Harriett Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself

Terry Novak (Johnson and Wales University)
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Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself

 is a slave narrative that has come to represent the particular horrors of life for the slave woman of the nineteenth century American South. Harriet Ann Jacobs, writing under anonymity, reveals several themes of her life in the text; these themes in turn become the themes of the text itself: sexual abuse, ownership of the black female slave by the white male slaveholder, the experience of the tragic mulatto, the deep bonds of family in the African-American community, motherhood, religious faith, and friendship between black and white women. Although 

Incidents

 is Jacobs’s own story, all of the characters’ names, including her own, are changed in the book. Jacobs gives herself the name Linda Brent, which is also the name…

2577 words

Citation: Novak, Terry. "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 16 July 2002; last revised 10 August 2020. [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=4465, accessed 19 March 2024.]

4465 Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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