Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl – Huashan Ji

One of the main themes of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is the suffering of female slaves during slavery. Comparing to Douglass’s An American Slave, Jacobs took a more emotional and sentimental approach when writing her essays. She portrays a female slave, who is threaten by the aggression of men, struggling to live and achieve freedom. Besides working long hours in the plantation like all slaves, female slaves were constantly under the fear of getting sexually abused by slave owners at the time. Jacobs, just like any other female slaves, dying to find protections for themselves. Jacobs mentions that after she ran away from the plantation, she spent almost seven years hiding in an attic at her grandma’s. This novel has opened more perspectives towards slavery for me. Prior to reading this story, though I was familiar with things like gender inequality and rape that occurred during slavery, I never had a chance to read anything like Life of a Slave Girl to learn more about them. One of the most unforgettable quotes from this novel is “slavery is terrible for men; but it is far more terrible for women,” which in my opinion sums up the center idea the author tries to convey. While Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs took different approaches when documenting their experience during slavery, they both hold the intention of pushing the abolishment movement forward. They both thought that it was necessary to write so people can be convinced that slavery needs to be eliminated. Fortunately, many people were influenced positively by both essays.

While slavery was abolished 150 years ago, different forms of contemporary slavery still take place in our society today. Human trafficking, forced sex labor, forced child labor are only some examples of critical Human Right issue that are going on today. In fact, according to the International Labour Organization, there are still over 40 million people are in some form of slavery today. It is our responsibility to demand and fight for equality and justice for every human being of this world.