In four pages this paper discusses how the plantation economy benefit from slave women's work in this consideration of Harriet Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Two sources are cited in the bibliography.
Name of Research Paper File: D0_GSJacobs.rtf
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This book is her autobiography, which is filled with one memory after another showing the hardships of her own life as well as the plight of all slave women.
Although her childhood was a pleasant one, the death of her mother and her mothers mistress meant her ownership transferred to Dr. James Norcom (Dr. Flint in the novel),
a man who would bring much misery into her life (PBS Online). Her life took many horrible turns as she spent years dodging the sexual pursuits of Dr. Norcom
and was even unable to see her own children for long periods of time (PBS Online). However, the autobiography also
reveals the work which the slave women did, in the course of their days both in terms of their own homes and families as well as the work they performed
for their masters. Jacobs tells about the horrors she and others endured while working on the Dr.s plantation. They were overworked, starved, dehumanized, beat, burned, flogged and more
(Jacobs). This book highlights the horrors of slavery, while also making a strong commentary on how such horrors damaged white society as well, many of which had important economic
ramifications (Jacobs). Consider all of the white women who would discover their husbands having affairs with slave women, or the
men who bore children with slave women but because of societal pressures were unable to properly acknowledge them (Jacobs). Furthermore, there were endless numbers of cases of poor white
workers living in poverty and therefore necessarily had to compete for work with unpaid labor - clearly a devastating reality which kept many white families in poverty (Jacobs).