Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - test ExampleOne depicts the life of a slave boy and the other that of a girl. That Jacobs used a pseudonym is sometimes cited as a proof the account being a piece of fiction. I hold it does non have to be so. It is an authors right to use a create verbally name and it applies to Jacobs just as well. It is literally true that facts are often stranger than fiction and that explains why Incidents, for a long period after its publication in 1861, continued to arouse the skepticism that it was in all probability a white abolitionists fabricated work till Yellin of whole step University established the authors authenticity (Diamond VIII). The cynicism understandably comes from those quarters where the members, owing as often to their confederation identity as to the gender identity, will never be able to identify with the traumatizing experience of what it pith to be a slave a female slave in particular in the south, to be even to a greater e xtent precise. The pain of having to choose between family needs and masters decrees, for instance, cannot be comprehended just by going through the pages of a book. However, they were not the authors target either. ... ery during the seventeenth and 18th centuries are two features that expose the darker side of the history, society, culture, politics and economics of a nation that is conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal (Elmore 232). In this context, Incidents assumes significance for its capacitance to throw light on the fact that the cruelly exploitative nature of slavery is as grievous as the atrocities under colonialism, if not worse. It is an important literary work as well a extension of crucial historical information about 19th century America that could be of essence to forthcoming generations in grasping what their forerunners lived through. It is a portrait of the society in which citizen was a strange reciprocation to be used to refer to a colored man, as Jacobs observes on receiving the obituary notice of her uncle Phillip (Castronovo 158). For a slave, what images is the word freedom likely to conjure up? Being a woman can make more difference than we think. Jacobs narrative is all about a relentless pursuit of individual freedom. But the substance she envisages this freedom is beyond the wildest stretch of ones imagination. The moment of freedom was not when she was able to apportion control of her life. Nor did it arrive when her employer had bought her freedom. Since self-definition and self-assertion are undeniably among the key themes of the protagonist in Incidents, it is not lightsome to resist the temptation to label it as feminist. But we find an interesting contradiction. From the feminist perspective, it is hard to think marriage can be synonymous with freedom whereas Jacobs equates freedom with marriage when she states Reader, my story ends with freedom not in the usual way, wit h marriage (Jacobs 183). It is in sharp contrast with the