Free will between slavery and freedom : a study of linda brent in incidents in the life of a slave girl

الملخص EN

Harriet Jacobs was a writer and a reformer.

As a female writer in the nineteenth century, Jacobs was a slave with an agency.

She wrote her narrative as a means of resisting the system of slavery at that time.

Her book Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Written by Herself (1842) reflects upon the exploitation of the black people and the need to change the hierarchal attitude that governs the white-black paradigm.

She was engaged in many abolitionist events and her anti-slavery approach appeared clearly in her writings.

She shares Du Bios ideas about freedom and emancipation and the need for political and cultural change.

Thus, Du Bois's theory provides a framework for her autobiographical novel where she portrays Linda Brent, the main character, a strong-willed lady whose path to freedom came after an agonizing journey.

Despite differences in cultural status and upbringing, both Jacobs and Du Bois go from a subjective representation of a personal experience to an objective statement about the general conditions of black people in slavery, and the discrimination black people face during their lives.

To Jacobs, freedom is a choice a person has to fight for, and a mental process that is accomplished through resistance and protest.

Her strategies of resistance came through three points in the novel; the family, who helped her through her journey; pregnancy and the choice of the father of her kids; and finally motherhood and the promise of a better future for her children.

This paper concludes that Jacobs's novel is a narrative antecedent for slaves' voices and a reclamation of identity after slavery.