The author shows us the depth of a mother's love as she suffers to see that her children aren"t also brought under slavery. Though she was able to escape her master, she does take up with another white man in hopes that he"d be able to buy her freedom. Her owner refuses to sell her and tells her that she and her children are the property of his daughter. Her lover seems kind enough as he claims, and offers to give them his name, and he did eventually buy them, though he failed to emancipate them to spare them from a life of slavery. Jacobs noted that slavery taught her not to trust the promises of white men. Having lived in town most of her life, Jacobs is sent to the plantation of her master's cruel son to be broken in after she continues to refuse his sexual advances. She is unaffected to this fate until she learns that her children, who were never treated like slaves, were to be brought to the plantation also. It is then that she decides to escape.
After enduring seven years of confinement in cramped quarters under the roof of her grandmother's house, Jacobs escapes to the North, which isn't quite the haven she imagined. Still, it is better than the south, and she makes friends who buy her freedom, leaving her both relieved yet bitter that she is still seen as property to be bought and sold like livestock. In New York Jacobs is reunited with her children and a beloved brother who'd escaped a few years ago while accompanying his master to the free states.
The author's main argument is that slavery is not just about perpetual bondage, but it involves the complete degrading of a people. She acknowledges that the "black man is inferior", but argues that it is a result of slavery, which awakens the intellectual capacity of her race. She believes that white men compel the black race to be ignorant. Although she was wronged by many Southern white men, she does not blame the white race for her ills.
