Education chapter 7- 12

In order to reassure her readers that she was not a harlot, Jacobs first steps outside of the narrative, explaining how "the remembrance fills me with sorrow and shame" (59). It was not a choice she made out of ignorance or recklessness, but she does feel that it was a decision that these women should try to understand. Going even further and making one of the central points of Incidents, she writes "O, ye happy women, whose purity has been sheltered from childhood, who have been free to choose the objects of your affection, whose homes are protected by law, do not judge the poor desolate slave girl too severely!" (60) Even more succinctly, she writes "I feel that the slave woman ought not to be judged by the same standard of others" (62). This is a very important assertion to make; Harriet's tale is controversial in its frank discussion of sex, but she does not want her readers to think that she was condoning premarital sex. She needs to make the case that white women and black women faced unequivocally different situations and should not be privy to the same judgment.