Triumphs in the Life of a Slave Girl

Anderson 1
Jennifer Anderson
Mrs. Fields
English 1010, Block 2
7 April 2003
Triumphs in the Life of a Former Slave Girl
In writing Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs’s goal is to appeal
to an audience who has never faced or feared severe oppression, nor could ever
completely understand. With this task in mind, she creates a narrative that replaces the
cliché of happy southern plantation life with the trials of a malcontent slave girl. Certain
that her audience is unable to relate to the hardships she faced as slave in the early 1800’s,
Jacobs helps her readers comprehend her struggle by directly addressing them in her text,
using stark comparisons between her life and theirs, as well as bringing to life the vivid
details of her existence as a slave girl.
Harriet Jacobs acknowledges that all people have the same basic emotions and
directs comments to her reader that invoke those feelings so the person can better identify
with her situa...