Essay 2

Humanity Through Liberty

Most slaves in the nineteenth century were very aware of their situation as slaves, and many could not read or write and had little hope of freedom. Harriet Jacobs as a child was oblivious to her status as a slave until she was six years old (Baym and Levine 920). She learned to read and write and became the first known African American woman in the U.S. to write her slave narrative, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (920). Because of what she had been through and witnessing others being treated badly, Jacobs knew that something needed to be done to help other slaves. Harriet Jacobs was using her own experiences in her narrative to convince her audience that slaves should be entitled to liberty by pointing out that they were not allowed to make life choices, lived in constant fear, and were considered property.

When people are not allowed to make life choices, they are not in control of their lives. One life choice that many people make is whom they marry. In Harriet Jacobs’ narrative, she points out that slaves cannot choose whom they marry when she quoted Dr. Flint, the slaveholder, “If you must have a husband, you may take up with one of my slaves” (925).  In other words, Dr. Flint was in control of whom she could marry. This did not sit well with Jacobs because she replied, “Don’t you suppose, sir, that a slave can have some preference about marrying? Do you suppose that all men are alike to her?” (925). This shows that Jacobs felt slaves were entitled to the freedom of choice. Another life choice would be choosing where one lives. In chapter ten, Dr. Flint decides to make a house for Jacobs, thinking that that will bring them closer when “he talked of his intention to give me a home of my own…” (928). When he says “give,” that implies that it is not Jacobs’ choice to choose and make her own home, but that he is in full control of where she lives. Jacobs swore to never enter the house Dr. Flint built for her saying, “I had rather live and die in jail, than drag on, from day to day, through such a living death” (928-9). Jacobs shows that she would rather rot in jail than not be able to make her own life choices.

If a person lives in constant fear, they are uncomfortable and cannot enjoy life. Harriet Jacobs lived in continual fear of being found when she escaped to live in her grandmother’s house. Jacobs points this out when she wrote, “yet I could never go out to breathe God’s free air without trepidation at my heart” (937). In other words, Jacobs could not leave her shed without fear of being recaptured and sold. It also shows that she did not have the freedom to enjoy her life; she had to live alone in a hovel. She goes on to say, “I could not think it was a right state of things in any civilized country” (937). This means that the inability to breathe the outside air due to fear is inhumane and uncivilized. When a person lives in these conditions, they are not comfortable and are obviously not enjoying life. Even after Dr. Flint died, Jacobs’ fear did not go away. She points out that “[h]e had threatened my grandmother that his heirs should hold me in slavery after he was gone; that I should never be free so long as a child of his survived” (937). His own children were instructed to keep her as a slave “because Mrs. Flint openly declared that her daughter could not afford to lose so valuable a slave as I was” (937). Since Jacobs was so valuable, she would never be free therefore could never be comfortable or enjoy her life.

During the nineteenth century, many slaveholders felt that slaves were not entitled to liberty because they did not consider slaves human. Domesticated animals cannot make informed choices for themselves, are dependent upon their owners, and are property of humans. So, they would rely on their owners to make decisions for them. Quite a lot of slaveholders had a paternalistic view on slavery. They felt that slaves could not do anything for themselves. However, the fact that Jacobs wrote this narrative is an example of an intelligent human. She made logical decisions just like any other human; Jacobs learned to read and write as well as, if not better than, many white people of the time. She proves that slaves were entitled to liberty because they were human.

When a person is property of someone else, they are no longer valued as a human. Harriet Jacobs’ narrative is pointing out that slaves deserve liberty by showing how they were property of slaveholders. When Jacobs’ mother’s slaveholder died, Jacobs wrote, “I could not help having some hopes that she had left me free…But alas! we all know that the memory of a faithful slave does not avail much to save her children from the auction block” (923). This shows that Jacobs felt that she should have been freed because her mother was a faithful slave. Instead she was “bequeathed…to [the slaveholder’s] sister’s daughter, a child of five years old” (923). It was like the family was passing down a painting or an armchair. She was not valued as a human. Another way that Jacobs shows that slaves should not be property is when she wrote “though only ten years old, seven hundred and twenty dollars were paid for [her uncle]” (922). How can someone put a value on human life? He was sold like cattle are. Jacobs is using an emotional appeal in both situations to entice her readers, people in the North, to see that slaves are humans and should be valued as such. The knowledge of a ten-year-old being sold and taken away from his mother would affect women of the North emotionally because they would not want their child to be taken away at such a young age.

Harriet Jacobs wrote Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl to convince her audience, the people in the North, that slaves were entitled to liberty. Her narrative was effective because she used her personal experiences as a slave to show her audience how truly terrible slavery was. This was important not only to inform people of nineteenth century America of the evils of slavery, but also to convince others to make change.

Works Cited

Baym, Nina and Robert S. Levine. “Harriet Jacobs.” The Norton Anthology of American Literature. 8^th ed. Vol. B. New York: W. W. Norton, 2012. pp 920-921.

Jacobs, Harriet. “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.” The Norton Anthology of American Literature. 8^th ed. Vol. B. New York: W. W. Norton, 2012. pp 921-942.