Representative Passage

 “When they told me my new-born babe was a girl, my heart was heavier than it had ever been before. Slavery is terrible for men; but it is far more terrible for women. Superadded to the burden common to all, they have wrongs, and sufferings, and mortifications peculiarly their own.”

Page 119

Chapter XIV

Explantation:

            This passage is the reason why she wrote the narrative. It shows her contribution to slavery literature, the emotional abuse and problems of slave women. It shows how she stands out among the other narratives out there, written by men. She shows it from a woman’s perspective and she shows how much more they suffered. That was her purpose for the narrative, to show that pain: the pain of mothers losing their children and of slave girls getting sexually abused. This quote sums it all up. She talks about how slavery was worse for women. Throughout the story, she explains the abuse and mental pain women of slavery went through. While a man’s narrative shows how physical strength gets him through it, Jacobs shows how a woman dealt with slavery.  Within the quote, Jacobs shows that the pain slave women went through was far more difficult than any physical punishment a slave man might have gone through.