Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.
"Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" by Harriet Jacobs (adapted into this book by Linda Brent) is about an enslaved woman's journey through the heinous institution of slavery to her emancipation. Through her description of enslavement, the reader realizes what it was like for millions of African Americans to be brutalized and ravaged by slavery. Written in 1861 to educate the Northerners, especially the women, about the evils of slavery, the autobiography is an account of a woman's life, what the author calls her adventures.
As mentioned above, the book was written to illustrate the depravity of slavery to people living in the North. It is striking to see how humbly the author has used her life to explain the circumstances of slavery. She has used fake names and concealed the names of places so as not to offend any person, black or white. As you read the book, the author can definitely be identified as a truthful person, and becomes easy to see why the author places so much emphasis on her secrecy. .
Jacobs was born as a slave in the household of a kind mistress. She lost her mother at the age of six, but her mistress, who was her mother's half-sister, took good care of her and endowed on her ward the gift of literacy. The horrid reality of slavery was hidden from the author until she entered her early teens, when within a year both her mistress and her father passed away, and she was acquired by the household of Dr. Flint. At his plantation, the author had to bear the full force of slavery. From this time to the author's eventual freedom, the reader gets a glimpse of the persecution that a slave had to face. Jacobs rejected the slaveholder's advances and dared to hope that she would be allowed to marry a free black man who loved and respected her. Not only was she not allowed to marry him, she was forbidden to see him or speak to him EVER again.
