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  • Essay / The Curse of Gender in the Books of Ellen Craft and Harriet Jacobs

    The Contempt of GenderDoes being a man equal power? Being a man in today's society is a privilege that can bring many benefits. It can bring higher salaries, credibility and outrageous success. Being a man in the 1800s meant having absolute power over everything, of course, only if you were a white man. Women control absolutely nothing. In Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, you examine the curse of gender. Ellen Craft and Harriet Jacobs show readers how being a woman can lead to incessant torment, almost no credibility, and inevitable problems. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay Each story presents gender from a different perspective. Ellen Craft in Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom shows how temporarily changing her sex to male literally frees her. Harriet Jacobs in Incident in the Life of a Slave Girl shows how being a woman carries physical danger. “It doesn't matter whether the slave is as black as ebony or as beautiful as her mistress. In both cases, no shadow of law protects her from insults, violence or even death; all this is inflicted by demons who have the form of men” (Jacobs 231). Harriet Jacobs says this after realizing that no one will help her escape Dr. Flint's vile words. At that time, all women were considered inferior to men, but black women were not even considered human beings. Because of this, Harriet had to accept all the rude gestures directed at her and could not report anything. Her master threatened her with rape and abuse and she was not allowed to challenge his advances. Harriet's master treated her like she was worthless and imposed all the problems in the world on her. I think she almost hated her femininity. This was a major disadvantage and source of difficulty for her. The only way she could gain control of some of her problems was to willingly become pregnant by another white man. This helped her escape the rape. She made a choice she thought was in her best interest, but her free will is taken away after that choice. She was deprived of her innocent mind and her reason. This is all simply because she was a black woman. Ellen Craft's situation is a little less morbid. Although being a woman was difficult for Ellen Craft, she loved her femininity. The fact that she was a woman was not the main source of her difficulties. “My wife had no ambition to assume this disguise, and would not have done so if it had been possible to obtain our freedom by simpler means; but we knew that it was not the custom in the South for ladies to travel with male servants” (Craft 433). Ellen did not want to take on the role of a man. When she was a slave, she never suffered just because she was a black woman, she suffered because she was just a slave. She was very fair. For this reason, people may have confused her with a white woman. This may have played a role in his treatment. Her suffering as a black woman was not as harsh because she was almost white. Her master's family treated her with a certain dignity. Both women faced discrimination and hardship, but I believe the darker a black woman's skin was, the more problems she would have faced during that time. Keep in mind: this is just one, 2014, 224-261.