By Julie Sara Porter,
Bookworm Reviews
Spoilers: Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin reflected the horrors of slavery but from the authorship of a white woman. While it received much defense and criticism, even to this day (particularly from many who use the term, "Uncle Tom" as a derogatory term), it opened a lot of pre-Civil War eyes to slavery and the abolitionist movement. However, because Stowe wrote it (and did meticulous research for it which she explored in the follow up A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin), it can only gain an outsider's perspective of what she imagines the life of a slave to be like. A book that had been written about the same time reflects the life of a slave much better, because it is the true story of a former slave written by herself.
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs (1813-1897) improves on Stowe's narrative because this was Jacob's life and her observations. The book was published under the name Linda Brent and with pseudonyms (however for this review, I will use the real names of the people.). Jacobs explored the horrors of her situation and her eventual daring escape with honesty, warmth, rage, and even a dry detached wit that not only matches up to Uncle Tom's Cabin, but surpasses it in terms of writing quality.
Jacobs resorted to some literary techniques in her writing such as addressing the "Reader" in an intrusive narrative form and she invited the Reader to imagine themselves in such a situation. But most of her narration is honest, frank, and doesn't resort to melodrama. For example she uses situational irony when she recounts one of her master's description of a run away slave who was found in New York to be starving and begged to return. Jacobs later mentioned seeing this woman who was completely happy and had no intention of returning. "Many of the slaves believe such stories, and think it is not worth while to exchange slavery for a hard kind of freedom," she wrote.
She described such horrible events as physical abuse and sexual assault, but in a plain matter-of-fact way to let the story speak for itself that slavery was a cruel institution. She didn't need to resort to drama to grab her reader's attention. She just let her own story speak for itself.
Jacobs recounted her childhood including her birth by her mother Delilah Horniblow and biracial father, Elijah Knox, and her upbringing by her grandmother. The home was so loving that Jacobs was unaware that she was property until her mother's death when she was six. "I was so fondly shielded that I never dreamed I was a piece of merchandise, trusted to them for safe keeping, liable to be demanded of them at any moment."
Jacobs lived with her mother's mistress, who was kind enough to teach her to read, write, and sew but not kind enough to free her. So after she died, the mistress left a will with a codicil that ended up causing Jacobs to be sold to the mistress' five-year-old niece, Mary Matilda Norcrom.
Mary Matilda's father, Dr. James Norcrom sexually harassed Jacobs when she came of age.He alternated between appearing nice and erupting into violent rages, both of which terrified Jacobs. "My master met me at every turn, reminding me that I belonged to him, and swearing by heaven and earth that he would compel me to submit to him." Jacobs recounted excellently that fear of being continuously abused and assaulted by a powerful man and the loneliness that she has no one to turn to who could help her.
Jacobs used many means to resist Norcrom's advances including becoming involved in a consensual sexual relationship with a white man who fathered her two children, Louise Matilda and Joseph.
Jacobs justified her sexual relationship as a means of survival. "I was a poor slave girl, only fifteen years old," she wrote. "To be an object of interest to a man who is not married, and who is not her master, is agreeable to the pride and feelings of a slave, if her miserable situation has left her any pride or sentiment."
However Jacobs' relationship had strings attached. While her lover promised to free their children, he refused to do so, though he eventually returned them to their grandmother. He also bought her brother and became upset that because he believed "some damned abolitionist encouraged him to run away." (In actuality, Jacobs' brother seized the opportunity to run away on his own.)
The careless behavior of Jacobs' white lover and former mistress shows that the Myth of the "Good Slave Owner" is just that: a myth. That when people with the best of intentions towards their slaves
still took part in such a heartless institution that offered no equality towards people seen as property. That even if a slave was fortunate enough to work under a kind master or mistress that encouraged them to read and never had them whipped, the slave was not seen as a human being in their own right. The kind master or mistress' protection may last only as long as they are still alive. The slave still could be at the mercy of being sold and separated from their friends and family, a real fear that filled Jacobs' life as she worried about her children being sold and Norcrom threatened to do if she resisted his advances.
Jacobs eventually ran away and in the book's most intense passages escaped to the last place Norcrom would have looked for her: instead of heading North, she turned right around and hid in the crawl space of her freed grandmother's attic. Jacobs watched from her grandmother's attic with glee as Norcrom made several fruitless trips up North to New York figuring that she ran up there to hide with relatives. But she also watched with heartache as her children and other relatives were sold and she can't do anything about it (though Norcrom kept bothering them about their mother's whereabouts which they did not know until Jacobs had been in hiding for years.) Even though Jacobs described the attic as "an uncomfortable prison" and her concern for her children was always apparent, she considered it a better alternative to being found and returned by Norcrom. "I heard the old doctor's threats but they no longer had the same power to trouble me. The darkest cloud of my life had rolled away," she wrote with pride about her escape and her children's removal from Norcrom's clutches.
Jacobs eventually escaped to Philadelphia in 1842 by boat to live with some anti-slavery friends and found work as a nursemaid in New York. She eventually was able to reunite with her children. Her book has a finality as she said that her story does not end with marriage, instead ending with the freedom of herself and her children. "We are as free from the power of slaveholders as are the white people of the north," she wrote with pride and dreamed of greater things like owning her own home (which she eventually did) and teaching about the evils of slavery (which she did at anti-slavery conventions), and her children going to school (which they both did. Louise Matilda worked towards educating young African-American children and Joseph joined his uncle and Jacobs' brother to live in California).
There is an interesting story that when Jacobs first thought of telling her story, she was uncertain of her own writing abilities. So she appealed to Harriet Beecher Stowe, even suggesting her daughter, Louise Matilda accompany Stowe to England to recount her story. Stowe refused suggesting that Louise Matilda's story as a former slave might hold her to being spoiled and pampered by the English audience. Stowe also doubted the veracity of Jacobs' story and wanted to consult with her employer. Jacobs was outraged and sharply retorted, "...what a pity we poor blacks cant (sic) have the firmness and stability of character that you white people have."
Jacobs proved with her own observations and brilliant gift of writing that she was more than capable of telling her own story herself.
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