Harriet Jacobs is the brain behind the creation of this body of sources. She was a female from a minority group from American South. The book therefore was a documentation of her life as a slave and ultimate fight for freedom. She is said to have contributed to the slave narrative genre through the use of techniques of a sentimental novel aimed at addressing gender and race issues. The book is primarily targeted to the white women in the North who seem to not understand the massive evils associated with slavery. She thus made a direct appeal to humanity to extend their influence and knowledge about slavery as an institution.
Harriet Jacobs in the story arguably represents her time and place as she employs vivid details and straightforward language to fully describe the experiences of being a slave. She stated that the Northerners think about slavery as a form of perpetual bondage and do not comprehend the depth of degradation there is to the whole world. Further, she noted that no one could clearly understand how slavery is a ruthless experience unless one has gone through it. The story tells about both hard labor and physical pains that she went through. Evidently, it seems to concentrate on an emotional perspective of slavery and how it shaped her. When writing the story, she had the political taking motive and wrote through her experiences and sufferings to make it apparent to people especially the white women in the North, how slavery is. She wished to arouse the north’s women to realize the sense of the condition of two million on women of South who were still in bondage. She was also determined to make people take action in the antislavery efforts. To make her story much effective she employed suitable language, strategic selection of details and incidents and method of addressing the audience.
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One of the main themes of this story is that of gender. the female gender suffered greatly from slavery compared to men. Apparently, slavery was highly terrible for both women and men but women suffered their own specific tragedies. Both women and girls realized that they did not own their bodies but considered as sexual objects for their masters to satisfy their depraved sexual fantasies upon. The females were taunted and gravely insulted, for instance, Harriet was raped and others had children with their masters. They were further denied the right to get married to men that they would have chosen for themselves and any child born would be a slave irrespective of the father’s position.
The race is another manor theme as brought out by Jacobs. Issues of race are evident throughout the story as the slaves were mainly comprised of the people of color who were considered as being inferior compared to the whites. The slave masters were all whites and regarded themselves as a dominant race while the blacks were considered to be worthless and could only exist better in slavery. The children of the slave owners further learned early about violence and sex and by the time they aged, they would have become indoctrinated into the racial profiling system held by their parents that they were superior while blacks were inferior. For instance, even some of the white people such as Mr. Thorne and Mr. Sands who did not engage in violent activities against slaves, they were racist and callous.
The book has furthered my understanding of the American history in relation to the plight of the slaves. The story deeply illustrates an overarching evil and pervasive depravity of slavery. The reader is taken to the dreary years that Jacob passed while in bondage, the massive exploitation which continued to haunt her day-to-day life; abuses form her master in addition to her ultimate determination to win the freedom for her children and herself. Thus the accounts in this story are a clear picture of the slavery horrors in the American history and how the black Americans struggled for freedom. Some of the experiences that are evident in this story and dominated the American history of slavery include massive violation of rights, deprivation of family ties, little or no food, long working hours in harsh conditions and even lack of medical attention.
