumbed to. However, Ironically Harriet believes these fortunes
             were actually her curse. The fact that she was well kept and light skinned as well as being attractive lead
             to her victimization as a sexual object. Consequently, Harriet became a prospective concubine for Dr.
             Norcom. She points out that life under slavery was as bad as any slave could hope for. Harriet talks
             about her life as slave by saying, "You never knew what it is to be a slave; to be entirely unprotected by
             law or custom; to have the laws reduce you to the condition of chattel, entirely subject to the will of
             In the earliest part of Harriet's life the whole idea of slavery was foreign to her. As all little girls she was
             born with a mind that only told her place in the world was that of a little girl. She had no capacity to
             understand the hardships that she inherited. She explains how her, "heart was as free from care as that
             of any free-born white chi...