The lives of slaves in the Antebellum south were full of suffering. Slave owners had managed to control nearly every aspects of their slave's existence. When reading Harriet Jacobs' "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl," we are told of the tactics performed by many slave owners in order to maintain their power over their slaves - their "property." The use of the word property is commonly found in texts of the day relating to slaves, and is also found quite often in Harriets own writings. This word, when describing a human being, coupled with Harriets writings give us a lens in which to view how oppressive and deceptive white slave owners where in their attempts to manipulate every facet of slaves lives. As mentioned before, Harriet eventually was able to reach freedom in the south. However, this was not the case for most slaves in the pre war south.
One way in which slave owners where able to maintain dominance over slaves was through the use of literacy as a weapon. By denying slaves the ability to learn how to read and write they were able to manipulate their understandings of subjects, most notably religion. Throughout the text we see examples of this many times and how it annoyed Harriet since she was an educated slave. For example, "The Slaveholders came to the conclusion that it would be well to give the slaves enough of religious instruction to keep them from murdering their masters". (Jacobs, 92) Harriet also went on to show this further, "The class leader was the town constable-a man who bought and sold slaves, who whipped his brethren and sisters of the church at the public whipping post."(Jacobs, 95). Also, throughout Harriets writing she mentions how masters would often tell their slaves that they were doing Gods will by serving their white master. This concept of whites being better than blacks because they were more educated is a constant theme in Harriets work, and is also something that annoys her enormously when she witnesses it firsthand.