Incidents in the life of a slave girl aunt martha

The Role Of Religion

"The Chimney Sweeper" (Songs of Innocence)

Summary

The speaker of this poem is a small boy who was sold into the chimney-sweeping business when his mother died. He recounts the story of a fellow chimney sweeper, Tom Dacre , who cried when his hair was shaved to prevent vermin and soot from infesting it. The speaker comforts Tom, who falls asleep and has a dream or vision of several chimney sweepers all locked in black coffins. An angel arrives with a special key that opens the locks on the coffins and sets the children free. The newly freed children run through a green field and wash themselves in a river, coming out clean and white in the bright sun. The angel tells Tom that if he is a good boy, he will have this paradise for his own. When Tom awakens, he and the speaker gather their tools and head out to work, somewhat comforted that their lives will one day improve.

Analysis

“The Chimney Sweeper” comprises six quatrains, each following the AABB rhyme scheme, with two rhyming couplets per quatrain. The first stanza introduces the speaker, a young boy who has been forced by circumstances into the hazardous occupation of chimney sweeper. The second stanza introduces Tom Dacre, a fellow chimney sweep who acts as a foil to the speaker. Tom is upset about his lot in life, so the speaker comforts him until he falls asleep. The next three stanzas recount Tom Dacre's somewhat apocalyptic dream of the chimney sweepers’ “heaven.” However, the final stanza finds Tom waking up the following morning, with him and the speaker still trapped in their dangerous line of work.

There is a hint of criticism here in Tom Dacre's dream and in the boys' subsequent actions, however. Blake decries the use of promised future happiness as a way of subduing the oppressed. The boys carry on with their terrible, probably fatal work because of their hope in a future where their circumstances will be set right. This same promise was often used by those in power to maintain the status quo so that workers and the weak would not unite to stand against the inhuman conditions forced upon them. As becomes more clear in Blake's Songs of Experience, the poet had little patience with palliative measures that did nothing to alter the present suffering of impoverished families.

What on the surface appears to be a condescending moral to lazy boys is in fact a sharp criticism of a culture that would perpetuate the inhuman conditions of chimney sweeping on children. Tom Dacre (whose name may derive from “Tom Dark,” reflecting the sooty countenance of most chimney sweeps) is comforted by the promise of a future outside the “coffin” that is his life’s lot. Clearly, his present state is terrible and only made bearable by the two-edged hope of a happy afterlife following a quick death.

Blake here critiques not just the deplorable conditions of the children sold into chimney sweeping, but also the society, and particularly its religious aspect, that would offer these children palliatives rather than aid. That the speaker and Tom Dacre get up from the vision to head back into their dangerous drudgery suggests that these children cannot help themselves, so it is left to responsible, sensitive adults to do something for them.

The Life of a slave girl

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl opens with an introduction in which the author, Harriet Jacobs, states her reasons for writing an autobiography. Her story is painful, and she would rather have kept it private, but she feels that making it public may help the antislavery movement. A preface by abolitionist Lydia Maria Child makes a similar case for the book and states that the events it records are true.

Jacobs uses the pseudonym Linda Brent to narrate her first-person account. Born into slavery, Linda spends her early years in a happy home with her mother and father, who are relatively well-off slaves. When her mother dies, six-year-old Linda is sent to live with her mother’s mistress, who treats her well and teaches her to read. After a few years, this mistress dies and bequeaths Linda to a relative. Her new masters are cruel and neglectful, and Dr. Flint, the father, soon begins pressuring Linda to have a sexual relationship with him. Linda struggles against Flint’s overtures for several years. He pressures and threatens her, and she defies and outwits him. Knowing that Flint will eventually get his way, Linda consents to a love affair with a white neighbor, Mr. Sands, saying that she is ashamed of this illicit relationship but finds it preferable to being raped by the loathsome Dr. Flint. With Mr. Sands, she has two children, Benny and Ellen. Linda argues that a powerless slave girl cannot be held to the same standards of morality as a free woman. She also has practical reasons for agreeing to the affair: she hopes that when Flint finds out about it, he will sell her to Sands in disgust. Instead, the vengeful Flint sends Linda to his plantation to be broken in as a field hand.

When she discovers that Benny and Ellen are to receive similar treatment, Linda hatches a desperate plan. Escaping to the North with two small children would be impossible. Unwilling to submit to Dr. Flint’s abuse, but equally unwilling to abandon her family, she hides in the attic crawl space in the house of her grandmother, Aunt Martha. She hopes that Dr. Flint, under the false impression that she has gone North, will sell her children rather than risk having them disappear as well. Linda is overjoyed when Dr. Flint sells Benny and Ellen to a slave trader who is secretly representing Mr. Sands. Mr. Sands promises to free the children one day and sends them to live with Aunt Martha. But Linda’s triumph comes at a high price. The longer she stays in her tiny garret, where she can neither sit nor stand, the more physically debilitated she becomes. Her only pleasure is to watch her children through a tiny peephole, as she cannot risk letting them know where she is. Mr. Sands marries and becomes a congressman. He brings Ellen to Washington, D.C., to look after his newborn daughter, and Linda realizes that Mr. Sands may never free her children. Worried that he will eventually sell them to slave traders, she determines that she must somehow flee with them to the North. However, Dr. Flint continues to hunt for her, and escape remains too risky.

After seven years in the attic, Linda finally escapes to the North by boat. Benny remains with Aunt Martha, and Linda is reunited with Ellen, who is now nine years old and living in Brooklyn, New York. Linda is dismayed to find that her daughter is still held in virtual slavery by Mr. Sands’s cousin, Mrs. Hobbs. She fears that Mrs. Hobbs will take Ellen back to the South, putting her beyond Linda’s reach forever. She finds work as a nursemaid for a New York City family, the Bruces, who treat her very kindly. Dr. Flint continues to pursue Linda, and she flees to Boston. There, she is reunited with Benny. Dr. Flint now claims that the sale of Benny and Ellen was illegitimate, and Linda is terrified that he will re-enslave all of them. After a few years, Mrs. Bruce dies, and Linda spends some time living with her children in Boston. She spends a year in England caring for Mr. Bruce’s daughter, and for the first time in her life she enjoys freedom from racial prejudice. When Linda returns to Boston, Ellen goes to boarding school and Benny moves to California with Linda’s brother William. Mr. Bruce remarries, and Linda takes a position caring for their new baby. Dr. Flint dies, but his daughter, Emily, writes to Linda to claim ownership of her. The Fugitive Slave Act is passed by Congress, making Linda extremely vulnerable to kidnapping and re-enslavement.

Emily Flint and her husband, Mr. Dodge, arrive in New York to capture Linda. Linda goes into hiding, and the new Mrs. Bruce offers to purchase her freedom. Linda refuses, unwilling to be bought and sold yet again, and makes plans to follow Benny to California. Mrs. Bruce buys Linda anyway. Linda is devastated at being sold and furious with Emily Flint and the whole slave system. However, she says she remains grateful to Mrs. Bruce, who is still her employer when she writes the book. She notes that she still has not yet realized her dream of making a home for herself and her children to share. The book closes with two testimonials to its accuracy, one from Amy Post, a white abolitionist, and the other from George W. Lowther, a black antislavery writer.

Character List
Linda Brent - The book’s protagonist and a pseudonym for the author. Linda begins life innocently, unaware of her enslaved state. In the face of betrayal and harassment at the hands of her white masters, she soon develops the knowledge, skills, and determination that she needs to defend herself. Linda is torn between a desire for personal freedom and a feeling of responsibility to her family, particularly her children.

Read an in-depth analysis of Linda Brent.

Dr. Flint - Linda’s master, enemy, and would-be lover. Although Dr. Flint has the legal right to “use” Linda in any way he chooses, he seeks to seduce her by means of threats and trickery rather than outright force. Linda’s rebelliousness enrages him, and he becomes obsessed with the idea of breaking her will. Throughout the long battle over Linda’s right to own herself, Dr. Flint never shows any sign of remorse or understanding that she is a person with rights and feelings.

Read an in-depth analysis of Dr. Flint.

Aunt Martha - Linda’s maternal grandmother and chief ally. Aunt Martha is pious and patient, suffering silently as she watches her children and grandchildren sold off and abused by their masters. Aunt Martha also represents a kind of maternal selfishness, grieving when her loved ones escape to freedom because she will never see them again. For her, family ties must be preserved at all costs, even if it means a life spent in slavery.

Read an in-depth analysis of Aunt Martha.

Mrs. Flint - Linda’s mistress and Dr. Flint’s jealous wife. Mrs. Flint is characterized mainly by her hypocrisy. She is a church woman who supposedly suffers from weak nerves, but she treats her slaves with callousness and brutality. Mrs. Flint demonstrates how the slave system has distorted the character of southern women.

Mr. Sands - Linda’s white lover and the father of her children. Mr. Sands has a kindlier nature than Dr. Flint, but he feels no real love or responsibility for his mixed-race children. He repeatedly breaks his promises to Linda that he will free them.

Uncle Benjamin - Linda’s beloved uncle, a slave who defies and beats his master and then runs away. Uncle Benjamin’s successful escape inspires Linda, but also shows her that to run away means to give up all family and community ties.

Benny and Ellen - Linda’s children with Mr. Sands. Linda loves Benny and Ellen passionately, and her feelings about them drive the book’s action. Benny and Ellen are dutiful children but otherwise are not characterized in great detail.

Uncle Phillip - Linda’s other uncle, instrumental in her escape. Uncle Phillip is reliable and moderate, remaining in the South with his family long after his mother, Aunt Martha, buys his freedom.

William - Linda’s brother, to whom she is close. William’s escape from Mr. Sands, his relatively “kind” master, shows that even a privileged slave desires freedom above all else.

Aunt Nancy - Linda’s maternal aunt and Mrs. Flint’s slave. A martyr figure, Aunt Nancy is slowly killed by Mrs. Flint’s abuse.

Peter - A family friend who helps Linda escape. Peter urges Linda to risk the escape he has planned rather than to remain in her attic hideaway.

The “white benefactress” - An upper-class white friend of Aunt Martha’s who hides Linda for a while. She is not named even with a pseudonym and is one of the few genuinely sympathetic slave owners in the book.

Betty - A slave in the household of the white benefactress. Betty is uneducated but an intelligent, loyal, and resourceful slave who provides material assistance and encouragement to Linda.

Sally - A family friend who lives with Aunt Martha and helps Linda escape into hiding.

Aggie - An old slave woman who tells Aunt Martha to rejoice that William has run away. Aggie provides a counterpoint to Aunt Martha’s reluctance to see her loved ones escape to the North.

Emily Flint - Dr. Flint’s daughter and Linda’s legal “owner.” Emily Flint serves mainly as Dr. Flint’s puppet, sometimes writing Linda letters in her name, trying to trick her into returning to Dr. Flint.

Mr. Dodge - Emily Flint’s husband, who seeks to recapture Linda after Dr. Flint dies. Although Mr. Dodge is northern by birth, entering southern society has made him feel as floundering and desensitized as any native-born slave holder.

Nicholas Flint - Dr. Flint’s son. Nicholas is essentially a carbon copy of his father, with the same lecherous tendencies toward his female slaves that Dr. Flint has.

Young Mrs. Flint - Nicholas’s bride. Seemingly kind at first, young Mrs. Flint provides further evidence of the cruelty of slaveholding women when she orders an elderly slave to eat grass.

Mrs. Hobbs - Mr. Sands’s New York cousin, to whom he “gives” Ellen. Mrs. Hobbs is a little slice of the Old South in Brooklyn, selfishly treating Ellen as property and highlighting the continued danger for escaped slaves even after they reach the Free States.

Mr. Thorne - A southerner visiting Brooklyn who betrays Linda’s whereabouts to Dr. Flint. Like Mrs. Hobbs, Mr. Thorne signals that a fugitive slave can never feel safe again.

Mrs. Bruce (#1) - Linda’s first employer in New York City. Mrs. Bruce is a kindly Englishwoman who helps Linda hide from the Flints. She dies and is replaced by Mrs. Bruce #2.

Mr. Bruce - Mrs. Bruce’s husband, who takes Linda on a trip to England.

Mrs. Bruce (#2) - Mr. Bruce’s second wife. The second Mrs. Bruce is an abolitionist American who protects Linda at great risk to herself and ultimately buys her freedom from Mr. Dodge. Linda claims to be very grateful to Mrs. Bruce but is also very upset at being purchased by her.

Amy and Isaac Post - Abolitionist antislavery friends of Linda’s in Rochester. The Posts appear in the book under their real names. They show Linda that it is possible for white people to treat her as an equal.

Reverend and Mrs. Durham - Free blacks, and the first people Linda meets in Philadelphia. The Durhams, with their legitimate marriage and morally upstanding lives, remind Linda that slavery has robbed her of the chance to have a normal existence.

Fanny - A slave friend of Linda’s with whom she escapes by boat to the North. Fanny had the devastating experience of watching all of her children be sold to slave traders.

Miss Fanny - An elderly woman and the sister of Aunt Martha’s mistress. Miss Fanny buys and frees Aunt Martha when Dr. Sands puts her on the auction block.

Luke - An acquaintance of Linda’s from home whom she meets on the street in New York. Luke has escaped by stealing money from his dead master, and Linda uses him as an example of how slaves cannot be judged by the same moral standards as free citizens.

Analysis of Major Characters
Linda Brent
An innocent young slave girl, Linda must grow up fast when she finds herself in the clutches of a morally corrupt master. She begins life with a secure attachment to her parents, who take excellent care of her for her first six years. They don’t tell her she is a slave, which enables her to develop a strong sense of self-worth that later allows her to overcome major obstacles. Linda is confident and spirited, and she never really accepts the fact that she is the property of another person. Although she is exposed to the most degrading treatment at the hands of Dr. Flint, she never loses her self-respect or her desire to have a normal home and family. She is devoted to her children and willing to endure great suffering for their sake.

Just as she refuses to acknowledge the legitimacy of the slave system, Linda totally rejects her master’s claim that she is his property, body and soul. She is an independent spirit, and Dr. Flint’s sexual harassment only intensifies her desire to control her own life. Linda is clever, rebellious, and strong-willed, and from the start, she lets Dr. Flint know that she will never submit to his advances. She enters into a battle of wills with him and at times even expresses a perverse satisfaction at tricking him or making him angry. Her independence also leads her to have an affair with Mr. Sands, largely to spite Flint and retain some control over her sexuality. Although she doesn’t love Mr. Sands and believes that it is wrong to have sex with him, she takes satisfaction in her ability to choose whom to sleep with. Similarly, when she hides in an attic crawl space for seven years, substituting a life of physical suffering over the relatively “easy” existence she would have had as Dr. Flint’s concubine, Linda once again expresses her strong desire to be psychologically and spiritually independent.

As Linda grows up, and particularly after she becomes a mother, her rebellious and independent nature is somewhat modulated. As a young girl, Linda dreams only of escaping slavery for a better life in the North. After becoming a mother, she still wants freedom, but she also feels deeply attached to her children, who are also Dr. Flint’s property. She is unwilling to leave them and worries about what will become of them if she runs away. Unlike some of the male characters in the book, she cannot simply sever all of her emotional ties and start over in the North. Most of Linda’s actions are directed by this essential emotional and moral conflict. She is torn between her independent nature and her maternal feelings, which urge her to sacrifice her own opportunity for freedom to save her children. In the end, motherhood wins out, although Linda’s bold spirit is never extinguished.

Dr. Flint
Although he is based on Harriet Jacobs’s real-life master, Dr. Flint often seems more like a melodramatic villain than a real man. He is morally bankrupt and lacks any redeeming qualities. He is thoroughly one-dimensional, totally corrupted by the power that the slave system grants him. He sees no reason not to use and abuse his slaves in any way he chooses, and he never shows any signs of sympathy for them or remorse for his crimes. If Dr. Flint expresses kindness, it is invariably a ruse to try to get Linda to sleep with him. Dr. Flint represents the cruelty, callousness, and treachery of the entire slave system.

Dr. Flint loves power above all else, and it often seems that forcing Linda to submit to him is more important to him than simply sleeping with her. He is galled and infuriated by her defiance, and he becomes obsessed with the idea of breaking her will. Rather than simply raping her, he persists in his efforts make her acknowledge his mastery. When Linda escapes, he pursues her relentlessly, putting himself hundreds of dollars in debt to chase her to New York. After his death, his venom and determination seem to be reincarnated in the form of his son-in-law, Mr. Dodge. Dr. Flint neither changes nor grows over the course of the narrative. His malice, representing all of the evils of slavery, appears to affect Linda even from beyond the grave.

Aunt Martha
Aunt Martha is one of the narrative’s most complex characters, embodying Jacobs’s ambivalence about motherhood and maternal love. She is a second mother to Linda, a positive force in her life, and a paragon of honesty and decency. She is loving and family-oriented, representing an ideal of domestic life and maternal love. She works tirelessly to buy her children’s and grandchildren’s freedom. Her unwavering piety leads her to attribute her enslavement to God’s will and to patiently bear the loss of her children to slave traders. Beneath her gentle veneer, Aunt Martha is a powerful figure with considerable standing in her community. She is the only black woman in the narrative with her own home. On more than one occasion, she rebukes slave holders who harm her relatives, even telling Dr. Flint to his face that he is going to hell for his treatment of Linda.

Although she is generally a positive character, there is a dark side to Aunt Martha’s domesticity. She prizes home and family first and foremost, loving her children and grandchildren so possessively that she cannot bear the thought of being separated from them. She is essential to Linda’s survival, but at times her maternal power threatens to suffocate her loved ones. She would rather see them in slavery than have them run away from her to freedom. She mourns the successful escape of her son, Benjamin, who has been dreadfully abused by his master. She repeatedly urges Linda not to run away. When Linda hides in Aunt Martha’s attic crawl space, it is as if she has been locked away in a prison of Martha’s creation. In the end, Aunt Martha manages to let Linda go, but only when it is clear that to stay would spell total disaster.

The Corrupting Power of Slavery
Jacobs takes great pains to prove that there can be no “good” slave masters. She argues that slavery destroys the morality of slave holders, almost without exception. Slave holders such as Dr. Flint become inhumane monsters. With no legal checks on their behavior, they inflict every conceivable kind of torture on their servants. Most slave masters view slaves as little more than animals or objects, never acknowledging their humanity. But even “kindly” slave holders, such as Mr. Sands, show themselves capable of betraying their slaves when it is convenient or profitable. Mr. Sands promises to free his slave children and may even intend to do so at first. However, in the slave system, such good intentions are easily forgotten. If a slave owner such as Mr. Sands encounters financial problems, he will likely be tempted to sell his own children to get himself out of trouble. Thus, slavery distorts even the most basic emotional instinct: the love of a parent for a child.

Slaves also suffer from the influence of the slave system on their moral development. Linda does not condemn slaves for illegal or immoral acts such as theft or adultery, saying that they usually have no choice but to behave this way. However, she also points out that slaves have no reason to develop a strong ethical sense, as they are given no ownership of themselves or final control over their actions. This is not their fault, but the fault of the system that dehumanizes them. Slaves are not evil like their masters, but important parts of their personalities are left undeveloped.

Domesticity As Paradise and Prison
At the end of Incidents, Linda states that she is still waiting to have her greatest dream fulfilled—that of creating a real home for herself and her children. The desire for a comfortable and safe home runs throughout this book, reflecting the cult of domesticity that would have been familiar to Jacobs’s mostly white female readers in the nineteenth century. During Jacobs’s time, women were relegated to the domestic sphere and expected to find all of their fulfillment in caring for their homes and children. Women were considered to be housewives by their very natures, unfit for any other kind of life. As a black woman excluded from this value system, unable even to live with her children, Linda’s longing for a home is understandable.

Jacobs does not always present the domestic sphere as an uncomplicated good. Aunt Martha, the book’s representative of domesticity and the only black woman Linda knows who has a real home, is both a positive and a negative character. She is caring and stable, the backbone of her family and a paragon of domestic virtue. Her tidy home is a refuge and a lifeline for Linda from the time her own mother dies. But at times in which Linda needs encouragement in her quest for freedom and independence, Aunt Martha and her house become a discouraging, even confining force. Placing her children’s needs above her own, Linda remains a virtual captive in Aunt Martha’s home until she is permanently crippled. Hence, home and family are valuable, but they must be balanced with personal freedom. Otherwise, they may overwhelm a woman’s individuality.

The Psychological Abuses of Slavery
Most slave narratives emphasize the physical brutality and deprivation that slaves were forced to endure, presenting gory descriptions of beatings and lynchings to shock the reader. Jacobs does not ignore such issues, but her focus on slaves’ mental and spiritual anguish makes an important contribution to the genre. As a slave with a relatively “easy” life, Linda does not have to endure constant beatings and hard physical labor. However, she and many of the other slaves around her suffer greatly from being denied basic human rights and legal protection. Men and women are not permitted to marry whomever they choose—they often are not allowed to marry at all. Women are frequently forced to sleep with the masters they despise. Worst of all, families are torn apart, with children sold to a place far away from their parents. Thus, even slaves who are not beaten or starved are stripped of their humanity. When Linda states that she would rather be a desperately poor English farm laborer than a “pampered” slave, she underscores the point that slavery’s mental cruelty is every bit as devastating as its physical abuses.

Motifs
Fractured Family Ties
There is only one intact black family in this book, and it does not live in the South. The happy Durham family, whom Linda meets in Philadelphia, contrasts starkly with the situation of black families living under slavery. Aunt Martha struggles to keep her family together, but sees nearly all of her children sold. Linda is taken away from her father at age six to live with her mistress. Her mistress acts as a sort of mother to Linda, but she shows how little this relationship means to her when she treats Linda as property in her will. Linda is also denied the right to raise her own children and meets many women who will never see their children again. Slaves are often not allowed to marry, and if they are, husband and wife cannot always live together. White men father children with black women but feel no parental obligation to them, and they abuse them or sell them as if they were unrelated. If a white woman and a black man have a child together, the woman’s family will frequently have the infant killed. Even privileged white families do not care for their own children, fostering them out to slave wet nurses. Finally, pseudofamilial ties that develop between white and black half-siblings and foster siblings are broken as soon as the whites deem it appropriate. Normal human relationships simply cannot survive the disruptions of the slave system.

Confinement
Linda’s seven-year imprisonment in Aunt Martha’s attic may be the narrative’s most spectacular example of confinement, but it is not the only one. Dr. Flint seeks to lock Linda up in an isolated cottage in the woods so he can sleep with her freely. Linda’s Uncle Benjamin is jailed for six months before he finally escapes. Dr. Flint imprisons Linda’s brother and small children when he finds that she has run away. Linda herself is confined in several places, including under the floorboards of her the house of her “white benefactress.” She continues to feel circumscribed by slavery even after she reaches New York. After the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, she becomes a virtual prisoner in her employers’ home. The greatest confinements of all, though, may be mental. Masters keep slaves trapped by ignorance: unable to read, they cannot question the pro-slavery claims that the Bible dictates their condition. They know nothing of life beyond their immediate surroundings, and many believe that free blacks in the North are starving in the streets and begging to return to slavery.

Graphic Violence
Violence is a motif common to all slave narratives, and Incidents is no exception. One of Linda’s earliest memories is hearing Dr. Flint brutally whip one of his plantation slaves. She recalls seeing the blood and gore on the walls the next morning. Mrs. Flint, a supposed Christian, orders slaves whipped until they bleed and spits in their food so they will have to go hungry. She forces Aunt Nancy to sleep on the floor outside her room, continuing this practice even when Nancy is pregnant, causing her to give birth to many stillborn babies. Mrs. Flint’s treatment of Aunt Nancy, as Linda points out, amounts to murder committed very slowly. Slaves are burned, frozen, and whipped to death. Their wounds are washed with brine for further agonizing torture. Jacobs includes such accounts throughout the book, narrating them in detail to shock the reader into sympathy for slaves and to goad him or her into joining the abolitionist movement. Such stories of violence also counteract the common proslavery claim that most slaves were well cared for and led happy, peaceful lives.

Symbols
Dr. Flint
Dr. Flint is based on Harriet Jacobs’s real-life master, and there is no reason to think that she exaggerated his vicious nature. Through historical research, scholars have confirmed that her depiction of him is accurate. However, in addition to his role in the true events of Jacobs’s life story, Dr. Flint also functions as the book’s main symbol of the slave system. He is monstrously cruel, hypocritical, and conniving, and he never experiences a moment of guilt, self-doubt, or sympathy for his victims. Given absolute power by the slave system, Flint never questions his right to do whatever he pleases to his slaves. He will accept nothing less than total submission from them. Dr. Flint aptly symbolizes the defining qualities of slavery: lust for power, moral corruption, and brutality. When Linda defies him, she threatens the legitimacy of slavery itself—hence his insistence on “mastering” her.

Aunt Martha
Aunt Martha, religious, domestic, and patient, represents ideals of womanhood and femininity that were important in Jacobs’s time. She lives for her home and her children and wants only to keep her family intact. She is so humble and pious that she believes that God has ordained her a slave for her own good. All of this is in keeping with a set of sexual stereotypes called the Cult of Domesticity (sometimes called “True Womanhood”), which dictated that women were essentially pure, submissive, pious, and oriented toward the private realm of home and family. Jacobs presents Aunt Martha as a sympathetic, virtuous figure, but also uses her to question some of the “feminine” values she represents, particularly as they apply to black women. Her virtue, patience, and piety go unrewarded, as she sees most of her children and grandchildren sold away or escaped to the North. Her last child, Aunt Nancy, is slowly killed by slavery. Aunt Martha’s story suggests that if slave women try to adhere to white middle-class ideas of how women should behave, they will be rewarded only with greater suffering.

The Loophole of Retreat
Linda’s attic hideout, a place where she is so restricted that she cannot sit or stand, represents all of the forces that keep her from being free. Conversely, it also represents the space of freedom she creates for herself in her own mind. Like slavery, the attic confines Linda’s body in terrible ways. She suffers physically and psychologically, losing her ability to speak and walk and becoming despairing and depressed. Her time in the attic almost kills her, which causes the reader to recall how Dr. Flint had claimed his right, under the laws of slavery, to do so himself. However, the attic is also a prison of Linda’s own choosing, and in this regard it differs from the imposed confinement of slavery. By going into hiding, she rejects Dr. Flint’s claim to own her soul as well as her body. Just as she decides to have consensual sex with Mr. Sands to avoid forced sex with Dr. Flint, she chooses the tortures of the attic over Flint’s luxurious cottage in the woods. She may have replaced one set of physical and emotional hardships with another, but she has claimed her mind and spirit as her own. The “loophole,” a peephole through which she can watch the outside world, symbolizes the spiritual freedom Linda finds even in seemingly restricted circumstances.

Important Quotations Explained
1. READER, be assured this narrative is no fiction. I am aware that some of my adventures may seem incredible; but they are, nevertheless, strictly true. I have not exaggerated the wrongs inflicted by Slavery; on the contrary, my descriptions fall far short of the facts.

Explanation for Quotation 1 >>

Jacobs opens her autobiography with these boldly stated instructions to her mostly white readers. This passage seeks to preempt a common criticism aimed at slave narratives by proslavery forces: that they were fabricated or inaccurate. Jacobs knows that many white northerners will be unwilling to accept her story, so she must assert her authority over her narrative from the start. She literally orders her readers to “be assured,” establishing an active, confident narrative voice. Also, Jacobs is about to make her sexual transgressions public, and she cannot trust genteel readers to be sympathetic. Therefore, she lets her audience know that whatever their interpretation of her story, she will remain firmly in control of it. Even as she asserts power over her readers, Jacobs also creates a feeling of intimacy with them by addressing them directly. This is an important strategy, given the sexually frank and politically controversial nature of her text. By making her narrator seem like a real person with whom readers can identify, she makes them less likely to automatically reject her story as unbelievable or immoral.

Close

2. Slavery is terrible for men; but it is far more terrible for women. Superadded to the burden common to all, they have wrongs, and sufferings, and mortifications peculiarly their own.

Explanation for Quotation 2 >>

This passage from Chapter XIV embodies Jacobs’s most important contribution to the literature of slavery—her depiction of the emotional anguish of slave women. Most slave narratives were written by men, and followed a standard formula that placed great emphasis on bodily pain and physical endurance. They included graphic descriptions of whippings and other physical abuses that stripped the slave of his masculinity. In order to reclaim his manhood, the slave had to assert bodily control over his master by fighting him. The male slave then endured more physical suffering during his dangerous and solitary escape to the North. As a female slave with a very different story to tell, Jacobs creates a new type of slave narrative. She emphasizes that whether or not they are beaten, starved, or made to work in the fields, all female slaves suffer horrible mental tortures such as sexual harassment and the loss of their children. In repeated anecdotes, she portrays the emotional agony of mothers whose children are taken from them, as well as the shame of slave girls who are sexually victimized by white men. For these women, such experiences were just as difficult as any physical punishment, if not more so.

Close

3. When he told me that I was made for his use, made to obey his command in every thing; that I was nothing but a slave, whose will must and should surrender to his, never before had my puny arm felt half so strong.

Explanation for Quotation 3 >>

In this passage, Linda realizes that although Dr. Flint has complete legal authority over her, she nonetheless has the power to resist him. His goading causes her to erupt into the rebelliousness that will come to define her character and will direct the course of her future. The statement appears in Chapter IV, after Linda relates that Aunt Martha believes slavery to be God’s will. Linda and William, taught by their parents to view themselves as self-respecting human beings, do not agree with their grandmother’s submissive, fatalistic attitude. They both long to take control of their own destinies. Soon after her encounter with Dr. Flint, Linda advises William to be patient and forgiving in the face of Nicholas Flint’s abusiveness. However, as soon as she recommends this course of action, it occurs to her that she herself has no intention of submitting to Dr. Flint’s control. Linda realizes that she will never be able to bear slavery passively, and notes that the “war of [her] life had begun.” This is an important moment of awakening for her, in which she finds that although Flint owns her body, she can remain spiritually free.

Close

4. Pity me, and pardon me, O virtuous reader! You never knew what it is to be a slave; to be entirely unprotected by law or custom; to have the laws reduce you to the condition of a chattel, entirely subject to the will of another.

Explanation for Quotation 4 >>

In this remark from Chapter X, Jacobs makes one of her narrative’s most powerful and radical claims: that other women have no right to condemn her for her shocking revelations about her sexual history unless they have been similarly victimized. As in the Preface, she uses a direct tone, taking charge of the reader at a controversial moment and asserting her right to interpret her own life story. If you have never been powerless in the face of sexual harassment and abuse, Jacobs argues, you cannot possibly understand what she has been through. The implication is that slaves should not be judged according to the moral and legal standards of the free world at all. Since slaves have no control over their bodies and destinies, they cannot reasonably be convicted of unethical or illegal actions. Elsewhere in the book, Jacobs makes similar arguments about slaves’ relationships to crime and the law, even defending the right of a slave to steal from his master on the grounds that all slaves are owed a lifetime of unpaid wages.

Close

5. Reader, my story ends with freedom; not in the usual way, with marriage. I and my children are now free! We are as free from the power of slave holders as are the white people of the north; and though that, according to my ideas, is not saying a great deal, it is a vast improvement in my condition.

Explanation for Quotation 5 >>

In this passage from Chapter XVI, Jacobs explicitly refers to the novelistic conventions she has used to shape her autobiography. Incidents borrows much from melodramatic novels, known as “sentimental fiction,” which also featured lovely virgins trying to preserve their virtue, lecherous villains, desperate mothers, and enterprising young men. Although Jacobs tells a true story, she uses the popular literature with which her readers were familiar to help them accept and understand her unconventional, even radical, tale. However, Incidents also departs from sentimental fiction in important ways, as this quote reminds us. The heroine does not preserve her virtue. She has no valiant male protector, and the villain dies peacefully at home rather than receiving his just desserts. And, as Jacobs notes, the story does not end with the inevitable wedding. Not only is Jacobs still unmarried, but she still does not even have a home of her own, as she points out shortly after this passage. Thus, even as her writing strategy allows her readers to identify with her story, it also challenges the literary conventions of the time. Jacobs makes the point elsewhere in the narrative that slaves cannot be judged according to the laws and morals of the free world. Similarly, she implies here, the “life of a slave girl” cannot be written according to the usual plot lines.