Harriet Ann Jacobs
Harriet Ann Jacobs
Harriet Ann Jacobswas an African-American writer who escaped from slavery and was later freed. She became an abolitionist speaker and reformer. Jacobs wrote an autobiographical novel, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, first serialized in a newspaper and published as a book in 1861 under the pseudonym Linda Brent. It was a reworking of the genres of slave narrative and sentimental novel, and was one of the first books to address the struggle for freedom by female slaves,...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
CountryUnited States of America
But I now entered on my fifteenth year - a sad epoch in the life of a slave girl. My master began to whisper foul words in my ear. Young as I was, I could not remain ignorant of their import
DURING the first years of my service in Dr. Flint's family, I was accustomed to share some indulgences with the children of my mistress
If a slave is unwilling to go with his new master, he is whipped, or locked up in jail, until he consents to go, and promises not to run away during the year.
If you want to be fully convinced of the abominations of slavery, go on a southern plantation, and call yourself a negro trader. Then there will be no concealment; and you will see and hear things that will seem to you impossible among human beings with immortal souls.
Southern women often marry a man knowing that he is the father of many little slaves. They do not trouble themselves about it.
The slave girl is reared in an atmosphere of licentiousness and fear.
When I was nearly twelve years old, my kind mistress sickened and died.
When my babe was born, they said it was premature. It weighed only four pounds; but God let it live.
I WAS born a slave; but I never knew it till six years of happy childhood had passed away
Every where the years bring to all enough of sin and sorrow; but in slavery the very dawn of life is darkened by these shadows
There must be sophistry in all this; but the condition of a slave confuses all principles of morality, and, in fact, renders the practice of them impossible.
Dr. Flint had sworn that he would make me suffer, to my last day, for this new crime against him, as he called it; and as long as he had me in his power he kept his word
I was ordered to go for flowers, that my mistress's house might be decorated for an evening party. I spent the day gathering flowers and weaving them into festoons, while the dead body of my father was lying within a mile of me. What cared my owners for that? he was merely a piece of property. Moreover, they thought he had spoiled his children, by teaching them to feel that they were human beings. This was blasphemous doctrine for a slave to teach; presumptuous in him, and dangerous to the masters.
The war of my life had begun; and though one of God's most powerless creatures, I resolved never to be conquered.