incidents 1:

Linda Brent. Harriet Jacobs.  Go by either name and a reader can find an inside look at the truth and hardships of slavery, especially for women during this time period. But more particularly than just hardships, Jacobs' style of writing conveys a closer look about the actuality of the power between whites and blacks, without claiming that her people were stepped on to the point of abandoning their dreams of freedom. It is striking to read a work written by a slave that places blame not on inability to fight back due to harsh laws and codes from slave holders, but also to the sheer ignorance that many blacks were living in. Because of the stories of poverty and toil that slave owners create for their slaves, many thought it would not be worth while, "to exchange slavery for such a hard  kind of freedom"(43). Jacobs goes on to tell stories of how a woman thought that, "America was governed by a queen to which the president was a subordinate"(45). The ignorance of the people as a whole is shocking, due to no fault of their own, but rather due to the painstaking efforts made by the slave holders to place false views of freedom in their slaves' minds. Jacobs' style of cutting straight to the truth, without emotions to distract from the information she conveys about slaver also sheds new light on the harsh punishments distributed on the slaves. They were jailed, they were hung so scalding fat would drip on to their bare skin. Slaves were murdered blatantly, whipped without clothes, and bloodhounds would literally rip the flesh from their bodies. Most surprising is that of the punishments that women slave holders inflicted on their slaves. Some of the women masters whipped more cruelly than the the men, and would sell slaves across the coast to split apart families. Jacobs' emotionless style of writing reveals a surprising, and harsh reality to slavery that was otherwise unknown.