This essay examines the gendered dimensions of chattel slavery as portrayed in Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, narrated through the fictional persona of Linda Brent. Drawing on key passages from the text, the paper argues that enslaved women faced a distinct set of horrors — including sexual objectification, coercion, and an inescapable emotional attachment to children fathered through exploitation — that fundamentally shaped both their suffering and their strategies for resistance. The essay contrasts Brent's path toward freedom with that of Nat Turner to illuminate how motherhood and bodily autonomy defined the female slave's experience in ways that differed sharply from male bondage.
The perverted socio-economic institution known as slavery has always carried significantly greater psychological ramifications and horrors for women than it has traditionally carried for men. This is particularly the case when one considers chattel slavery, such as that which was prevalent in the United States at the inception of the country's founding. Many of the perverse manifestations of slavery's effects upon women are detailed in Harriet Jacobs's thinly veiled fictional autobiography of her life, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. While the inhumane, unnatural experience of having one's body, soul, and mind owned as a piece of property by another is similarly degrading for both men and women, the effects of this perceived ownership are inherently different for women — shaping not only the nature of their servitude, but the nature of their attempts to escape it.
The attempt to escape slavery is one point of commonality that can be found between both male and female slaves during the time Africans and African-Americans were held in bondage in the United States. It may be argued that the desire to be free of slavery is a shared interest among nearly all who were ever enslaved, whether chattel slaves or otherwise. This point is certainly not lost upon Jacobs, who writes her first-person narrative under the guise of Linda Brent.
When Brent has determined to disengage herself from a life of slavery in the sixteenth chapter of the narrative, she perceives both the voice of her father and references Nat Turner within her thoughts, which are decidedly upon freedom, as the following quotation shows: "As I passed the wreck of the old meeting house, where, before Nat Turner's time, the slaves had been allowed to meet for worship, I seemed to hear my father's voice come from it, bidding me not to tarry till I reached freedom or the grave" (Jacobs 121). Such thoughts quite literally and figuratively indicate the systematic history of slavery, and also the history of slaves attempting to liberate themselves from the clutches of such a vile institution. Furthermore, thoughts of Nat Turner and of Linda's father — who was free for a good portion of his life — are demonstrative of the level of conviction Brent holds regarding her desire to obtain freedom.
Brent's attempt to gain freedom is decidedly unlike Turner's, however, in the fact that Turner did not run away to procure his liberty — he chose to fight until the death of either himself and his band, or that of his oppressors. Brent, by contrast, is largely opposed to her own death, for the simple reason that she has brought children into the world whom she needs to protect. The following quotation demonstrates this essential difference between Brent's and Turner's struggle for freedom, which is representative of a key distinction between female and male slaves:
"My friends feared I should become a cripple for life; and I was so weary of my long imprisonment that, had it not been for the hope of serving my children, I should have been thankful to die; but for their sakes, I was willing to bear on" (Jacobs 140).
Turner may have been willing to "bear on" for the sake of posterity, but he was also willing — and perhaps perfectly justified — to do so by fighting until his death. This quotation shows that Brent's willingness to bear on is far more literal: she wants to remain alive in order to help secure the safety and future of her children in a direct, hands-on fashion. This distinction — becoming attached to children who, all too often, were sired by slave masters — separates the plight of female slaves from that of male slaves. Male slaves might risk everything, including their lives, to win freedom, while female slaves have everything — their bodies, emotions, and sentiments — wrenched from them, and remain attached to the fruit of that horrendous exploitation. This reality colors the rest of their existence and plays a key role in shaping their future actions, as it does for Brent.
"Constrained sexual choice as minimal female self-determination"
The following quotation, in which Brent rationalizes her decision to enter into a relationship with Mr. Sands, evidences as much: "…but to be an object of interest to a man who is not married, and who is not her master, is agreeable to the pride and feelings of the slave, if her miserable situation has left her any pride or sentiment. It seems less degrading to give oneself, than to submit to compulsion. There is something akin to freedom in having a lover who has no control over you, except that which he gains by kindness and attachment" (Jacobs 64–65).
This quotation demonstrates that having some degree of choice in a sexual partner is "akin to freedom" and is virtually the only defense available to enslaved women who are sought after by slave-owning masters. The quotation does not imply that Brent actually wanted, or even enjoyed, her relationship with Sands — who fathered her children. It simply shows that choosing him was the preferable alternative to being violated by a heartless slave master, and represents Brent's own way of assuming some degree of control over this part of her life. As scholars of slave narratives have long noted, such constrained choices illuminate how enslaved women negotiated agency within profoundly oppressive conditions.
The primary distinction between the level of suffering endured by male and female slaves was the sexual component of ownership that was frequently imposed upon the latter. The least disagreeable way to address this occurrence was to retain some choice in who would have sexual access to the female slave. However, the broader compulsion toward freedom — as documented through Brent's father and through historical figures such as Nat Turner — is a trait that recurs throughout history and helped empower and affirm Brent's decision to attempt liberation. Jacobs's narrative ultimately demonstrates that the institution of slavery was not a monolithic experience: for women, it carried an additional, intimate dimension of violation that shaped every aspect of their bondage and their resistance.
Jacobs, Harriet. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. New York: Barnes and Noble, 2005. Print.
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