Both Harriet Jacob’s Incidents In The Life of a Slave Girl and Fredrick Douglass’s speech “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” illustrate a perspective that those who haven’t endured slavery cannot ever understand. This perspective is one that shows readers or listeners that they have never been through something as dehumanizing and traumatizing as those who have endured slavery–a way of life that doesn’t let a human feel like they will ever be treated as anything more than property. Slaves are people that are treated like they will never have the right to be a human, which illustrates a mentality that still kills thousands due to racism, discrimination and scapegoating. Both Harriet and Fredrick were strong enough to take a stand against these horrors by telling the truth as to what really went on, from their own perspectives that were painful to even hear or read. The Seneca Falls Declaration is a little different, as it is about women’s rights, predominantly, from a white woman’s perspective.

I have to say that even though it hurts to hear Fredrick’s perspective on an entirely different viewpoint of Independence Day, as a woman, I was much more outraged and touched by Harriet Jacob’s writings that emphasized how especially hard it was to be a female slave. Every single thing she did was a sacrifice–something she did to avoid something worse from happening, often just due to fear that her owner would sexually abuse her to a worse and worse extent than had occurred already. A woman who had to endure torturous labor, her story is touching because it also tells the terror that a woman has to go through in order to maintain her own dignity. This illustrates why The Seneca Falls Declaration is relevant, however, it is only from a white female’s perspective. These white women, although abolitionists, cannot relate to the horrors that slave women had to deal with–as they were women who were treated like nothing but property. The white women complain about things like, “He has taken from her all right in property, even to the wages she earns,” however that’s the least of the problems that enslaved women  have faced–they aren’t even entitled to earing!

The fact that Linda had to fabricate a love for her neighbor just to avoid further sexual abuse from her owner shows the extent an enslaved woman has to go through in order to avoid the worst. She had to put herself in a situation that made her uncomfortable, and made her use her body with another man in order to compensate for an abuse that was not consensual–the only thing worse at this point.

Frederick Douglas’s work is different because he speaks from the perspective of any slave–thirsting for freedom and the ability to feel like he is entitled to feel independence on Independence Day. He thirsts to feel like he lives in a nation that is seen as superior because of how much liberty it grants to its citizens. However, this is true for every single slave, whereas Harriet’s point was that slavery is a hundred times harder for a woman. “Slavery is terrible for men; but it is far more terrible for women. Superadded to the burden common to all, they have wrongs, and sufferings, and mortifications peculiarly their own,” she said in chapter XIV.

There are hundreds of things a woman has to deal with in addition to the problems that Fredrick spoke of. The fear of sexual abuse forced Harriet to tweak every single thing she did in her life– she had to live in an even more debilitating fear. She had to live in the fear of her children being unsafe without her, and her daughter one day being abused the way she has been.

It seemed as though Fredrick’s complaints as a slave were complaints of a system that was botched, however Harriet proved the same point through a heartbreaking story. She used her blood, sweat and tears to explain not just what she wishes she was entitled to, but she forced us to identify even further with details as to her pain and suffering. She didn’t tell us that her life was unfair, she showed us what she went through in order to paint the pictures of injustice in our heads. The way she told this story was absolutely remarkable, and it is no surprise to me that this book was so controversial and unbelievable to thousands.