Bonus Blog: Incidents

         During the era of legal bondage in the United States, slaves were viewed with a very distinct and general stigma. This stigma was most often seen in the form of inferiority, especially unintelligence. In Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs combats this stigma with eloquent diction and vivid adjectives. When describing her master, she uses words such as, “contrived,” “blandest,” and “blighted” (776). When depicting the painful effects of slavery in her everyday life, Jacobs employed “constrained,” “abyss,” and “deliberate” (776-777). With certainty, many college students might not know the meanings of these words, let alone utilize them in their quotidian speech. Reading articulate designations such as these would have been surprising even to abolitionists and former slaves, in addition to shocking and almost unbelievable to slaves and slaveholders. What a rude awakening it would have been, to Jacobs’ former owners, to read her graphic and direct illustrations of them.

            Jacob’s also dedicates several sections reflecting upon her mental state at that time. After her master told her that he would build her a secluded home of her own, Jacobs firmly stated that she would “rather toil on the plantation from dawn till dark; I had rather live and die in jail, than drag on, from day to day, through such a living death” (776). Through her earnest and painstaking descriptions, Jacobs’ was able to show that she was more than just a toiling slave, lacking the brainpower to understand what she was suffering through and act to challenge it.