Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Harriet Jacobs

Biographical background

Harriet Jacobs was born into slavery in Edenton, North Carolina in 1813. When she was a child, her mistress taught her to read and write, skills that were extremely rare among slaves. At twelve years old, she fell into the hands of an abusive owner who harassed her sexually. When he threatened to sell her children, she hid in a tiny crawlspace under the roof of her grandmother's house. After staying there for seven years, spending much of her time reading the Bible and also newspapers,[4] she finally managed to escape to New York in 1842.

Her brother, John S. Jacobs, who had also managed to escape from slavery, became more and more involved with the abolitionists led by William Lloyd Garrison, going on several anti-slavery lecturing tours from 1847 onwards.[5] In 1849/50, Harriet Jacobs helped her brother running the Anti-Slavery Office and Reading Room in Rochester, New York, being in close contact with abolitionists and feminists like Frederick Douglass and Amy and Isaac Post. During that time she had the opportunity to read abolitionist literature and become acquainted with anti-slavery theory. In her autobiography she describes the effects of this period in her life: "The more my mind had become enlightened, the more difficult it was for me to consider myself an article of property."[6] Urged by her brother and by Amy Post, she started to write her autobiography in 1853, finishing the manuscript in 1858. During that time she was working as a nanny for the children of N. P. Willis. Still, she didn't find a publisher until 1860, when Thayer & Eldridge agreed to publish her manuscript and initiated her contact with Lydia Maria Child, who became the editor of the book, which was finally published in January 1861.

Abolitionist and African-American literature

When Jacobs started working on Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl in 1853, many works by abolitionist and African-American writers were already in print. In 1831 William Lloyd Garrison had started the publication of his weekly The Liberator.

In 1845, Frederick Douglass had published his first autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. Written by Himself, which became a bestseller and paved the way for subsequent slave narratives.[7]

The White abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe published Uncle Tom's Cabin in 1852, artfully combining the genres of slave narratives and sentimental novels.[8] Although a work of fiction, Stowe based her novel on several accounts by eyewitnesses.

However, the relationship between Black and White abolitionist writers was not without problems. Garrison supplied a preface to Douglass's Narrative that would later be analyzed as latently racist,[9] and the relationship between the two male abolitionists deteriorated when Garrison was less than supportive to the idea of Douglass starting his own newspaper.[10] That Stowe's book became an instant bestseller was in part due to the fact that she shared her readers' racist mindset, explicitly stating that Black people were intellectually inferior and modeling the character of her protagonist, Uncle Tom, accordingly.[11] When Jacobs suggested to Stowe that Stowe transform her story into a book, Jacobs perceived Stowe's reaction as a racist insult, which she analyzed in a letter to her White friend Amy Post.[12]

Cult of True Womanhood

In the antebellum period, the Cult of True Womanhood was prevalent among upper and middle-class White women. This set of ideals, as described by Barbara Welter, asserted that all women possessed (or should possess) the virtues of piety, purity, domesticity, and submissiveness.[13] Venetria K. Patton explains that Jacobs and Harriet E. Wilson, who wrote Our Nig, reconfigured the genres of slave narrative and sentimental novel, claiming the titles of "woman and mother" for Black females, and suggesting that society's definition of womanhood was too narrow.[1] They argued and "remodeled" Stowe's descriptions of Black maternity.[14]

They also showed that the institution of slavery made it impossible for African-American women to control their virtue, as they were subject to the social and economic power of men.[15] Jacobs showed that enslaved women had a different experience of motherhood but had strong feelings as mothers despite the constraints of their position.[16]

Jacobs was clearly aware of the womanly virtues, as she referred to them as a means to appeal to female abolitionists to spur them into action to help protect enslaved Black women and their children. In the narrative, she explains life events that prevent Linda Brent from practicing these values, although she wants to. For example, as she cannot have a home of her own for her family, she cannot practice domestic virtues.