The African-American experience is often chronicled in personal narratives like Harriet JacobsÆ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (Slave Girl hereafter) and Richard WrightÆs Black Boy. Though JacobsÆ was a slave who endured the hell of that peculiar institution and Wright was not, both suffered abuses living in a racist society. The discrimination and violence Jacobs was subjected to as a slave is comparable to that of WrightÆs while living in the Jim Crow South. Both Jacobs and Wright suffered from physical and psychological captivity, though WrightÆs physical captivity was of a geographical nature and not the enslavement imposed on Jacobs. We see in a comparison of these two personal narratives that both Wright and Jacobs suffered greater physical and psychological captivity because neither was willing to remain servile when faced with humiliation and violence.
As a slave, Harriet Jacobs suffers from literal physical captivity as well as psychological captivity as a little girl. In Slave Girl, we see the author had a happy development until she realized she was a slave, ôI was born a slave; but I never knew it till six years of happy childhoodö (Jacobs, 1861, Ch 1). It is only then that the little girl realizes she is a captive of the institution of slavery, ôa piece of merchandiseö that is owned and sold at the whim of the owner (Jacobs, 1861, Ch 1). For the rest of her life, until her freedom is finally purchased for her by her friend and employer, Jacobs will either be captive as a slave, in hiding, or on the run. Yet she will attain freedom.
Life as a slave was initially tolerable to Jacobs, primarily because her first owner was a kind and compassionate woman. Jacobs prayed for her life when she fell ill because ôI loved her; for she had been almost like a mother to meö (Jacobs, 1861, Ch 1). Despite this compassion, we see that this is a form of psychological captivity experienced by slaves, wh...