Harriet Jacobs Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

“…Though we were all slaves, I was so fondly shielded that I never dreamed that I was a piece of merchandise…” (Jacobs 820). In “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl”, by Harriet Jacobs, Linda Brent describes her first-hand experience in slavery under the name Linda Brent. Through Brent’s life, from childhood until her twenties, Harriet Jacobs wrote about an African-American girl struggling to come to terms with her identity as a slave. In this story, Jacobs focuses on Linda Brent’s mental suffering during slavery rather than her physical abuse. This is slowly shown through the story as Brent’s was stripped of her desires, values, individuality, and future. Linda Brent learned that, as long as she was

Shortly after the announcement of her pregnancy, Dr. Flint took her into a room and cut off her hair (Jacobs 830). Harriet Jacobs wrote, “I had a fine head of hair; and he often railed about my pride of arranging it nicely” (830). This was a symbol of her identity. Dr. Flint targeted her hair because he knew that it would affect how she saw herself. This same thing happened again when Brent was reminded that her children would also suffer in slavery. Her children had no legal right to their names, could be ripped away from her at any time, and would always feel the weight of slavery on their shoulders (Jacobs 830-832). Worst of all, as a slave, “the child shall follow the condition of the mother,” (Jacobs 830), which meant they would be slaves as well. By having children, Brent grieved over the loss of her identity and the identity of her children. The product of this emotional strain was the desire to die, but a obligation to stay for her children. “Had it not been for these ties to life, I should have been glad to be released by death, though I have lived only nineteen years” (Jacobs

This was not limited to marriage or pregnancy, but also through confinement. Dr. Flint was a temporary placeholder for Brent until his five-year-old daughter, Brent’s actual owner, grew to the right age (Jacobs 825). This meant that Brent would be under the constant reign of Dr. Flint. Then, when his daughter grows up, she would belong to his daughter until she died, or was bought. Even if something happened to the family, Brent would eventually be up for auction. In her early childhood, she had recalled a time where her grandmother had to go through the same thing. “Notwithstanding my grandmother’s long and faithful service to her owners, not one of her children escaped the auction block” (Jacobs 822). She was aware that the auction block would be her other future if she did not attempt to escape. Further in the story, this confinement forced her to run away from her master and hide for seven years in the crawlspace of her grandmother’s house without seeing her kids (Jacobs 832-834). The only human contact she received was late at night or through the peepholes she drilled in the wood. The fact that she would never have a real future drove her into physical confinement to escape her horrid