Harriet Jacob's Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl

Assignment 4 The book “Incidents in The Life of a Slave Girl “were written in the 1860’s, the year when the civil war had begun and slavery was an issue in the United States. It was written by a fugitive slave and mother, Harriet Jacob. The text talks about her life as a slave and how woman would marry slave-owners and realize that their husbands would impregnate slave women and have kids with them. Slave owners would be aggressive and sexual harass slave women such as Harriet Jacob. Harriet Jacob’s value was her first child and how life was like for women of slave owners. Harriet’s child was born premature weighing only four pounds, however she was also sick herself as said on the text “ I was a mere wreck of my former self. For a year there was scarcely a day when I was free from chills and fever.” She stated that she had

However she would realize her husband would sleep with and impregnate his slaves. The wife’s of the slave owners would be very revengeful and jealous, due to the fact that their husbands would have kids with his slaves and see her kids as well as the slave women’s kids in the same household. . These women lived a fake, sad and miserable life due to the fact that their husband’s would be unfaithful with his slaves. In the passage Harriet states that women would be ashamed and not approve of what their husbands where doing, saying “‘He not only thinks it no disgrace to be the father of those little niggers, but he is not ashamed to call himself their master. I declare, such things ought not to be tolerated in any decent society!’”. Although some woman don’t see the children of slaves as much of a trouble and see them more as “the pigs on the plantation “. Other Southern woman taunted their husband to free the slaves who he had a sexual and “ parental relationship “ with. The husbands would then grant his wives wish. Eventually separating the kids from their