Harriet Jacobs: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Part I

You are probably familiar with slaves-turned escapees-turned activists such as Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth. I want to tell you about another such woman who is not taught as often and maybe you haven’t hear of: Harriet Jacobs, known more widely in the North by her nom-de-plum “Linda Brent” which she adopted in writing her memoir to protect those who had helped her escape slavery. Although less well known today than Tubman or Truth, much of what Jacobs recalls in her narrative Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is representative of the type of abuse typically faced by female slaves.

Jacobs was born around 1813 in Edenton, North Carolina. Jacobs describes it as being a small town where everyone knew each other, a fact that she felt sheltered her some degree from her master’s abuses and which ultimately allowed her to escape. Had she lived in the isolation of a plantation, Jacobs suggests that she may have suffered a worse fate.

Jacobs recalled her childhood and her first mistress fondly, however, before the reader gets too cozy with the false narrative that slavery “wasn’t so bad,” Jacobs has this to say, “I would ten thousand times rather that my children should be the half-starved paupers of Ireland than to be the most pampered among the slaves of America.” However enjoyable her early childhood may have been, Jacobs was still considered chattel and in her mistress’ will, Jacobs was bequeathed her mistress’ four-year-old niece.

Jacobs was eleven at the time, and has little to say about the young girl she was enslaved to, but the girls’ parents – whom Jacobs called Dr. and Mrs. Flint in her narrative – treated their slaves cruelly, something that Jacobs herself began to experience after she turned fifteen. Dr. Flint, who was forty years older than teenage Jacobs, began to make salacious comments at her and tried to solicit sex from her. In Jacobs’ own words:

Every where the years bring to all enough of sin and sorrow; but always in slavery the very dawn of life is darkened by these shadows…She will become prematurely knowing in evil things. Soon she will learn to tremble when she hears her master’s footfall. She will be compelled to realize that she is no longer a child. If God has bestowed beauty upon her, it will prove her greatest curse. That which commands admiration in the white woman only hastens the degradation of the female slave…I cannot tell you how much I suffered in the presence of these wrongs, nor how I am still pained by the retrospect. 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. If I went out for a breath of fresh air, after a day of unwearied toil, his footsteps dogged me. If I knelt by my mother’s grave, his dark shadow fell on me even there.

This form of abuse was not unusual. In fact, sexual abuse of female slaves was commonplace and there were no laws to protect slaves from rape and sexual abuse any more than there were laws to protect them from being beaten or killed by their masters. They were, after all, “property.” (One of the great and infuriating ironies is that after emancipation, there were widespread fears within white communities of black men raping white women, and countless black men were lynched on such charges, when in fact, for centuries, there had been systemic rape and sexual abuse of black women perpetrated by white men.) Even though it was not illegal or unusual for slaveholders to have sex with their slaves, it was still socially unacceptable and was therefore, often swept under the rug.

            Perhaps you remember Thomas Jefferson’s slave mistress Sally Hemmings? (If you don’t, stay tuned for an upcoming post.)

This political cartoon that circulated during the election of 1804 not only associated Jefferson with the violence of the French Revolution by depicting him as a rooster (it was a revolutionary symbol – don’t worry about it) but also derided him for his alleged relationship with Sally Hemmings. The Jefferson-Hemmings controversy shows not only that the American public has always been scandalized by politicians’ sex lives, but also shows that to the 19^th century American public, sex between a man and his slave was even more scandalous.

            Just in case slavery by itself wasn’t bad enough, in American slave codes the status of a child as free or enslaved depended on the status of one’s mother, thus allowing for a self-perpetuating slave population in the United States, even after the international slave trade ended. Moreover, we know that since sexual relations between white men and their slaves was not uncommon, that often the children of female slaves were also the children of white slave owners. However, to again reference the slave codes, if your mom was a slave, you were a slave, even if your dad owned the whole dang plantation. Therefore, raping female slaves provided white slaveholders with a cheap way of maintaining his slave population by LITERALLY ENSLAVING HIS OWN CHILDREN. (If this does not make your blood boil with rage and fury, go back and re-read this paragraph and then really let it sink in.)

            The white wives of philandering slave holders were frequently aware of what their husbands were up to. As Jacobs recalled, sometimes these women would insist that their husbands free their illegitimate mixed race children, but more often, the wives would insist on selling their husband’s children, and possibly the unfortunate mothers as well. As I mentioned in my previous post, women tend to identify more strongly with their race and social class than with gender, meaning that most white wives of slave holders were not at all sympathetic to their husbands’ black victims, and often treated them with disdain and cruelty.

Dr. James Norcom, whom Harriet Jacobs called "Dr. Flint" in her narrative

            Jacobs describes how Mrs. Flint responded when she confronted Jacobs over Dr. Flint’s dogged sexual harassment of his still teenaged slave girl:

She felt that her marriage vows were desecrated, her dignity insulted; but she had no compassion for the poor victim of her husband’s perfidy. She pitied herself as a martyr; but she was incapable of feeling for the condition of shame and misery in which her unfortunate, helpless slave was placed.

Jacobs was certainly sympathetic to Mrs. Flint’s position, and wished that Mrs. Flint had showed some kindness or sympathy to her in return. 

Mary Matilda Horniblow Norcom, "Mrs. Flint" who was 16 when she married 32-year-old Dr. Norcom in 1810.

After learning that Jacobs had avoided having sex with Dr. Flint, Mrs. Flint provided Jacobs with a modicum of protection, however, Jacobs never felt that this protection was for her own benefit, and Mrs. Flint became an abuser in her own way. For instance, Dr. Flint insisted that his young daughter should sleep in his room, which would require a slave or servant to also sleep in the room to tend to the child if she woke up. Guess who he picked for the job? But Mrs. Flint interceded:

She now took me to sleep in a room adjoining her own. There I was an object of her especial care, though not of especial comfort, for she spent many a sleepless night to watch over me. Sometimes I woke up, and found her bending over me. At other times she whispered in my ear, as thought it was her husband who was speaking to me, and listened to hear what I would answer. If she startled me, on such occasions, she would glide stealthily away; and the next morning she would tell me I had been talking in my sleep and ask who I was talking to. At last, I began to be fearful for my life. It had been often threatened; and you can imagine, better than I can describe, what an unpleasant sensation it must produce to wake up in the dead of night and find a jealous woman bending over you.

Harriet Jacobs had mild hope of escaping this awful situation when she fell in love with a free black man who wanted to marry her. But alas, this was not to be.

To be continued…

Sources:

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, by Harriet Jacobs (full text available on Project Gutenberg)

I also consulted Book 5 of the Bedford Anthology of World Literature which has excerpts from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and also a context guide that I found very helpful in my research.

Stay tuned for the conclusion of Harriet Jacobs’ story next week – or click the Project Gutenberg link and read on for yourself! Or, check out this website for more information about Jacobs and her life.

For more information on Dr. and Mrs. Norcom (aka Dr. and Mrs. Flint)