1. Who do you think Jacobs envisions as the audience for her autobiography? How can you tell?
2. What does Jacobs add to the understanding of the experience of slavery we gleaned from Frederick Douglass?
3. How does Jacobs attempt to control her own destiny?
4. What is “the loophole of retreat?”
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4. What is “the loophole of retreat?”
I believe the loophole of retreat refers to Harriet Jacobs’ hideout. It is above her grandmother’s shed were she hid from her master, Dr.Flint. Loophole refers to the tiny crawlspace while retreat means her escape from Dr.Flint. There, she had to endure many difficult years surviving from the cold during the winter as well as the heat from summer. She often sees her children and Dr.Flint while she is stuck in there.
I agree with Zhilou. The loophole of retreat is the place where Harriet hides. She uses her grandmother’s house as a place to hide from her master Dr. Flint. Harriet describes her days in the loophole as a time of isolation. She could only talk to her grandmother and uncle, but not even with her children. They would also bring her food, hot drinks in the winter and homemade medications for the bugs’ disease. All of this happens while Dr. Flint is looking for her and even asks her children for her but they don’t know either, or at least that’s what they say to him.
4. What is “the loophole of retreat?”
As the previous answers stated, the Loophole of Retreat is the shed where Jacobs hid from Dr. Flint and other slave-hunters who were after her. Although a loophole is defined as a way to avoid something, Jacobs had to suffer the summer heat, winter coldness, and lack of light all while fearing that she’ll be captured by her pursuers. Also, the loophole was not guaranteed to keep her hidden forever as Dr. Flint and his family bribe her children into telling them where her location is. Despite the terrible living conditions of the shed and the fear of being caught by slave-hunters, Jacobs preferred to hide rather than to have her fate as a slave.
What is “the loophole of retreat?”
The loophole is an ambiguous term used in the title to convey both the meanings of: a means of evasion as well as the small hole in the wall. Harriet Tubman in this passage is hiding from Dr. Flint, and her loophole was a trap door hidden to those outside of her peripheral view. She was able to see outside because of a little hole she had made in the wood, a loophole. From this deduction, my inference would be that she had just gone back to the South with the purpose of retreating back to the North freeing those along her path.
The loophole of retreat is term that contains two meanings. First it describes this tiny place in witch Jacobs is hidden. From this place she is able to watch over her kids and feel more secure. She rather lives in those conditions rather than being mistreated by Dr Flint her master. The second meaning is the body of the slave himself. Jacobs is hidden her real personality inside. She is forced to undergo rough treatment from Dr flint without having a chance to defend herself or retaliate. Through her eyes she watches her children defenseless .
2. What does Jacobs add to the understanding of the experience of slavery we gleaned from Frederick Douglass?
Douglass depicts how inferior slaves were to the white man and how slaves were continuously dehumanized. Jacobs’s autobiography also states the same claims, but also conveys the kind of “domestic violence possible only when an owner assumes a double privilege over a slave because she is both black and female.” She was constantly harassed by her master and to elude his advances, she attached herself to another white man. This relationship infuriated her master but saved her from his abuse.
Women slaves had to constantly endure the unwanted advances of the white man. If a woman were to get pregnant with her master’s child, she would be separated from her child (the master keeps the child).
Who do you think Jacobs envisions as the audience for her autobiography? How can you tell?
Jacobs envisions the white women of the north as the audience of her autobiography. Slave women suffered under double privilege of her master, in which he had power over her as black and a women. So she is trying to relate to her auidence as a fellow women, who has suffered under a tyrant of a man. She makes it clear who her audience is, when she says “… I do earnestly desire to arouse the women of the North to realizing sense of the condition of two millions of women at the south”. Her main reason for writing this is to relate to them as women, so they can connect to the suffering for which words do not do justice. She shows this by comparing the two and showing how different and unfair their life is to a slave women. And asking them to not judge her on with the same standards.
2. What does Jacobs add to the understanding of the experience of slavery we gleaned from Frederick Douglass?
Fredrick Douglass had given his point of view of slavery from a man’s perspective while Jacobs gave hers from a women’s point of view. Black women were more likely to experience domestic violence because, “…an owner assumes a double privilege over a slave because she is both black and female.” This means that white slave owning men often raped black women. This would lead to black women having the slave’s children which led them to either get rid of the women or the children. Jacobs shared her experiences of a mother trying to get back to her children and how her route to freedom was different than that of Douglas’. Both experienced terrible things through slavery, but in different ways under different circumstances.
4. What is “the loophole of retreat”
The loophole of retreat is where Jacobs hid from slave hunters. It is her grandmother’s shed in which there was a trapdoor. She often heard the voices of children in this, I wanted so bad to speak to them. Jacobs felt oppressed by the darkness and lonliness of this but would rather stay in this condition than be a slave. Her treatment by Dr. Flint was so terrible, that she stayed in such a cramped condition.
I agree with your response about this question my friend that its the place where Jacob hid from slave hunters.
2. What does Jacobs add to the understanding of the experience of slavery we gleaned from Frederick Douglass?
Jacobs adds her view as a female slave. She uses her story to tell us the situation and life of the female slave under the slavery. Female slaves are treated worse than male slaves. They are abused mentally and physically by their masters. Most of them will be raped by their masters at a very young age. They don’t have a way to escape from this destiny. Their desires are to be loved and have a marriage like those white women have. Unlike the Douglass, the female slave keeps hiding for his master. The injuries for female slaves is huge from the mental to the body.
3. What have you learned from reading this narrative that you didn’t already know about slavery in America?
One of the things that I have learned about slavery in America that I didn’t already know is their precise treatment in the North and South. In high school, the information about slavery in America brought in more general and simplified way. Whereas, southerners were generally loved the idea about having slaves thus usually treated them firmly by forcing them to work all day long, and northerners being fairly good towards African-Americans and treated them as equals. However, after reading this slave-narrative, I learned that the conditions were much worse to the point where slaves were dehumanized and treated worse than livestock. Moreover, the pre-civil war relationship between both North and South were much more severe that I have ever imagined and was inevitable. In school, they usually teach about the Civil War that started with a bombardment at Fort Sumter in Charleston Bay, but they never mention anything regarding why the war might have broken up in the first place other than that it based upon ending slavery. In other words, they never suggest how differently and crucially Confederates were dehumanizing slaves and how the slaves honestly felt about life in the south and north.
My apologies I accidentally miss-clicked the sections. Here is the right response.
2. What does Jacobs add to the understanding of the experience of slavery we gleaned from Frederick Douglass?
The story told by Harriet Jacobs adds one of the essential aspects of the treatment of female slaves at that time. From Frederick Douglass, we generally learn that the elderly female slaves usually take care of the kids and by time close to their death they sent to leave alone in the woods far from anyone. The narrative of Harriet Jacobs, on the other hand, explains their life more broadly and showing that they are treated reasonably good compared to other. Doubtless, the more youthful dehumanized uniformly as any other slave and similarly to the ideas shared by Douglass separated from their kids from the day of the birth. Moreover, the story told by Jacobs indicates a more comprehensive view and thoughts of slaveowners regarding slaves escaping to the north as well as difficult to obtain access to retrieve them.
4. What is “the loophole of retreat?”
The term “loophole of retreat” refers to Harriet Jacobs’ hideout. It is above her grandmother’s shed were she hid from her master, Dr. Flint and other slave-hunters who were after her. The “loophole” part refers to an actual loophole which is a way to avoid something. The shed was a loophole because it was where Jacobs had to suffer through the summer heat, winter coldness, and lack of light to avoid capture by her pursuers. The “retreat” part refers to retreat as a withdraw to a quiet or secluded place. While in hiding Jacobs was forced to limit her physical interactions with others to avoid detection.
1. The audience I envision for Harriet Jacobs’ autobiography is an audience of predominantly colored, free women, residing in the North. I can tell from one of the beginning paragraphs, when Harriet writes:”I do earnestly desire to arouse the women of the North to a realizing sense of the condition of two millions of women at the South, still in bondage, suffering what I suffered, and most of them far worse.”
2. That “There may be sophistry in all this; but the condition of a slave confuses all the principles of morality, and, in fact, renders the practice of them impossible… .”
2. What does Jacobs add to the understanding of the experience of slavery we gleaned from Frederick Douglass?
Harriet Jacobs reveals that women who were slaves were even more oppressed than men. They were oppressed not only by their status as a slave but also by their female gender. In Frederick Douglass’s slave narrative, he reveals how long and risky it was for him to get to freedom. Jacob’s story adds on to this narrative by revealing the condition of women who were born as slaves. In her story, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet writes about how she was not allowed to marry to a man of any status and was often sexually harassed by her white master. She discusses how in order to escape her fate, she took Samuel Sawyer, a free white lawyer, as her lover and got pregnant from him so that her children would be born free. Her later decision to hide in her grandmother ’s shed and not see the sun except for the small hole in the room shows the sacrifices that females had to make in order to escape their fate. Harriet chose to live in that shed for many years because as she stated, “I would have chosen this, rather than my lot as a slave.”
4. What is “the loophole of retreat?”
The loophole of retreat was where Jacobs hid for 7 years. The conditions were filthy, infested with rats, cold. But in her opinion, hiding in those circumstances we’re still better than being a slave and that was all that mattered to her. She wanted control of her own destiny.