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Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

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Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

In Harriet Jacob’s book; Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, She retells her life in a compelling story that shows just how unstable the lives of slaves were back then. Upon writing her book, Harriet Jacobs seeks to unveil the truth about life for slaves in the antebellum South. She depicts the cruel punishments, deprivation of food and appropriate clothing, harsh labor and broken families.
In her book, she focuses a great deal on the prohibition of strong family ties by the selling off of family members or the forced dissolution of marriages, detailing the grief felt by mothers who saw their children sent away and the despair felt by Harriet when she realized she could not marry who she wanted. Harriet focuses on female slaves, who were subject to being raped and had to bear their masters' children. This book gave me a better view of how women were treated back then. Not only were women inferior, slave women were just useful for hard work and producing more slaves. It is kind of sickening knowing that women have been preyed upon like that and still undergo rapes and domestic abuse today. It would be interesting to know what kind of people think rape is acceptable as there are many still going on today.
As you may read in other papers, I feel that women have always been considered the weaker sex. Not to say that men are evil and women are helpless, but genetics makes women less strong. Therefore they are more vulnerable when it comes to violent disputes. This book appeals to women as a whole because white women can relate due to their status rank back then. On both accounts, women were neither high on the social status totem pole nor were they decision makers in important historical events. Some may argue that these historical women supported their husbands emotionally, but since it is not mentioned, was it

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