epicted in ?The Fire Sermon.? Both are Anglo-Saxon, financially stable men who like to take control of the lives of others to make up for lack of control in their own lives. In ?The Fire Sermon? the ?Baltimore Billionaire endeavors to engage her in caresses,?() to which the woman does not seem to resist. Sexual advances are often and present throughout Incidents but contrary to ?The Fire Sermon,? Linda never submits herself to sexual acts with her oppressor and instead spends most of her life trying to devoid her life of him. Consequently, the woman who struggles with race and class setbacks seems to overcome the other whom has many advantages over her. The obvious contrasts between the texts resolve any notions that race or class dictate inner strength or contentedness.Lastly, religious undertones appear in both texts but have different uses. Jacobs discards all conventional descriptions of slavery and repeatedly sums it down to slavery being ?ties cruelly sundered by the Demon?(). Clearly, the suffering that Linda Brent incurs in the novel are tolerated not by her mere humanity, but her drive of sheer faith and hope that there is a better life. The people that empower Linda to live a half-normal life such as Mrs. Bruce, who hires her to be a nanny in her home, lead her to say, ?truly, such souls as hers are the kingdom of heaven?(). In fact, the further away from Dr. Flint that Linda escapes, the more frequent her allusions to religion occur. For example, when describing her trip to London, the furthest she has been from the plantation, she states that ?my visit to England [is] a memorable event in my life, from the fact of my having there received strong religious impressions?(). The citing of various religious exclamations is important in Incidents because it leads to the impression that the novel might not exist had Linda not had her faith to rely on for strength, a trait she prays for many times throughout the trials. Relig...
