Masculine Power Presented through Rape in Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
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Abstract
Danger of sexual assault has been directly and indirectly warned as one of crucial problems of women and girls through media in Thailand daily. According to news reported about this kind of crime, mostly women and girls are the main target of it. All women and girls insecurely live in this world. This gender-based violence reflects people’s attitudes which pass from time to time toward women’s value in society. This research aims to study the use of men’s masculine power in the form of sexual violence over women in a slave narrative literature, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Ann Jacobs. The result showed that Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl directly portrays sexual coercion and injustice that female slaves had to face under slavery to the world. Masculinity of men was exercised through fierce and coercive sexual actions on slave women as the way to express their power. In addition, men’s violence toward women was a relation to gender and power. Power was an individual possession. Sex roles, the influence of patriarchal ideology, income and status inequalities allowed men to exercise their power, violence, and violation.
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References
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