Harriet Jacob’s experiences as a slave, mother, and literary slave narrative producer changed many of the outlooks that people had on the American slave system. The way families were ripped apart, humans were being beaten to a cripple, and slaves in every plantation were being harassed in every manner was exposed through slave narratives like Jacob’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.  Jacob’s says herself that “it would have been more pleasant to me to have been silent about my bondage”. The act of speaking against the slave system brought more troubles than successes for the voice of the enslaved people. This article refers to this as the unbroken rule; “Masters abuse, slaves are silent” It was an extensive process for Jacobs to figure out how to manipulate the language that kept her in bondage for twenty-one years to work for her in the act of expressing the experiences she had as a slave. Her owner, Mr. Flint, was a master at using language as a mechanism for power. He put many of these powerful, persuasive words towards Jacobs to sexually harass, attack, and abuse her. This gave Jacobs the incentive to figure out how to use the language that was keeping her oppressed to free her.  This article expresses the views of Jacob’s and Douglass on how their literacy gave them the power to escape from the oppression and voice their experiences to the ignorant north of America.  However, literacy is also viewed as a double edged sword to the slaves that are not in the position to gain freedom through the obtainment of written language. Douglass is quoted saying that “literacy may be the pathway to freedom… but it is also the pathway to a fuller understanding of enslavement.”  Many of the slaves that learned to read behind barns, hiding from their masters, became aware of the severity of the violence and restrictions that their life entailed.  Not only did the African American literary movement unfold the blinds to ignorant White people, but it did the same to many of the literate slaves. The phrase ‘Ignorance is bliss’ only applies to half of the population that was affected by this movement.  The White Northern population of America needed to be awakened to the cruelty of the American slave system, but to make a person aware of the severity of their situation, who has no hope from escaping it, is cruel within itself.

The severe torture against the black body did not only reap pain and suffering at the individual level. This article breaks down the experience of a slave mother, who through enduring such physical pain experiences the breaking down of her family unit. The enslaved African American women and their children were never securely together for extended periods of time, always at risk for separation. Even if on the same plantation, strict regulations on slave behavior did not allow a development of this parental relationship. To experience pain on your own body is in one way tolerable, but for a slave mother to witness her children taking numerous whippings putting them in crippling pain has to wring their heart. Many times the mother herself had to commit to experiencing an extra amount of physical violence to secure their children’s security. The expected female role of being a  “mother” are never held by enslaved women because the American slave system did not allow it. Jacob’s describes the destruction of family bonds as “the fundamental evil of slavery” in her text Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Her depictions of slave "motherhood" call attention across the nation to the sufferings the African American women are experiencing. The tale of the enslaved mother that loses her children in Incidents was not aimed to affect the mainly illiterate slave community, but to break the ignorance of the White women that could sympathize with these mothers. It calls for the bringing together of all women, no matter what race, to ensure the motherhood experience not be ripped out of the hands of another African American woman. The American slave system tore Black families apart, showed no mercy in causing slaves to watch their kin experience the cruel brutalities, and taking the very essence of being a woman and mother out of the enslaved women’s hands. Jacob’s text broke the enslaved silence code and put the experiences of these women on the front burner of American issues at that time.