Blog Entry #6

In "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl", Harriet Jacobs describes the events of her life as a female slave. At her time in society, being both female and a slave put her in the very bottom of the lowest possible social class. This factor was something that defined the choices she made in her life and sadly for Harriet lead her to what became "failures". An example of this is when she is taken advantage of by her Master, Mr. Flint, and has his child. Since she is his property, Flint is able to do whatever he wants with her, more specifically he is allowed to rape her and take advantage of her as he pleases. Since Harriet wanted to get married to a freed black man and was not allowed to by Mr. Flint's choice (also a failure), my guess is that this made things worse for her because of Flint's jealousy. Unsurprisingly, Harriet becomes pregnant with a child of Flint's, and poor Harriet struggles with this fact "I shuddered to think of being a mother of children that should be owned by my old tyrant" (778). This is something that Harriet obviously did not want to happen in her life, but because of her position in society and being a woman, she had no choice. "I wanted to confess to her that I was no longer worthy of her love; but I could not utter the dreaded words" (778). We know that Harriet feels like this is a failure in her life because despite her close relationship with her grandmother, she is too ashamed to give word to her, and is so uneasy about her dignity and reputation. "My relatives would hear of it, I felt wretched...My self respect was gone!...And now, how humiliated I felt!" (778). Harriet's choices were effected negatively in society because as a slave girl, she didn't even have choices. This lack of respect, freedom and self-ownership takes everything out of her hands and puts them into her owners, which in the end leads to failures because she had no control over her life or what might happen to it.