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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Who do you think Jacobs envisions as the audience for her autobiography? How can you tell?
She envisions women in the north as her audience. She expresses her “earnest desire to arouse the women of the north” to what’s happening to the women in the south. Also, the fourth paragraph starts with “But, O, ye happy women”, she is confessing her affair with the white unmarried man and telling them why she does it.
What does Jacobs add to the understanding of the experience of slavery we gleaned from Frederick Douglass?
Jacobs expresses the tragedy of slavery from a female’s perspective during the time period. She entices the audience by targeting white females in particular by explaining the horrific experiences of slavery. Compared to Douglass, Jacobs describes and views the acts of slavery as inhumane in addition to the fear of being sexually assaulted. While Douglass goes to the side of describing the barbaric events in specific, Jacobs goes off the tantrum of showing the mistreatment of conduct in a proprietary and sexual manner.
What does Jacobs add to the understanding of the experience of slavery we gleaned from Frederick Douglass?
Jacobs adds the female perspective to the slave narrative. Throughout the text, Jacobs tells the audience the way her life was decided due to being a woman and how she used it to her advantage. She decides to have children with a white man who was not her master. This allowed her a certain degree of protection from her master, but she could not see her children after she escaped from slavery. It is always a great loss when children are separated from their mother and Jacobs had to endure it for seven years, all while looking at them through a peephole! Jacobs speaks of her experiences and caters to the white women of the North in hopes of their support. She stresses the position she was in as a black female in the south that did not have any freedoms nor any guarantee of seeing her children.
I completely agree with you, I would only add that Jacobs’ pesperctive gives us more detail about how slavery affected her as a mother. While Douglass gives us a more detailed understanding about what he went through as son of a slave woman. Both mother and children suffer tremendously in different ways, and Jacobs shows how as a mother she had to sacrifice so much for herself and her children as well. Being separated from them while she spent 7 years hiding, she found great consolation in the hole she was able to make to see his children and hear thier voices.
How does Jacobs attempt to control her own destiny?
Jacobs attempts to control her own destiny by choosing a partner to bare her children. She knew there was no way she would be able to have children with another slave as it was forbidden. Jacobs also didn’t want her master to be the one to do so for the safety of her children. Willingly though, decides to let the neighbor who was very interested from the start and made the choice to have the opportunity with him. This was her way of creating her destiny, by not having to be forced by her master and by baring children from another white male who knew they would be protected from slavery. She took matters into her own hands not just as a slave but as a women with a natural right.
2. What does Jacobs add to the understanding of the experience of slavery we gleaned from Frederick Douglass?
Frederick Douglass gives us an insight to slavery, which is still useful, but his perspective shows the adversities of African-American Males. Harriet Jacobs, on the contrary, shows us the perspective of a female slave. Although they share many of the same struggles, being a female is quite different. Jacobs expresses her fear of being raped by her master, something that Douglas never has to go through… not to say that he does not live in fear, but fear of being sexually molested is less common amongst males.
What is “the loophole of retreat?”
The loophole of retreat describes the space where Jacobs spent 7 years of her life in hiding after she fled her life of slavery. It was the closet thing to freedom for her and she stayed in this pace where she eventually carved a peephole to catch rare glimpses of life on the outside and that of her children.
2. What does Jacobs add to the understanding of the experience of slavery we gleaned from Frederick Douglass?
The narrative of Frederick Douglass gives a full in depth analysis of the hardships of enduring slave life. Harriet Jacobs in “Incidents in the life of a slave girl” addresses a whole other world of struggles of those enslaved in this period. Jacobs depicted what Douglass could not capture, The horrors of the life of enslaved women. Contrary to Douglas’s encounters, women also had to deal with sexual torture. Whether it be constant rape so that the owners could own more slave children, or even being forced into the sex trade and prostitution.
What does Jacobs add to the understanding of the experience of slavery we gleaned from Frederick Douglass?
In contrast to the readings of Frederick Douglass ,we as the readers get to see what slavery was like from a female perspective .Jacobs during her narrative , talks about her experience as female slave . Furthermore , she explains her hardship she encountered such as the several sexual abuse she received from her master , and physical and mental abuse.
Who do you think Jacobs envisions as the audience for her autobiography? How can you tell?
Jacobs wrote her autobiography to shed light on the lives of female slaves specifically and aims to write for woman in the north. She reveals how female slaves are seen as both property and sexually.
4. What is “the loophole of retreat?
For Jacobs “the loophole of retreat” is her way to escape from slavery. It has two connotations, a negative one and positive one. It’s negative in the sense that it is dark and small and no air passes through, she calls it “horrible” and yet it was her best choice against slavery. She was free while being trapped in there and that is how it became her loophole while in retreat.
1. Who do you think Jacobs envisions as the audience for her autobiography? How can you tell?
I believe that Jacobs is envisioning her audience as the African American women of the north. One reason for this is that many African Americans of the south were uneducated and unable to read as well as prohibited from reading if they were kept in slavery from their slave owners. Therefore this story would be for the African Americans of the north who either escaped captivity and learned to read or African Americans who were born in the north and knew how to read so that they could hear her story and learn about the horrors of southern slave life.