Chapter 10

Jacobs’ intended audience was intended to be women. I believe that she wrote to women because they more easily empathized with her and by empathizing could understand that this is embarrassing and something difficult for her to express. I believe that she thought white women would empathize because for northern women, although they were not forced into slavery, did not have rights as citizens of countries, additionally, I think southern women may empathize with the story because of what Dr. Flint’s wife had to go through. Her tone and language in chapter ten describes her dilemma and dictates her actions. At the time she was only a teenager and she felt obligated and had no choices in what would happen in her future. She uses a melancholy and frustrated tone telling us as readers that she felt trapped under the wrath of the Flint family and that she had nobody who understood her. “I wanted to confess to her that I was no longer worth of her love; but I could not utter the dreaded words.” I think this quote exemplifies that she is stuck. I do not believe that Jacobs’ knew how to protect herself. Whites had so much power in the south that she was stuck between please Dr. Flint and his wife. She was afraid to please one or the other because both acts were shameful. She was afraid of being killed or losing her family, so she did her best to follow Dr. Flint’s degrading and forceful sex and acts and stay as far away from his wife to live.

Because you can feel and see the pain that Jacobs’ goes through I believe that women understood and felt her torment and torture that slavery put her through. I think this allows us to see slavery as not only sad but lonely. Even though slaves worked with other slaves and looked out for each other as best they could, at the end of the day women were left to fen for themselves. When Jacobs’ grandmother forsakes her, she had no place to turn. I feel like this also related to women, because for example women’s rights advocates often had nobody to relate to or confide in. Not everyone wanted women’s rights and like Jacobs’ women were sometimes left alone and did not have anyone to confide in.