Texts by Harriet Jacobs

• Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

Resources about Harriet Jacobs

1. International Information Programs, “Outline of American Literature” revised edition. Chapter 4, The Romantic Period, 1820-1960, Fiction. Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896). Dec 2006http://usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/oal/lit4.htm
Harriet Jacobs was a slave born in North Carolina. Her mistress taught her to read and write. After her mistress died, she was sold to another white master who she resisted to have sexual relations with. She ended up with a white lover whom she had two children. Due to her compulsive owners treatment, she ran away. Jacobs spent about seven years hiding in her grandmother’s attic, only peeking through holes she drilled to see what her children were doing. Surprisingly, she was hiding in her master’s hometown only after starting a rumor that she had run off to the North. Eventually, she ran off to the North where she meant Amy Post. Post suggested that she write her autobiography. Harriet published Incident in the Life of a Slave Girl under the name Linda Brent in 1861. This book condemns the sexual exploitation of black slave women.
The purpose of this website is to provide information on American literature. I’ve learned about a piece of history in just reading from this website. This site lists a number of novelists of the American history. The summation on Harriet Jacobs’s background tells me that her life situation helped her write about the experience she had as a slave. This site is credible because it delivers information about current U.S. foreign policy about the American life and culture. It provides information related to conventional accounts of past history. This in turn helps us as a society abstract the ideas to help us in our decision making and views about different issues. A couple of examples would be human right issues and democracy. - NatalieT

2. “People and Event: Harriet Jacobs.” 22 June 2007. < http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2923.html >.
This informational page off of the PBS official website gives biographical information about Harriet Jacobs, an African American slave who lived during the nineteenth century, in addition to some historical information about the time period in general. Of all her insufferable trials as a slave, the most shocking seem to be the many sexual advances made by her masters, of which she refused and later wrote. The article states, “It was not Harriet Jacob's nature to give up without a fight. Born into slavery, Harriet Jacobs would thwart repeated sexual advancements made by her master for years, then run away to the North. She would later publish an account of her anguished life in her autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.” This became her self-defining piece for the rest of American, as well as piece that provided one of the first in-depth, realistic, unapologetic, non-propagandizing depictions of what slave life was actually like. The article goes on to mention her post-war efforts in regards to slavery, stating that “Harriet was actively involved with the abolition movement before the launch of the Civil War. During the war she used her celebrity to raise money for black refugees. After the war she worked to improve the conditions of the recently-freed slaves.” I found this reference very credible, reliable, and informative. It helped me get a good start on the life of Harriet Jacobs, and the times in which she lived.

3. Grun, Bernard. "Timeline of Events." http://xroads.virginia.edu. 14 Feb. 2004. University of Virginia. 23 June 2007 <http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/JACOBS/hj-timeline.htm>.
The main purpose of this website is to offer information on the life and works of Harriet Jacobs. It also has a timeline of the major events in her life. She is an important person to know about because she herself was a slave. Her writings are a first hand experience about slavery. This makes her writings critical to an understanding of the literary period. This resource is helpful in reading and interpreting the author, texts, and themes because it offers links to other websites for more information. This is a credible website because the author is clearly indicated. The source is from a reputable site, the University of Virginia.

4. “Harriet Ann Jacobs”. Wikipedia. 19 May 2008 Wikipedia Foundation, Inc. 10 June 2008 < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriet_Ann_Jacobs >. The main point of this website is to give information to the public for free. In his particular section it gives information on the author Harriet Ann Jacobs. It goes into detail about her life as a slave and how that influenced her writing. Harriet Ann Jacobs is important to the time period because during this time authors were beginning to use very vivid emotion in their writing and her book “Incidents in the Life of the Slave Girl” has very moving emotion in it that helped the world to understand what slaves, particularly females, had to go through. When she first began writing the accounts of her experiences with her slave master they were so horrific that public newspapers had to stop printing them. It was hard for people to face the truth but it was also necessary, and this period began to make people do so. This website is credible because it has been recently updated, it is copyrighted, and it is also a .org website meaning that is no meant to make a profit from its readers, but is meant to give information. 5. "Harriet A. Jacobs." Encyclopedia of World Biography, 2nd ed. 17 Vols. Gale Research, 1998. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Gale, 2008. <http://galenet.galegroup.com.ezp.mc.maricopa.edu/servlet/BioRC >. This website gives a detailed background into the life of Harriet Ann Jacobs. It tells about her life as a slave and gives readers a better understanding to why her writing contains so much emotion and why she fits into the romantic period. This website is credible because it gives detailed background as to where it got its information and is easily proved.

5. "Jacobs, Harriet A. (1813-1897)." Encyclopedia of World Biography. Thomson Gale, 1998. NA. Academic OneFile. Gale. Mesa Community College. 4 June 2009
http://find.galegroup.com.ezp.mc.maricopa.edu/itx/start.do?prodId=AONE.
This article from the Encyclopedia of World Biography tells the life story of Harriet Jacobs along with some history of important family members such as her parents and Grandmother. This author is important to know from this literary period because her
critique is very unique. Through Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Harriet made a plea to the women of the North in hopes that they would see the horrors of slavery and encourage their husbands to act out against it. It is critical to see the hidden messages and feminist position Harriet takes in her narrative to understand how the critique of slavery worked. Harriet’s critique on slavery was not only an account of her life it was a plea to all women to make a stand. This source was helpful in understanding the text because it basically listed the important events/people in Harriet’s life and left out all conversations that were included in the narrative making it was easy to follow. It was also helpful in understanding the author to know slightly more about her family and reemphasize the major events in her life. Additionally this source was an extra tool to see where Harriet creates her identity from and visualize the setting in which Harriet hides for seven long years. This source is credible because it came out of a known Encyclopedia series from an esteemed publisher.

6. “Harriet Jacobs: Selected Writings and Correspondence”. http://www.yale.edu/glc/harriet/index.htm

The main purpose of this website is to provide the reader with a brief background on Harriet Jacobs. This site also includes a collection of 15 documents composed by Jacobs herself. It also provides a brief resource guide and a link to the Gilder Lehrman Center which studies slavery, resistance and abolition. In the introduction, the site explains that Jacobs is best known for her autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, recalling and telling the events she faced in her lifetime. She was an abolitionist who actively worked for the reform movement of the Negroes. Under the documents tab, there are 15 letters, advertisements, and articles written by Jacobs, each accompanied with correspondence. Jacobs is an important person to know and read she lived 29 years a slave and was actually able to write down her daily accounts. It was uncommon for a slave, especially a woman, to be literate and write their tale of their enslavement. She is remarkable woman who deserves to be well known. The documents included in this website were amazing and offer a first-hand account of Jacob’s life and her mind. It is a credible website.

7. Washington, Margaret. "'From motives of delicacy': sexuality and morality in the narratives of Sojourner Truth and Harriet Jacobs." The Journal of African American History 92.1 (Wntr 2007): 57(17). General OneFile. Gale. Mesa Community College. 2 July 2009
<http://find.galegroup.com.ezp.mc.maricopa.edu/itx/start.do?prodId=ITOF>. The purpose of this article is to describe the author Harriet Jacob’s. She was formerly a slave and she shared her life story in a book. The information contained in the book was about her however, when the book was published the author named on the title page was Lydia Maria Child. Jacob’s also wrote another story where she used a pseudonym “Linda Brent.” The article gives background information of Harriet. She was from North Carolina in 1918 and she escaped slavery. Jacob lost her parents at the age of 12 and she became property of a 3 year old child. The authors life is explained in the article as well as her seven year wait until she finally fled slavery. This is an important author during the romantic period because she was actually a slave that was able to escape and write about her life to make others aware of her situation and the situation of others. This resource was helpful in refreshing my memory on slavery and learning how a slave was able to escape and write about her life experiences. This is a credible resource because it was found on the MCC electronic resources website.