Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

In what ways are earlier representations of white slave masters similar and/or different to contemperory representations?

the ways of the writers in early texts and contemporary texts

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Jacob's story is representative of the lives of women during the 1800's in America. Her novel not only cites the actions and misuse of female slaves, but also works in a contemporary setting to explain the issues black women have been dealing with since. the best explanation I found for this is found below;

"Harriet Jacobs's autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861), is the most widely-read female antebellum slave narrative. In recounting her life experiences before she was freed, Jacobs offered her contemporary readers a startlingly realistic portrayal of her sexual history while a slave. Although several male authors of slave narratives had referred to the victimization of enslaved African American women by white men, none had addressed the subject as directly as Jacobs finally chose to. She not only documented the sexual abuse she suffered, but also explained how she had devised a way to use her sexuality as a means of avoiding exploitation by her master. Risking her reputation in the disclosure of such intimate details, Jacobs appealed to a northern female readership that might sympathize with the plight of a southern mother in bondage. Indeed, throughout her narrative, Jacobs focuses on the importance of family and motherhood. She details the strain of being separated from her grandmother and two children during her seven years in hiding, and afterwards in New York and Boston, when she lacked the means to free her daughter. As her biographer Jean Fagan Yellin has noted, Jacobs's slave narrative is similar to other narratives in its story of struggle, survival, and ultimately freedom. Yet she also reworks the male-centered slave narrative genre to accommodate issues of motherhood and sexuality. By confronting directly the cruel realities that plagued black women in the nineteenth century, Jacobs's work occupies a significant place in American literary tradition."

Source(s)

http://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/jacobs/summary.html