Position Paper: Harriet Jacobs
Harriet Jacobs is widely known for her feminist stand and courage to educate women with respect to freeing themselves from any form of slavery (Sherman 168). Harriet Jacobs powerfully speaks to her readers by offering description on the brutalities of slavery and the manner in which beauty lives can be destroyed by slave owners. Jacobs’s main agenda was to educate her readers and specifically women as her audience from the north region. AS though the readers have no experience or exposure to the pain experienced by slaves she offers detailed samples of the general lives of these slaves thus provoking a rather an incredible range of emotions. Jacob utilizes a number of well-developed techniques in her work to evoke emotions and to portray sense in every detail that she gives and she reaches her audience fully. Despite the fact that she is highly criticized for being a feminist she focuses on her audience and the issues that concern them fully. Jacobs work is unique as it fully overcomes the male spirited slave description genre in its customized viewpoint and particularly its emphasis on sexual mistreatment of the female slave (Sherman 170). Slavery is actually dreadful for men but it is more evil for women. Harriet Jacobs writing is intended to awaken sympathy by highlight facts while restoring a feeling of concern for all the enslaved women.
In my opinion, Jacobs work is particularly beneficial and her writing was bold and daring. Her work is to encourage not to encourage sympathy as she notes ‘’I do it to spark a blaze of sympathy in your emotions for my sisters who are still in bondage’’ (Sherman 170). Despite having to work in an environment that is dominated by men she never abandoned her feminist focus. Slavery according to Jacobs view is more direful for the female gender because, in addition to the challenges and brutalities that men endure under slavery, women are bound to bear the extra torment of being strained and withdraw from their children. To make this pain more concrete and humiliating, enslaved women were in most cases utilizes as bearers by being forced to give birth to more children in order to raise the stock for their bosses but never given a chance to be there for them (Jacobs 7). Such suffering is never ensured by a male since lust is subjected to female slaves who in addition to satisfying their desires are forced to bear offspring’s that they cannot afford to offer decent living (Jacobs 7).
The domination of male gender had in most cases hindered most women writers from addressing some of the most pressing issues in general (Sherman 172). In that, the focus was mainly to try and avoid criticism which for Jacobs was not the case. She offers compelling advice and illustration to her women audience. In that, her subject of slavery was not just grounded on movement but other aspects in life such as marriage which mainly restrains individuals from achieving their best and focusing on self-growth. She emphasizes the importance of women and how domination should never be encouraged since there is no one gender that is primarily superior to another. She, therefore, encourages them to work beyond the set limitations and to achieve higher by freeing themselves (Jacobs 11).
In summing up, I do agree that slavery is not the restriction to the movement since other aspects of life have always restrained people from being achievers. Based on the male domination women are the most affected by such aspects of life. Her feminist stand is highly essential in empowering women as well as all those that might be restrained in a certain situation, hindering their capability to work efficiently.
References
Jacobs, Harriet A. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. , 2009. Print.
Sarah Way Sherman. Moral Experience in Harriet Jacobs's "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl". NWSA Journal, Vol. 2, No. 2 (Spring, 1990), pp. 167-185. The Johns Hopkins University Press http://www.jstor.org/stable/4316015
