1. Describe how Linda Brent (Harriet Jacobs) became fully aware of her slave status.
Brent was born a slave, but she never fully knew until she reached the age of six. When Brent’s parents were alive, she was so loved and cared for by them that she never thought she would be considered a piece of property. Brent’s father was a very valuable slave because he was skillful. He had money and hoped to purchase his children but he was never able to. When Brent’s mother died when she was six, many others talked and that led to Brent realizing that she was a slave. Although her mother’s mistress took Brent and her brother into her care for they were her slaves, but she treated them very well. When her mistress then also died was when she started to live a very hard life, because she was handed down to a relative, but became property of a young girl. Although she was property of the young girl, her Massa and Mistress seemed to make her life a living hell.
2. Using examples from throughout the book describe the complex relationship between slaves and slave owners.
Throughout the book Brent talks about all these different kinds of relationships between the owner and the slave. It made me, the reader, understand how cruel and unfair slave owners were with their slaves. Slave owners had very different and complex relationships with some of their slaves. There was no such thing as “good” slave owners. For example slave owners had the slaves that they favored and treated well, there were the slaves that the Massa would often have intimate relationships with, and then there were the slaves that were punished for suffering, either for punishment or just because of hate from either the Massa and or Mistress... Slave owners could honestly careless for the slaves, all they cared about was for slave to get their work done
