The Humiliating Nature of Enslavement, Sexual Savage...

The humiliating nature of enslavement, sexual savage exploitation, and degradation in autobiographical narratives of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Ann Jacobs In the age of Romanticism, slavery and the slave trade provoked sharp criticism and controversy and played a very significant role in shaping public opinion and causing moral opposition to injustice and tyranny. Since Columbus’s journey opened the doors of the Atlantic passage to African Slave Trade, slavery became man’s greatest inhumanity to man â€Å"converting† the victims into labor and economic units of production. The foundation of African culture and civilization stagnated, decayed and almost disappeared within the over three hundred years of the Christian motivated evil of†¦show more content†¦That is why throughout his life, he worked very hard to read and write, attain more knowledge, and share this knowledge with others suffering alongside him as slaves. â€Å"The work of instructing my dear fellow-slaves was the sweetest engagement with which I was ever blessed†¦I succeeded in creating in them a strong desire to learn how to readâ₠¬  (Douglass). However, while Douglass mostly spoke about his black brothers and sisters as one whole – the brotherhood, Jacobs in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself portrayed the wrongs inflicted by slavery in the eyes of women slaves and the sexual tyranny exerted by white slave masters over black women† (Jacobs). Reader, be assured this narrative is no fiction†¦I was born and reared in Slavery†¦I do earnestly desire to arouse the women of the North to realizing sense of the condition of two millions of women at the South, still in bondage, suffering what I suffered, and most of them far worse. (Jacobs) With these words, Harriet Ann Jacobs revealed her personal story of enslavement, sexual savage exploitation, and degradation. In appealing to white women to look at life from her perspective, Jacobs was hoping to portray the cruelty of slavery in the eyes of a woman. She did not talk about severe whipping or punishments like Douglass but rather Christmas which she could not spend with