Incidents in the Live of a Slave Girl

Incidents in the Live of a Slave Girl
Harriet Jacobs wrote Incidents in the Live of a Slave Girl. This book was written through out Harriet Jacobs’ enslavement, her successful escape, and her life as a free woman in the years of the 1800s. She was born into slavery in North Carolina during 1813. Jacobs’ mistress, Margaret Horniblow, took her in when Jacobs’ mother died. Jacobs’ was only six years old. In 1825 Jacobs mistress dies and is given to Horniblow’s niece who is only five years old.
Jacobs goes through unrelenting sexual harassment during the years she is with her five year old mistress, by Mr. Flint. Mr. Flint is the father of the five year old mistress and Jacobs is around sixteen years old. Jacobs is afraid that sooner or later Mr. Flint will get his way with her, so she decides to have a sexual relationship with the white neighbor Mr. Sands. She then gets pregnant with Benny, by having this love affair with Mr. Sands. Jacobs believe this will lead Mr. Flint to be disgusted with her and sell her, but her plan doesn’t go as she wished it to go. Mr. Flint sends her to work in his plantation to be broken for revenge. Soon after Jacobs gets pregnant once again with Mr. Sands, and has Ellen.
Jacobs then discovers that her two children, Benny and Ellen, are to work in the plantation. When she hears news of this she comes up with a plan to run away. The only problem is that Jacobs is torn in two. She is no longer willing to go through Mr. Flint’s abuse, but she is equally unwilling to abandon her family. Jacobs finally decides she has to run away to give her children and her self a shot at freedom. She knows this will be tremendously hard, but knows that the outcome will weigh out the bad.
Jacobs hopes that Mr. Flint gets the wrong impression that she has ran away to the North, and that he will eventually sell her children. Mr. Flint keeps her children and refuses to sell them, he sees this as a way of revenge for her running away. Mr. Flint eventually gets tired of the children and sells them to Mr. Sands, who gives them to Jacobs’ grandmother.
During these times Jacobs is hiding in the attic of a small shed, in the back yard of her grandmother’s house. The attic of the shed is so small that she cannot sit or stand, this slowly physically disables her. Her only satisfaction that comes out of this is seeing her children through a peephole she made in the tiny attic.
One time Mr. Sands stopped by the grandmother’s house, and Jacobs saw it as an opportunity to talk to him. She asked him to free his children if he won the race for congressmen. After winning he takes his daughter Ellen to Washington, D.C., to look over his newborn daughter. Jacobs is worried that Mr. Sands will not keep his side of the bargain and never free her children.
After seven years of being imprisoned in the small attic Jacobs escapes to the North by boat. Benny remains with the grandmother, and Ellen is reunited with her mother in New York at the age of nine. Jacobs decides to stay in New York with her daughter. Jacobs gets a job as a nursemaid with a family named the Bruce’s. Soon after she needs to flee to Boston because Mr. Flint is still pursing her. There in Boston she is reunited with her son Benny. Time is made short between the reunion because Jacobs has to go to London and care for Mr. Bruce’s daughter. For the first time in her life she feels free from all the racial prejudice.
When Jacobs returns from London Benny moves to California with William, Jacobs’ brother, and Ellen is off in boarding school. Mr. Flint also dies and his daughter continues the hunt for Jacobs. Emily and her husband want to capture and put her in the slave system again. Jacobs goes into hiding and refuses to bought and sold again. Once again she is bought, but this time by her current employer Mrs. Bruce.
I thought this book was really good and interesting. It has been one of the few books that I enjoyed reading. Harriet Jacobs was a strong and brave woman. I admire her for sacrificing all that she did for her children and herself. Going through sexual abuse, racial prejudice, and being away from her family I think made her that much stronger as a woman. Many times her spirit was threatened to be broken, but she prevailed with the help of God.