1) Harriet Jacobs “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” gives us more insight on the cruelty of slavery, but from the perspective of a slave woman. She explains how she was able to enjoy only 6 years of her life, before slavery and its cruelty took 27 years of her life. In the intro, she has to remind us that she did not exaggerate any part of her narration, and even though some things may sound unbelievable, they really did happen. One part of the narration that struck me was when she mentions that her father and her brother’s mistress called for him at the same time, and he ended up answering his mistress first. This made her father angry, and that brought me back to the discussion on Frederick Douglass where we examined why slaves were separated from their parents by slave owners, and it made sense to me. They did not want slave children to have any connection with their parents so that there will be no form of competition when it came to the attention of these slave children. However, Jacobs mentions that she did not go through a lot of physical abuse from whippings under her master, she still had to suffer physical pain as a result of her hiding for close to 7 years in her “loophole of retreat” for the rest of her life. Harriet Jacobs main inspiration to overcome slavery came from the fear of her children suffering what she suffered, and that brings us back to the love of a mother that was also seen in the narrative of Frederick Douglass. He explains how his mother will walk long miles just to see him, knowing that she might end up in trouble in the hands of her master.
2) Slavery sadly is still an important Human Rights issue in our day, some different forms of modern slavery are human trafficking, and sex trafficking which most of the time is rampant in underdeveloped countries. They occur through threat, fraud, and coercion and due to the desperation of these victims, they fall into the hands of these traffickers as they are vulnerable and easily deceived. Another one is forced child labor which is mostly as a result of poverty, as parents sometimes have no choice than to use children to make a living for the family.
Eunice, You make some wonderful connections between Jacobs and Douglass, particularly in thinking about how familial attachments were seen as threatening to the power of the slave owner. Thanks for these insights!