Representations of Women in Slave Narratives and Literature

The Post-Reconstruction Context and the Double Burden of Black Women

The concept of slavery in America has engendered a great deal of scholarship. During the four decades following Reconstruction, despite the hopes of liberals in the North, the position of the Negro in America declined sharply. After President Lincoln's assassination and the resulting malaise — compounded by the economic burdens of war — much of the political and social control in the South was returned to white supremacists. Blacks were left at the mercy of ex-slaveholders and former Confederates as the United States government adopted a laissez-faire policy regarding the "Negro problem" in the South. The era of Jim Crow brought to the American Negro disfranchisement, social, educational, and occupational discrimination, mass mob violence, murder, and lynching. Under a form of peonage, Black people were deprived of their civil and human rights and reduced to a status of quasi-slavery or "second-class" citizenship (Foner). Strict legal segregation of public facilities in the southern states was further entrenched in 1896 by the Supreme Court's decision in Plessy v. Ferguson. Racists, northern and southern alike, proclaimed that the Negro was subhuman, barbaric, immoral, and innately inferior — physically and intellectually — to whites, and totally incapable of functioning as an equal in white civilization (Elliott).

It is not as typical in academic scholarship to discuss the roles of women during this pre-Civil War and Reconstruction period, at least not until the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. In the intervening years, between the Compromise of 1877 and the Compromise of 1895, the central problem facing Negro leadership was how to obtain first-class citizenship for the African American. This seemingly simple question caused considerable debate. Some advocated physical violence to force concessions from whites; a few urged a radical and immediate return to Africa. The majority, however, suggested that African Americans use peaceful, democratic means to change undesirable conditions. Some Black leaders emphasized becoming skilled workers, hoping that economic indispensability would lead to political and social rights. Others advocated a direct struggle for civil rights — specifically the right to vote — on the theory that economic and social rights would follow. Most agreed that solutions would come gradually (Litwak).

Black women faced an even more tragic paradigm: they were a double minority, often treated poorly by both Blacks and whites. Yet the role of Black women cannot be underestimated, particularly regarding the economic nature of the slave experience and its socio-cultural impact on future generations. Research consistently shows that work was a central aspect of slave life, and that male and female children had substantially different work experiences. One analysis found that the net earnings of a slave — calculated as the value of labor minus maintenance costs — indicated that females were far more productive than males, and thus exerted a greater influence on both the tangible and intangible aspects of slave culture (Steckel).

Harriet Jacobs and Frederick Douglass: Biographical Backgrounds

Harriet Jacobs (1813–97) was an American writer who escaped from slavery and became a dedicated abolitionist and reformer. She published one book in 1861, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, under the pseudonym Linda Brent. It was one of the first autobiographical works to focus solely on the struggle for freedom by women slaves, and it offered a frank account of the sexual harassment and abuse they endured under the institution of slavery. Unable to bear the cruelty of her situation any longer, Jacobs escaped at the age of 22 and hid in a crawlspace attic for seven years before finally making her way to the North. Even then, she was not safe, and she endured further hardships until 1853, when she began writing about her life in various newspapers. She eventually found a sympathetic audience and publisher in 1861 (Harriet Jacobs, 1813–1897).

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) was one of the most prominent early leaders of the abolitionist movement and became a celebrated American social reformer, orator, writer, and statesman. He was among the greatest orators of the late nineteenth century — so compelling, in fact, that many Northerners found it difficult to believe he had ever been a slave (Radical Reform and Antislavery). Douglass was passionately committed to antislavery and served as a living counter-argument to slaveholders' claims that enslaved people lacked the intellectual capacity to function as independent American citizens (Lawson and Kirkland). He wrote several books and remained active in the abolitionist cause, in the broader movement for Black equality, and in the campaign for women's suffrage. His convictions can be summed up in his own words: "I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong" (Douglass, 33). Douglass ended his life as he had lived it — in a blaze of public attention. On February 20, 1895, he attended a meeting of the National Council of Women in Washington, D.C., where he received multiple standing ovations. Shortly afterward, he returned home and died of a heart attack or stroke; he was buried in Rochester, New York (Oakes).

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Gender, Domesticity, and Survival

At the time of its publication, the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 — which required states to return any escaped slave to their master — had been in effect for over a decade. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, along with Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, was considered one of the most persuasive arguments against the Slave Act and, for many readers, laid the groundwork for anti-Southern sentiment and the eventual coming of the Civil War. The novel is both a biographical account of Linda's (Harriet's) journey to the North and escape from abuse, and a social commentary on the role of women and the family in the pre-Civil War years. Fictionalized names were used to protect the identities of many people in the story, some of whom remained in danger at the time of publication. The book was praised for its simple style — a narrative that was conversational and yet emotionally forceful at the same time (Yellin).

The book is also a rich commentary on the manner in which women, marriage, and the family are depicted in the antebellum period. Jacobs writes: "Reader, it is not to awaken sympathy for myself that I am telling you truthfully what I suffered. I do it to kindle a flame of compassion in your hearts for my sisters who are still in bondage" (5). The novel juxtaposes its central subject — sexual predation upon Black women — with a prose style that, as was fitting for the nineteenth century, tends toward the melodramatic. What emerges is the portrait of a strong Black woman who would survive against all odds, and who, despite her gender and physical vulnerability, ultimately triumphs over her tormentors: "Those who never witnessed such scenes can hardly believe what I know was inflicted at this time on innocent men, women, and children…. Everywhere men, women and children were whipped till the blood stood in puddles at their feet…. Some received five hundred lashes; others were tied hands and feet and tortured…" (98).

The idea of domestic space — of home and hearth — is depicted in a way that suggests the house was an extension of the woman, at least within Black society. In her role as angel of the household, as mother or wet nurse, the enslaved woman had direct and formative influence over children — both in her own household and in the households where she served as a slave or maid. Through their actions, their answers to children's questions, the stories they told, and the songs they sang, these women profoundly shaped the children in their care as those children formed their first understandings of the world. The most telling example of this is the well-documented phenomenon of white children from wealthy Southern families developing far warmer feelings for their Black nannies than for their own birth mothers. The house, too, represented safety, security, and a barrier against white violence: "Honey, now you is safe. Dem devils ain't comin to search dis house. When I get into miss' safe place, I will bring some nice hot supper" (153).

This concept extends into the idea of motherhood — not simply a biological act, but one of emotion and tenderness that is not reserved for one's own offspring, and that transcends law and discipline: "The spirit of the mothers was so crushed by the lash, that they stood by, without courage to remonstrate" (132).

Works Cited

Douglass, F. The Anti-Slavery Movement. Rochester, NH: Lee, Man and Company, 1855. Print.

Douglass, F. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. Boston, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005. Print.

Elliott, M. Color Blind Justice. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. Print.

Foner, E. Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1853–77. New York: Harper Perennial, 2002.

"Harriet Jacobs, 1813–1897." March 2002. PBS — Africans in America. Web. December 2011.

Jacobs, H. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Google Book Edition. December 2011.

Lawson, B., and F. Kirkland. Frederick Douglass: A Critical Reader. Ed. B. Lawson and F. Kirkland. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1999.

Litwak, L. Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery. New York: Vintage, 1980. Print.

Matlack, J. "The Autobiographies of Frederick Douglass." Phylon 40.1 (1979): 15–28. Print.

McFeely, W. S. Frederick Douglass. New York: Norton, 1991. Print.

Oakes, J. The Radical and the Republican: Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln and the Triumph of Antislavery Politics. New York: W. W. Norton, 2007.

"Radical Reform and Antislavery." January 2011. Digital History. Web. December 2011.

Scully, P., and D. Paton. Gender and Slave Emancipation in the Atlantic World. Chapel Hill, NC: Duke University Press, 2005. Print.

Steckel, R. H. "Women, Work, and Health Under Plantation Slavery in the United States." In Gaspar, D. More Than Chattel: Black Women and Slavery in the Americas. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1996. 43–60.

Tracy, S. In the Master's Eye. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1995. Print.

Yellin, J., ed. Harriet Jacobs: A Life. Cambridge, MA: Basic Books, 2003.