People in a Slave Culture

Having established that striverry was a terrible institution, Jacobs now attri thates "kindness" to her first owner and claims that this fair sex had fulfilled many of the functions of a mother, leading Jacobs to "love" her.

Jacobs last realizes that "the memory of a faithful slave does not helper much to save her children from the auction block" (Chapter 2, 1). At the develop of seven, Jacobs (1, Chapter 2) is given to the family of her former mistress and greeted with " frigidness looks, cold words, and cold treatment." Introduced to the Christian (white) God, the narrator of this story finds herself condemned to a life of vile and oppression.

Jacobs (1, Chapter 2) characterizes her new owner, Doctor cussed, as an epicure. In this particular situation, Jacobs' communicative describes the great unhappiness suffered by all slaves.

In Chapter 3, for example, stark naked Year's Day is depicted in terms which make it absolved that a day of new beginning is often a day of endings for slaves. Slave mothers approach virgin Year's Day "with fantastic sorrows" knowing that her children "may all be torn from her the nigh morning" (Jacobs, 1, Chapter 2). The tension between the oppression of slavery and exemption is clear in the fact that many slave mothers are depicted as wishing that they and their children could die before New Year's Day is over.

When the chronicle shifts from the voice of its creator to that of a slave mother, the language itself changes:

Jacobs, Harriet. Incidents in the brio of a Slave Girl:

"Gone! All gone(p)! Why don't God kill me" (Jacobs, 1, Chapter 3)?

This language is likely to be genuinely the language of the slave whereas the language in which the narrative written by Jacobs on behalf of Linda Brent is the language of the controlling discourse of the time. Nevertheless, the shape of the text does reflect oppositional strategies in that Jacobs herself uses the wording of the dominant discourse to negatively characterize Doctor Flint and other slaveholders. For example, Jacobs (p. 1, Chapter 4) writes that "he did not resort to corporal punishment, but to all the petty, tyrannical ways that human ingenuity could devise." As Foucault suggested, the slave owners set forth in this narrative use the index of punishment and of discipline to ensure that their human chattel digest in fear.

Written by Herself. 2003. Available at

The narrative demonstrates that almost slaves lived in a state of tension in which they accommodated their know in order to escape certain kinds of oppression. It also reveals that safeguard through subtle and overt acts was common. Ultimately, the slave as described in this narrative was vulnerable to the moods of a master and mistress.

The opposit
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