Journal 36

Nika Bogoslovsky
11/23/07
Jacobs

“Why does a slave ever love? Why allow the tendrils of the heart to twine around objects which may at any moment be wrenched away by the hand of violence?”

Summary:

This is a chapter in Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl about her first love with a carpenter whom had already gained his freedom. She discusses how hard it was for them to be together since she was still a slave.

Response:

As we know, Jacobs and this boy do not end up together because he cannot afford her freedom and her masters don’t permit it. What I think she is trying to relay to her audience is that she not only has to suffer from a broken heart, like any average woman might, but she has to suffer from one and the fact that she is not free. It’s because she is a slave that she can’t be with her carpenter and the reason for her broken heart. In class, we were discussing what Jacobs’s was trying to get across to her audience and I think, at least with this chapter, she’s trying to make her audience realize the depth of this awful situation. Being a female audience, most could relate with a broken heart, even become wrapped up in the romance, but few could understand the additional pain of slavery and that her freedom prevents her from what every human does naturally: love. As a slave, she already has nothing but she lets us know that with this broken heart she is stripped from her basic human instincts.