Harriet A. Jacobs Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl

Honors U.S. Women’s History, Prof. Blythe Dana L. Shaw

An Analysis of “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Written by Herself” by Harriet A. Jacobs, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge Massachusetts, and London, England, 2009; Introduction by Jean Fagan Yellin
Harriet A. Jacobs, a former slave, in “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Written by Herself”, offers a poignant and unique perspective on women and mothers in slavery. One woman’s first-hand account of slave life and the trafficking of human beings as chattel illuminated this depraved and pervasive institution during the antebellum period of America. Slaves were considered as a piece of property for the use of their masters. It is clear in her statement “But I do earnestly desire to arouse the women of the North to realizing sense of the
condition of two millions of women at the South, still in bondage, suffering what I suffered, and most of them far worse" that bringing the plight and sufferance of female slaves out of the shadows of ignorance was paramount to her.
Female slaves were placed in an even more precarious position than male slaves, in a society of sexual oppression and coercion, which derived from, a “divisive sexual ideology of the white patriarchy” . Harsh examples of the trials special to female slaves are presented throughout Jacobs’ story. Witnessing the most despicable acts perpetrated against others, and she herself which she described as “daily violating the most sacred commandments of nature” these examples present a stark reality to the reader. Women were considered particularly valuable for both their labor and reproductive ability. They were considered sexually available and “the all-pervading corruption produced by slavery” ensured that “the slave girl is reared in an atmosphere of licentiousness and fear” . Children born of violation were either added to the slaveholder’s “stock” or sold off for profit. Violence and abuse was inescapable and the victims had no recourse. The lines between Black and White were so pronounced that they were unable to appeal to their mistresses for aid. When confronted with the ugly truth the mistresses were usually incited to jealousy and malevolence directed not at the slaveholder but at the slave, who didn’t even have authority over her own body.
As evidenced in Jacobs’ matter of fact story of her life as a slave woman and mother, the “extremity of their sufferings, the depths of their degradation” went without notice.
Lives filled with poverty, abuse, fear and desperation were and everyday state of being “yet few slaveholders seem to be aware of the widespread moral ruin occasioned by this wicked system” The raw reality of the heartfelt joys and sorrows cast a haunting light on slavery as a gendered experience in which women were sexually abused, degraded, coerced, and where they “considered of no value, unless they continually increase their owner’s stock” . The hypocrisy of slave holders, along with the failure to intercede by men and women of both the North and South, continued to perpetuate the atrocities of the slave trade. Incidents was both tragic, and compelling, in that bittersweet moment of freedom, Jacobs states “A human being sold in the free city of New York”, recognizing the irony that “women were articles of traffic in New York, late in the nineteenth century of the Christian religion” , it was important to make future generations aware of and learn from
it.