Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl – Evanthia Peikidou

  Reading Harriet Jacob’s, Incident in the Life if a Slave Girl, I realized that it is the first time I read what a woman is going through in slavery. I have seen movies, or read texts but from men slaves. I tried to compare between what Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacob has been through, trying to decide what might be worse, being a male or female slave, but both of them are awful. The moment Harriet escaped her Master and she was hidden in grandmother’s roof I thought that she was almost free, but then she was 7 years in this small space, in the winters where it is cold, in the summers where it is extra hot, in the rain. And there is where I understand that she preferred to leave under all these circumstances for 7 years, than leaving with her Master. Both readings reveal how and why both genders are equally desperate to escape slavery. I feel that it is also very different to read actual facts from people, and read about their feelings and emotions at any event that happened to them. The only thing that can come to mind when thinking what the difference between this two readings might be, is that Harriet Jacob’s language is more casual than Frederick Douglass’s, but they both wanted to tell their story in order to stop slavery.

      When searching the internet for contemporary slavery, I was expecting on how even today, so many years after slavery was abolished,people still  discriminate black people because of their skin color, which of course it was there, but I also came across something else that didn’t even have in mind (for some reason) as a slavery,is human trafficking. Which makes sense, buying and selling people is slavery. Another form of modern slavery, is forced and early marriage, which also makes sense. When there are people and children, that are forced to marry someone for whatever reason, and not being able to deny it, that is slavery. It might not be exactly as it was then, it might be illegal, but it is happening today.