Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl’ is a powerful and compelling story of Harriet Jacobs whose dauntless spirit and faith carried her from a life of servitude and degradation in North Carolina to liberty and reunion with her children in the North. This is one of the few slave narratives written by a woman. Jacobs writes frankly of the horrors she suffered as a slave, her eventual escape after several unsuccessful attempts, and her seven years in self-imposed exile, hiding in a coffin-like ‘garret’ attached to her grandmother’s porch.
Slavery is a terrible thing, but it is far more terrible and harrowing for women than for men. Harriet Jacobs was owned by a brutal master who beat his slaves regularly and subjected them to indignations that were far worse. Jacobs eventually escaped her master and moved to a northern state. Though she was unable to take her children with her at the time they were later reunited.