Description Published in 1861, "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" was one of the first personal narratives by a Slave and one of the few written by a woman.
About the Author Jacobs (1813-97) was a Slave in North Carolina and suffered terribly, along with her family, at th.
Her story is a remarkable testimony to her strength and courage, and an unrelenting attack upon the institution of slavery.
At last she had a chance to escape to the North.
She stayed there for seven years, enduring cold, heat, and a crippling lack of movement, always hoping to catch a glimpse of her children through a crack in the walls as they walked by on the road below her.
Finally, in desperation, she ran away and hid in an uninsulated garret, three feet high at its tallest point with almost no air or light.
Her first attempt at revenge and escape failed: she became the lover of a local unmarried white man and had several children, but even then her master refused to sell her.
Harriet Jacobs\' master started pursuing her when she was fifteen; in disgust she continually refused and avoided him.
Families broken apart; promises of freedom made but never kept; whippings, beatings, and burnings; masters selling their own children - all are recounted with precise detail and a blazing indignation.
Her book is an eloquent recital of the suffering that is slavery.
At that time she was an escaped Slave living in the north, but the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 meant that she could no longer consider being in the northern states a guarantee of freedom or safety. "Slavery is terrible for men, but it is far more terrible for women," Harriet Jacobs wrote in 1861.
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Eventually, she was reunited with her children.
She made several failed attempts to escape before successfully making her way North, though it took years of hiding and slow progress.
Jacobs (1813-97) was a Slave in North Carolina and suffered terribly, along with her family, at the hands of a ruthless owner.
Description Published in 1861, "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" was one of the first personal narratives by a Slave and one of the few written by a woman
