Enslaved African-American Women

1888 Words8 Pages
Harriet Jacob and Phillis Wheatley, Incident in the Life of a Slave Girl and On Being Brought from Africa to America both present the existential conditions of being a black woman in a patriarchal society. Despite their years span differences both author present different yet unifying views of enslavement in America where black women struggle to reclaim their humanity and seek freedom within their society. For both Harriet and Phillis, both women used literacy as their voice to rise concern for the plight of enslaved African-Americans, more specifically African-American women. For both Harriet Jacob and Phillis Wheatley, their authority comes through narration in establishing the authenticity of their character, which becomes a significant…show more content…
Despite both works being written by a woman, both the poem and narrative are signed off and approved by a male figure. This presents the issue of race and class-based identity and the relationship between black female author and white male editors reflect the issues concerning women’s oppression because of male power and its relation with authorship. On Being Brought from Africa to America, is eight-line monologue divided into three parts with each part increasing in authoritative tone. Wheatley begins her poem praising the divine mercy from bringing her from a “pagan land” to a land where she can learn and seek spiritual redemption. There is a shift of tone in line five, where the narrator, shift from internal reflection to external perception of how people believe blacks skins to be diabolic. There final shift are in the last two line in which she express belief that both black and whites could be save. Furthermore, Wheatley’s form becomes her message. Her poem consists of heroic couplet, which serve to make her argument brief and to the point. Her poem which consist of couplets, consistent rhyme scheme and iambic lines imitates her message which is that was being bought to the new world has educated and redeemed…show more content…
Harriet writes her narrative to inform the readers the extent at which the slave system abuses women but also to evoke sympathy from women, more specially women from the North to act on slaves’ behalf. She establishes this sympathy within the epigraphs written by an unidentified Woman of North Carolina who states, “they [Northerners] have no conception of the depth of degradation involved in that word, SLAVERY; if they had, they would never cease their efforts until so horrible a system was overthrown” (1). Harriet includes this to counteract to emphasize the purpose of the narrative by drawing on the trauma and abused woman endured at the hands of slavery. Before she begins her narrative, Harriet states, “I do earnestly desire to arouse the women of the North to a 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” (2). Through this statement, Harriet stands as a representative of the voice of African-American women slaves refuting the notion of the condition endured by
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