"It's Not What You Say, But How You Say It"

Growing up, my mom always pressed the concept of saying things the way they are meant to mean. For the longest time, I didn't understand what she meant, but looking back on the past, Harriet Jacobs wrote "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" with that motto in mind. Jacobs' intent wasn't to scream at the women reading her novel or even the white men and women soaking in her words. Her intent was to tell a story and hope that her readers would respond to her experience and try to make a change. Jacobs summed up her intent in her preface, where she mentioned "I have not written my experiences in order to attract attention to myself; on the contrary, it would have been more pleasant for me to have been silent about my own history. Neither do I care to excite sympathy for my own sufferings." Instead of reading a book, you are almost talking to the woman herself. She speaks to her audience directly, and in my personal opinion, she reached out to her audience more directly that way. Firstly, Jacobs decided to directly address white women or African American women not involved in slavery directly, "But, O, ye happy women, whose purity has been sheltered from childhood, who have been free to choose the objects of your affection...If slavery had been abolished, I, also, could have married the man of my choice; I could have had a home shielded by the laws, and I should have been spared the painful task of confessing what I am now about to relate." Jacobs is not flirting with big words or hiding her main intent: she is putting into comprehensible words her view on the world, and hoping that her experience and view on slavery will light the fire in free and enslaved women to fight for freedom from oppression. "But 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." In sum, Jacobs wasn't claiming superiority by saying her situation represented the entire population and that she was screaming for a change. Jacobs' easy-going, relatable language choices and diction add a conversational touch to "Incidents" that make it a truly meaningful read. (EXTRA CREDIT)