Other Aspects of a Slave Narrative found in "Incidents"

All slave narratives had the same basic motivation: an end to slavery. Slave writers were urged by white abolitionists to follow distinct guidelines so that they could produce what they considered to be their most powerful weapon against slavery. They were encouraged to give accurate and explicit details of their personal experiences as a slave, stressing the cruelty and suffering inflicted upon them by their brutal masters. In "Incidents" Jacobs does this and more. Not only did she accurately portray the physical and mental anguish of her own experience, she also shares many "incidents" that she witnessed of other slaves, male and female.

Pro-slave writers tried to discredit these autobiographical slave narratives by saying that it was impossible for the stories to be written by slaves because a slave could neither read nor write. This led to the need for another element to be included in the slave narrative; that of a sort of justification. An explanation of how/why the slave had become educated enough to relay their own experiences themselves in print. Jacobs does this in the Preface and in chapter one of "Incidents" when she explains that after her mother died, her mistress took her in and treated her with kindness. She taught her to read, write and sew. Jacobs also explained that she never really knew that she was a slave until her mother died when she was six, and was not really treated as a slave until her mistress died when Jacobs was 12.

Not only did the write of the slave narrative have to "explain" how it was that he/she could read and write; they also had to have a "white" benefactor to attest to the truth of the claim. The "editor" did this in the Introduction of the book.

Do you think that this was really necessary for anyone to believe the stories? Were the majority of the people in the North so gullible as to believe that the stories were made up by the abolitionists? Of course, the Southern slave owners try to pooh pooh the mistreatment of slaves away, but surely the people of the North knew better than that. It is the same question we ask of the German people during the Holocaust. "Were you really so blind?"

Perhaps they were. Maybe they are just like we humans tend to be today. If something doesn't touch us personally, we tend to ignore it until it is put in our face. Do you think that is what was going on then?