Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
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Struggle, desperation, perseverance; these themes and more seem to be the central thesis of Harriet Jacobs novel Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Based around the personal struggles of a slaves individual quest for freedom, this novel also details the incidents and lives of those whom she comes into contact with. The series of events that transpire over the course of the main character, Lindas, life as a slave define for herself and her audience not only what slavery means, but also what freedom means.
Perhaps the most persistent and obvious subject matter laced throughout the novel is that of survival techniques. The requirements that the average slave must achieve in order to survive daily in their own life is drastic for the most part. Two characters that exemplify very obvious survival techniques are the main character Linda and her maternal grandmother. Lindas grandmother, though mentioned briefly in the novels beginning, has a very important role in the novel as a whole as she appears later to help Linda in her own personal quest. She is a locally famous baker known for her crackers, and she used this to earn quite a decent sum of money and the promise of her freedom upon her mistress death. However, being deceived by her mistress, she is put on the auctioning block but rescued by her mistress sister and granted her freedom. Thus, her struggle was not in vain.
Lindas grandmother had only one goal in mind for achieving her goals of freedom: secure the means to free her family as well. However, after granted her freedom it is only a bittersweet victory over injustice for her family is still enslaved. Thus, throughout the course of the novel, she goes by any means necessary to free the remainder of her family by doing such things as securing Linda specific, safe hiding places while she escapes the clutches of her master; risking her own life hiding Linda in her attic; and assisting in the safety of her great-grandchildren, Lindas children.
Then there is Linda whos initial struggle for freedom didnt begin until later in her childhood and into her early teenage years. Her first survival technique was to resist the advances of her owner, Mr. Flint. Soon, Linda engages in sexual relations with Mr. Sands in order to try to triumph over Mr. Flint, especially when she discovers she is pregnant. After bearing Mr. Sands two children, Linda decides to try to escape into freedom. Upon doing so, she risks her life and the lives of those of others to reach that seemingly unattainable goal. For the majority of her time spent in hiding, Linda is unable to see her children out of fear that she may somehow be discovered if she comes out of hiding to spend time with them. Her only comfort in this matter is knowing that they are safe and being cared for. As the novel progresses and Linda begins to fight harder and harder for her freedom, the single underlying theme that is present in her survival techniques is to overcome.
Though Linda and her grandmother seem to have very different stories in their quests for freedom, there is one major similarity that binds the two women together: their desire to keep their family in tact. When Lindas grandmother was granted her freedom, she was heartbroken in the knowledge of the fact that although she was given the gift of freedom, her family still had to endure the harsh treatment that went hand in hand with slavery. Thus, she dedicated herself to ensuring that her family would be protected and eventually free. The case is also true with Linda. The primary purpose of Lindas quest was not simply for her own personal freedom, but for the freedom of her children and brother as well. While she was in hiding in the south, her main concern was that her children could be kept safe and she delighted in the small pleasure of at least being able to see them from afar while hiding in her grandmothers attic. However, when they were separated from her and from each other, Lindas new quest is to reunite the family. Linda then ventures to the north to try to locate her daughter and once again risks her life being a fugitive slave in the north. Though the two women found freedom at two extremely different means, their intentions and goals were astoundingly similar in the essence that family was their sole motivation.
It seems that each individual slave has their own story to tell reguarding slavery, but it is also evident after reading this novel that each gender also has their own story to tell. Though both men and women are bound under the same laws of slavery, the individual experiences that each gender goes through are vastly different from one another. In relation to the novel, it can be assumed that women may have a slightly more difficult time while in slavery simply based on emotional levels. Jacobs details the incidents that transpire every New Years Day when the all slaves are auctioned off and describes the pain a mother goes through over the fear that she may end up childless:
“But to the slave mother on New Years dy comes laden with
peculiar sorrows. She sits on her cold cabin floor, watching the
children who may all be torn from her the next morning; and
often does she wish that she and they might die before the day
dawns. She may be an ignorant creature; but she has a mothers
instincts, and is capable of feeling a mothers agonies (p. 17).”
The fears that a mother has of losing even one of her children is an emotional blow that one should never have to endear; slave or not. Though it is obvious that the children are the products of both a man and a woman, the emotional attachment a mother has to her children is more evident then that of a father.
Not only has the novel made it obvious that a womans emotional suffering throughout the bouts of slavery are trying from a mothers perspectives, Jacobs also sheds light on the fact that simply as a woman working for a male slave owner, the troubles one may encounter under their room are enough to be emotionally scaring in their own right.
“No matter whether the slave girl be as black as ebony or as fair
as her mistress. In either case, there is no shadow of law to protect
her from insult, from violence, or men. The mistress, who ought to
protect the helpless victim, has no other feelings towards her but those
of jealousy and rage (p. 27).”
While