He uses the experience to fuel his anger and develop a sense of courage as he is unable to protect his aunt, a woman very close to his heart. This experience struck [him] with awful force (Gates and Smith 339) like a match would strike to make a fire. Jacobs, on the other hand, invites the reader to feel her pain as her master violates her mind with unclean thoughts at her extreme youth (231) . She makes it clear that even his verbal abuse tainted her most sacred commandments of nature (216). Reaching out to her female readers, Jacobs asks for their sympathy since every woman remembers the moment when she loses her sexual purity. She dilates these details on to her ultimate decision to bear a child with another strange man and asks that she is not judged poorly for her readers whose purity has been sheltered have been free to choose the object of [their] affection (233) unlike her. She juxtaposes her experience with that of the readers to show that because she was a slave, she was exposed to the situation at this young age and there was no one to protect her or guide her through this time. In a sense, the matter of sexual violence plays a big role in Jacobs eventual fate as a fugitive slave, while it only marks the beginning for Douglass journey. Douglass tells more about his path to his fugitive state as his story progresses to showcase the obstacles he had to overcome.t.
Frederick Douglass literally spells out his attempts at learning how to read and write to show the unconventional measures he took to attain his education, while Harriet Jacobs could only use her gift of literacy as a mere distraction during her time of confinement. When Jacobs was a child, she had a mistress kind enough to provide her slaves with education, which she admits so rarely falls to the lot of a slave (227). Although she was bestowed this privilege, she couldnt use it to her advantage in any way because of the tragic ordeals she had to face as a young woman and as a mother.
