Incidents in the Life of a Sla

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl In her essay, “Loopholes of Resistance,” Michelle Burnham argues that “Aunt Marthy’s garret does not offer a retreat from the oppressive conditions of slavery – as, one might argue, the communal life in Aunt Marthy’s house does – so much as it enacts a repetition of them…[Thus] Harriet Jacobs escapes reigning discourses in structures only in the very process of affirming them” (289). In order to support …

…contract entered into by a slave will be binding. Finally, we encounter death. Yes, for the deceased the life of slavery has ended, but it is the life of slavery has ended his life. The slaveowner may have financially lost, but to his own ethics, he has won. No home, even Aunt Marthy’s, no matter how much love it holds, can offer retreat from the horrors of slavery until those horrors cease to exist.