I found the book “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” to be very uplifting. Taking into account my own family’s history (which I am not proud of) with racism, books like this give me motivation to make a difference in this world. The way Jacob fights for her freedom and her children’s freedom is truly heartwarming. Amazing tales of bravery, such as being treated like a piece of meat from Dr. Flint, hiding out in a swamp while being bitten by mosquitoes, getting bitten by a poisonous snake, being put in a tight space and staying there for seven years, teaching others to read knowing the consequences if she gets caught will be death, having to consistently worry about whether her master will find where she has been hiding for all these years and having the fear she might never see her children again show us how much strength she had.
A paragraph in Chapter 23 caught my attention. They were talking about Benny being bitten by a dog. The lines read, “As Mrs. Flint went out, Sally told her the reason Benny was lame was, that a dog had bitten him. ‘I’m glad of it,’ replied she. ‘I wish he had killed him. It would be good news to send to his mother. Her day will come. The dogs will grab her yet.’ With these Christian words she and her husband departed, and, to my great satisfaction, returned no more.”
It is interesting how Jacobs says this. Even though Mrs. Flint is a slave owner, she is still considered a stout Christian. Christians are supposed to be kindhearted, meek, humble, peace keeping, and riotous. Mrs. Flint is none of this. Even though Mrs. Flint’s society sees her as a Christian Jacobs doesn’t. I think she writes this to get the attention of the Northern women to see how awful society has become in the south. For example, Mrs. Flint’s take on Christianity, goes against the beliefs of northerners, who think that slave ownership is radically anti-Christian.
The entire paragraph turns out to be an attempt of sorts to get the message out to the northern women (anti-slave). I know if I was a Northern woman this paragraph would catch my attention. I enjoyed the ending of the book knowing that see became free after all she went through. Unfortunately for others it was not so much a happy ending.