Treatment of the Mentally Ill and Slaves in Literature

¶ … life of slaves in Harriet Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and the lives of the mentally ill in Victor LaValle's Devil in Silver

The theme of freedom and escape was common in antebellum literature written by former slaves -- and is also common in narratives of the lives of the mentally ill today. Both Harriet Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of Slave Girl and Victor LaValle's Devil in Silver chronicle unjust imprisonments: in Jacob's case, the narrator's life as a slave; in LaValle's novel, the horrors perpetrated upon the mentally ill. These texts indicate that those who are marginalized in our society are selected in an arbitrary fashion based upon categories such as race or class rather than have intrinsic properties that make them uniquely different. Over the course of the narrative, both protagonists overcome the societies of fear and tyranny that are created by their oppressors and liberate themselves physically and spiritually from their bonds.

Jacobs memoir relates her life in bondage and finally in freedom. She was born to a relatively kind mistress and looks back upon her early years with fondness. However, her mistress died and willed Jacobs to a young girl, making Jacobs' effectual master a hard, cruel man named Mr. Flint. Jacobs relates the capricious life of a slave, whose existence is entirely dependent upon the person into whose hands he or she is sold. "To the slave mother New Year's day comes laden with peculiar sorrows. She sits on her cold cabin floor, watching the children who may all be torn from her the next morning; and often does she wish that she and they might die before the day dawns. She may be an ignorant creature, degraded by the system that has brutalized her from childhood; but she has a mother's instincts, and is capable of feeling a mother's agonies" (Jacobs 26). Jacobs states that slaves are not inferior beings intrinsically, but the state of slavery makes them so mentally and morally degraded they are hardly recognizable at such. Yet still, human feelings exist -- one of the cruelest aspects of slavery is the fact that mothers are separated from their children.

Similarly, LaValle's novel about a man named Pepper who is unjustly committed to a mental institution portrays a world in which people are arbitrarily declared sane or insane. Pepper is not mentally ill but given he is transient, large, and somewhat threatening in his appearance, committing him becomes a way for law enforcement agents to deal with him. Once committed and labeled insane, he finds it virtually impossible to shirk that label. The institution uses powerful psychotropic drugs to control the inmates and regardless of their mental state before admission, they are damaged beings after a certain point -- like slaves -- by virtue of being subject to this regime. "In general, people thought he took up too much room on the subway and often sighed and grunted to let him know. His only benefit to this great mass was that he could lift heavy things" (LaValle 20). Pepper looks intimidating, which results in his getting labeled, much like Jacobs is labeled as inferior because of her race and like all African-Americans enslaved during the antebellum period, she must fight every day to preserve her dignity.

Jacobs' plight is rendered particularly harsh by virtue of being a woman. She is continually subjected to the unwanted advances of Dr. Flint, who calls her ungrateful when she resists. "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 (Jacobs 46). Jacobs falls in love with a free-born man but Dr. Flint refuses to allow anyone to buy Harriet's freedom. "For a fortnight the doctor did not speak to me. He thought to mortify me; to make me feel that I had disgraced myself by receiving the honorable addresses of a respectable colored man, in preference to the base proposals of a white man" (Jacobs 63). Jacobs has no control over her destiny or her body because she is a slave. Moreover, Dr. Flint believes that she should be grateful for his attentions because he is white. He tells her: "you have been the plague of my life. I have wanted to make you happy, and I have been repaid with the basest ingratitude; but though you have proved yourself incapable of appreciating my kindness, I will be lenient towards you" (Jacobs 62).

Similarly, the mentally ill are made to feel as if they should be grateful for their confinement: supposedly the treatment they receive while they are incarcerated is supposed to make them better, even though it is clear that those who are committed seldom get better or leave. What feels painful for them is supposed to be 'good' for them, just like it is for a slave, according to the novel. The drugs the patients receive are supposed to be beneficial for them, even though they just render the patients into a stupor: "their mouths hung open and their eyes looked heavy in post-dosage stupor. What else could they do to ride the dosage out but to watch television?" (LaValle 39).

Both slaves and the mentally ill live a day-to-day existence that is alternated by boredom and terror. For the slaves, the dullness comes from a life of manual labor and enforced ignorance (at least Harriet was taught to read by her first mistress). For the mentally ill patients, it is a day of drugs and staring into space. However, there is also terror -- for the slave, it is the terror of being punished or of being caught if the slave tries to escape. Jacobs notes how in the case of one owner: "his body servant gave him some offence. He [the slave] was divested of his clothes, except his shirt, whipped, and tied to a large tree in front of the house. It was a stormy night in winter…A member of the family, fearing he would freeze to death, begged that he might be taken down; but the master would not relent" (Jacobs 73). Harriet relates the fate of a number of escaped slaves, including her brother Benjamin, who are clapped in manacles and sold to even worse situations because of their defiance.

Eventually Harriet manages to get away, concealing herself in her grandmother's room until she can head northward. This is painful for her because she cannot be with her children, as well as the constant terror of apprehension. But Harriet perseveres because of the hope of securing her freedom. However, even when she leaves the South, she still encounters prejudice in the North because of the color of her skin, including not being permitted to eat in the same places as white servants. " My answer was that the colored servants ought to be dissatisfied with themselves, for not having too much self-respect to submit to such treatment; that there was no difference in the price of board for colored and white servants, and there was no justification for difference of treatment" (Jacobs 266). Jacobs' strong sense of self is the only thing that preserves her spirit and her sanity over the years.