Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861):

1. What is the chief form of oppression which blights the narrator's life?

2. How are her life and experiences of slavery, as she describes them, different from those of Frederick Douglass?

What were the different outcomes of their escapes?

3. How are her experiences similar to those of Frederick Douglass, as described in his Narrative? What were some disadvantages which made it harder for her to escape? Which of the two was more isolated?

4. Are there ways in which her account seems to corroborate and enforce his?

5. What may have been some reasons it took Jacobs several years to publish her narrative? What would have been its controversial elements for the mid-nineteenth century reader?

6. For what audience do you thinnk this book was written? How can you tell?

What purpose was served by the initial prefaces by Child and Jacobs? How are the attitudes expressed by Jacobs different from those expressed in Douglass's narrative?

7. What is added by the appendix? By the supplementary documents provided by the editor?

8. What were salient features of Jacobs's early life? What seem to have been important features of her character?

9. What role did her grandmother play in her life? What forms of support were provided by her Uncles Phillip and Benjamin, brother William, Peter, Betty, the neighbor who first conceals her, and others?

10. What seems to have been the grandmother's social role in the neighborhood? To what extent did the family's many social connections with white families work to their advantage? Why wasn't that enough to effect her escape?

11. What were features of Harriet Jacobs's relationship with Mr. Sands? What was his profession, then and later? What motivated her affair? What did he finally do for their children, and what remained undone?

12. What factors prevented Mr. Flint from raping Harriet?

13. Are there any significant omissions from this account?

14. What factors enabled Harriet Jacobs to escape at the end? Why was the escape so long postponed?

15. How does the narrative create suspense?

16. How would you describe Jacobs's style?

17. What does Jacobs seem to regret as she looks back on her life? What seem to have been her traits of mind and chief emotional ties? Are there any aspects of her tale which may have been heightened for her potential audience?

18. What does she find in her trip north that seems pleasant or satisfying? How does she react to life in England?

19. What does she fail to achieve in the north? What attitudes does she find that shock or anger her? Does she respond aggressively?

20. Is she successful in giving you a sense for the personalities of her two children? For her struggle to maintain herself in the north?

21. Which aspects of slavery do you believe wre ultimately most painful to Jacobs?

22. Is this a well-organized, unified book? Does it progress to a climax? How would this have been a different account if it had ended directly after her escape north?

23. What is added to her narrative by the account of her life after reaching the north? What points are added by her tale of later experiences?