The language in the tenth chapter of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is full of emotion. The reader can feel the desperation and pain. The language is very literal and Jacobs makes no attempt to hide the pain and suffering. She uses words and phrases such as, "sorrow and shame", "unhappy life", and "secretly mourned" to give the reader an idea of what she was going through. Jacobs also uses literal language to make her audience aware of their good fortune. She writes, "O ye happy women, whose purity has been sheltered from childhood... do not judge the poor desolate slave girl...". Similarly she states, "Pity me, and pardon me, O virtuous reader! You never knew what it is to be a slave". She uses this language as an attempt to justify to her audience that she only took the actions she did out of desperation for herself and her survival. Jacobs's use of this literal language was particularly successful in reaching out and striking a chord with her intended audience of wealthier white women. Jacobs's language in Incidents allowed these women to see what it was like to be a slave and it allowed them to see a new historicism perceptive about slavery.
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