Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, published under the pseudonym of Linda Brent, is a harrowing memoir that depicts her captivity in its rawest form. Her account is especially concerned with the way in which slavery destroys any opportunity for her to maintain sexual purity and her ability to “choose the object of [her] affection[s]” while having that choice “protected by law.” Brent’s romantic and sexual experiences are evidence of her struggles against her captivity and are a way in which her captivity can be defined in order to elicit the solicitude of Northern white women, who are protectors of chastity and the sacredness of marital vows. Brent recognizes that these women have the power to push men to make these rights of white women the rights of black women too and seeks to utilize their skills to do this.
The Peculiar Institution’s Challenges to Virtue
Linda avers that “it is deemed a crime” in slavery “to wish to be virtuous.” Slavery has made Linda “prematurely knowing in evil things,” and tries its “utmost to corrupt the pure principles [her] grandmother ha[s] instilled” in her. She has concluded this because of her horrific experiences with her master Dr. Flint, who stalks her every waking and sleeping hour waiting for Linda to submit to his carnal desires. This makes Linda’s life a living nightmare as she desperately tries to avoid his advances and drown out his “foul words.” Despite all her efforts to maintain her virtue, Mrs. Flint’s jealousy and consequent wrath is placed on Linda, causing her to suffer even more for her master’s immorality.
Through these experiences, Linda is able to present a terrible truth of slavery: masters exploit their female slaves not only to satisfy their own sexual desires but also to multiply their property. This tragic fact serves to degrade the womanhood of the exploited female slaves but also the wives of the slaveholders who have to witness their “marriage vows [become] desecrated.”
Sexual Abuses in Slavery
During her time under Dr. Flint’s dominion, Brent meets and falls in love with a freed black man, but as she tries to pursue the relationship Dr. Flint threatens to punish her and kill her lover if she is ever seen with him. Because of Flint’s stubborn position on their relationship and the realization that even if she married the “young colored carpenter” that their marriage would not be legally binding and her children would be Flint’s property, Brent tells her lover that he should move away and continue his life without her; this choice wounds her deeply. Brent is unable to bear the psychologically exhausting burden of Dr. Flint’s harassment and concludes that she has to make a choice to protect her sexuality, which is why she chooses to strike up a sexual liaison with Mr. Sands and bear his child. She understands that she has degraded herself with sex out of wedlock, but to her it “seem[ed] less degrading to give [her]self, than to submit to compulsion.”
Unfortunately this choice to be with Mr. Sands is not really an escape from captivity because he is not able to free her. Moreover, Brent does not reveal whether Mr. Sands truly desires to free her or just desires to buy her for himself. However, it is a small victory for her against captivity, in which she discovers that she is not helpless and that freedom is something that is attainable. Brent has also learned that freedom will come at some price or sacrifice just as volition over her sexual partner did, i.e. a loss of her Christian purity and her grandmother’s high-regard.
The early parts of Brent’s account of her struggles in slavery largely define her captivity in terms of the sexual and romantic limitations it places on her. She endures the attempted sexual exploitations of her master, is denied the love she desires because of her master’s jealousy and impetuousness, and is essentially forced to choose a white lover that she can tolerate to protect herself and spite her master. It is evident that Brent resents the position that Dr. Flint and his slaveholding behaviors have confined and reduced her to, indicating that captivity is not a place for her or anyone who respects the sacredness of love and romantic relations between men and women.
Sources
- Jacobs, Harriet. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. New York: Dover Publication, INC. 2001.
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