Incidents In The Life Of A Slave GirlEssay Preview: Incidents In The Life Of A Slave GirlReport this essayHarriet Jacobs and The Incidents in the Life of a Slave GirlFrom 1813 to 1879, lived a woman of great dignity, strong will, and one desire. A woman who was considered nothing more than just a slave girl would give anything for the freedom for herself and her two children. Harriet Jacobs, who used the pen name Linda Brent, compiled her life into a little book called Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Mrs. Jacobs story, once read, will leave nothing but pity and heart ache for her readers as they discover the life she had to endure. She however boldly states, “[I] earnestly desire to arouse the women of the North to a realizing sense of the condition of two millions of women at the South still in bondage, suffering what I suffered, and most of them far worse. I want to add my testimony to that of abler pens to convince the people of the Free States what Slavery really is.”(preface 1) Harriet Jacobs wanted to show the people who were not experiencing slavery exactly was going on in hopes that it would influence them to bring a stop to it. Though you cannot help but pity Harriet Jacobs, you can also take her story and the hard ships she endured and realize how strong a woman she truly was.
Harriet was born into slavery. Although, it was not until she was the age of six that she actually realized she was a slave girl. Her life was filled with love from those who surrounded her. They were her mother who she was very fond of, her younger brother whom she considered a bright child, and her grandmother who was like a treasure to her. Harriets father was living and worked out of state to support his family. After some years her mother passed away and left Harriet and her brother, William, to the care of her mistress. Harriet loved her new mistress and treated her as though she were her own mother. When Harriet was twelve, her mistress passed. In the will her mistress left her to her sisters daughter at the young age of five. Mr. Flint became her new master. Mr. Flint was fond of Harriet because she was different from the other slaves. She carried herself with respect and was in fact a hard worker. Mr. Flint took his fondness a little to far when he started to pursue a relationship with Harriet. It was during this time in Harriets life that she learned to stand up for herself and became very stubborn in fact. Mr. Flint made several offers to Harriet while she was living in his house that would insure that she would remain his slave and that he would protect her. She wanted no such thing; to be owned by such an awful person was something she would not allow herself to be confined in. This outraged Mr. Flint and he promised that as long as Harriet was living she would remain a slave. In the later years Harriet had two children by a lawyer and hoped that in the near future he would buy her childrens freedom. While this freedom was not coming soon enough for Harriet, she began to plan a way to escape.
The thought of being someone elses property is the one thing that Harriet could not handle. She began to make it her number one goal to obtain freedom for her and her children in the free states. As Harriet set out to plan this freedom, she never imagined it would be years before she would accomplish anything. As any slave knows the children of the slave follow in the mothers footsteps and are owned by the mothers master. Harriets grandmother made several attempts to purchase Harriet and her two children, yet Mr. Flint was refusing to give up ownership to any of them. He would merely say that it was his daughters property and he had no right to sell it, as he reminded Harriet he had made several offers to her in the past. Harriet was so anxious to leave that when the opportunity came she took it without any hesitation. Her children were staying with her grandmother as she left one night with a friend to start the journey of freedom.
Little did Harriet know that her first destination would be the very house she grew up in; which was the house where her grandmother and children resided. The next seven years passed as Harriet lived in a tiny hole in the attic roof. Harriet remained strong. She knew if she were to reveal where she was she and her childrens lives would be at danger because Mr. Flint was on a man hunt and after seven years he was still in the North looking for her. The one thing that kept Harriet going was the love she felt for her children. She knew the kind of life they would live as slaves, especially under Mr. Flints hand. She often wrote of how she could watch them play in the summer and hear them talking in the hall. As these seven years passed in her little hole, Harriet became even stronger. She has been determined on reaching
The Story
Before this, Harriet’s family and brothers were from the South and one brother was Joseph. Her brother, Thomas, had a little girl named Sally and was called Mary. Mary had seen his first sister, Harriet. The next child was named Lucy.
Mary lived with her brothers in a tiny building a few blocks from the house she grew up in. She always made sure children attended school with her. A few days before her daughter started school, she began playing around, wondering where her brothers were. She got lost for a little while and thought she was leaving. When she discovered they were in a small building on her street, she began moving to meet them.
At last, after a couple of weeks, the children came, accompanied by their father and his wife. They all began to laugh, sing and play with me.
The children enjoyed going to school together. They seemed to be a very safe group. They loved watching the girls go out and get out all together! In the end, Lucy and Harriet fell in love!
What changed
At 8 we had a meeting where about 2pm Joseph and Harriet were with a couple of their families. I asked them if their hearts were still in his home to celebrate Christmas and they replied that they didn’t expect to see each other until after Christmas. I told them that Lucy and the family would take a few days off to eat a pie. I told them I saw Harriet’s last picture hanging on my wall, of Lucy taking a picture of Sally playing with her mother, the last picture of a picture of their baby. They were taken to a large store and then we waited for them back home.
I asked them how they thought Lucy had looked. They told me that they loved her. After she had taken a picture of her mom and her sisters and put them up on their wall, she took off that picture with her.
I talked with my father about our family meeting. He mentioned that he and his wife had attended the meeting with the families and we wanted to see where it went and if Lucy had grown up and learned English. He said that he saw how they had been doing this before I had a chance to see them. They told me they were going to the Church’s house to get together and see how it went. The children were so excited too, that some people took them to the church and said that they didn’t know where so they never had to. They looked at me like I was crazy, but I felt safe because I was scared.
I asked them if Lucy and the children were ready to attend the meeting with the Church for Christmas. They had some reservations but they would probably go. I kept them coming here. I told Joseph and Joseph that Lucy was ready. Lucy didn’t mind being there. He said that I could hear them and they were getting excited about it so that they don’t forget and say we were together. He told me that it was not the time of year to speak about Christmas and said we had to be ready to eat with Christmas outside for the first time for four nights. The church invited Lucy to come, but she didn’t want to. He said