How The Economics Of Slavery And Patriarchy Shaped Harriot...

How the Economics of Slavery and Patriarchy Shaped Harriot Jacobs’ Life In Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Will Collins Harriet Jacobs autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, describes how the economic realities of the time shaped her life as slave, female and mother. Jacobs was born a slave in Edenton, North Carolina in 1813, five years after the African slave trade was abolished in the United States and about two decades after the invention of the cotton gin. These two events dramatically influenced Harriet’s life as a slave, female and mother by changing the socioeconomics of slavery. Throughout her life, Harriet seeks to buy herself out of slavery and to become free. But, it is her misfortune that slave values consistently increased during her lifetime (slaves on average cost between $30,000 to $130,000 in current dollars), especially in the Deep South where â€Å"gang† agriculture used large number of slaves to produce cotton. Harriet’s strategies to free herself and her children are consistently blocked by the macroeconomic reality that slaves represented a significant percentage of the South’s wealth. As is shown in her autobiography, the increasing brutality that Harriet experiences is at least partially correlated with her increasing value as a commodity. When Harriet finally escapes slavery, she learns that she cannot earn the money she needs to live a full life because, while she is not a slave, she is still a woman. â€Å"Free† women’s lives