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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
A 6 page essay that contrasts and compares Phillis Wheatley's poem "To the University of Cambridge, in New England" with Harriet Jacobs' autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. The writer argues that for former slaves Phillis Wheatley and Harriet Jacobs, the use of the written word proved to be a means by which they could communicate to an audience their particular experience of slavery. Separated by roughly eighty years, Wheatley's language is more constricted and covert than that used by Jacobs because she lacked the support of the abolitionist movement, which allowed Jacobs to be more direct in her writing about slave conditions. However, this examination of their writing demonstrates, Jacobs also had to be covert in her message as she endeavored to justify herself not only as a person of color, but also as a woman. No additional sources cited.
Page Count:
6 pages (~225 words per page)
File: D0_khpwhjcc.rtf
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
an audience their particular experience of slavery. Separated by roughly eighty years, Wheatleys language is more constricted and covert than that used by Jacobs because she lacked the support
of the abolitionist movement, which allowed Jacobs to be more direct in her writing about slave conditions. However, as an examination of their writing will demonstrate, Jacobs also had to
be covert in her message as she endeavored to justify herself not only as a person of color, but also as a woman. Writing in the eighteenth century, Wheatley
had no support system, no abolitionist movement, to provide a buffer between her writing and the reaction of the mainstream white public. Therefore, unlike Jacobs, Wheatley did not directly address
the conditions of slavery. The first stanza of her poem "To the University of Cambridge, in New England," Wheatley introduces herself as a black individual; however, in so doing, she
simultaneously disarms any white resistance to the act of a black person setting words to paper by disparaging her homeland ("land of errors and Egyptian gloom," line 4) and also
by insinuating that she is being aided by muses. It is as if Wheatley is telling her white readership not to be offended by the idea of a black poetess,
as, first of all knows her place, and, secondly was divinely inspired. In the antebellum era, it was illegal for slaves to be taught to read and write, so
Wheatley simply putting pen to paper and writing verse was in itself an act of subversion. In the second stanza, Wheatley directly addresses the university students to whom the
poem is addressed. "Student, to you tis given to scan the heights/Above, to traverse the ethereal space,/ And mark the systems of revolving worlds" (lines 7-9). Denied education because of
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