Comparison of Harriet Jacob's Autobiography Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, and Henry Thoreau's Walden

In Harriet Jacobs's autobiography Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl she is confined in a cramped space for seven years, in Henry D. Thoreau's Walden he lives away from society for two years. Both of these authors form relationships with the community around them despite such isolation in their lives. The reasons and circumstances surrounding the isolations are distinctly diverse; however there are many parallels that can be drawn from their separate experiences that are essentially much deeper than the differences that immediately appear on the surface.

The first major difference between the two texts occurs within the relationship between Jacobs and Thoreau's reasons for isolation, and relationships with their communities. Thoreau begins his novel with, "When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts and earned my living by the labor of my hands only. I lived there two years and two months" (Thoreau, 1). It is immediately apparent that Thoreau's isolation is by choice. This willing isolation affects his relationship with his community. His reasoning for his isolation was so he could live away from society, for this reason he as very little contact with his community. He does not see his family although he does talk about his wife and brother's. He has few visitors, and spends most of his time reflecting on the beauty of the land. Thoreau does defend himself stating that, "I think that I love society as much as most, and am ready enough to fasten myself like a bloodsucker for the time to any full-blooded man that comes in my way. I am naturally no hermit, but might possibly sit out the sturdiest frequenter of the bar-room, if my business called me hither" (Thoreau, 94). Thoreau talks of many visitors, however his most frequent visitor was a man by the name of William Emery Channing, but they did not have what one would describe as a friendship.