Analysis Of Harriot Jacobs Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl

Harriot Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1860) is a personal and extremely detailed autobiographical account of her life as an antebellum slave in the South. The book was such a key milestone in the abolitionist movement as most of its target audience consisted of white people who were either already receptive to the abolitionist cause or could be persuaded to do so. The account, penned under the pseudonym Linda Brent, details Jacobs' fight for freedom and the various forms of oppression she experienced as a slave, including sexual abuse, physical abuse, and psychological trauma. The two concepts of slavery and freedom are heavily touched upon and juxtaposed in her writing. Jacobs illustrates the precarity of finding freedom in

In order to escape the abuse of Dr. Flint, Jacobs hid in the attic crawl space of her grandmother, Aunt Martha, because she didn't want to leave her family unattended. Jacobs describes the pain she felt when she was separated from her children as she attempted to escape, saying, "presently two sweet little faces were looking up at me, as though they knew I was there, and were conscious of the joy they imparted. How I longed to tell them I was there!." (p.175) This quote illustrates how Jacobs was forced to watch her children from a peephole in the room without them even knowing she was there. Even though she has been freed through her escape from the cruelty of her tormentor, the forced abandonment of her children as well as her newfound inability to physically be present in their lives without being recaptured has created a new sort of imprisonment. Overall, the condition of slavery has put a strain on Jacob's closest familial bonds, making her escape from literal abuse a conduit to a tragic form of emotional

The strain on the familial bonds stemming from her former enslavement follows Jacobs even after her escape from the south and reunion with her children in Boston. This is illustrated through the narrator's sense of uneasiness while in New York, “When I took the children out to breathe the air, I closely observed the countenances of all I met. I dreaded the approach of summer when snakes and slaveholders make their appearance. I was, in fact, a slave in New York, as subject to slave laws as I had been in a Slave State.” (P.290) This quote highlights the fact that the current laws in America, allowing slave owners to travel through supposedly free states in order to recapture or kill escapees from the South. This cumulates in a sense of dread for Jacobs as neither she nor her children can ever truly free herself from her past as she will always be on the run. While both she and her children may be freed from their physical imprisonment south their familial bond has been forever tainted by the threat of