Imagery of Death in a Slave’s Survival
In Harriet Ann Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, she writes about the life of a slave woman named Linda Brent and her struggles to secure her freedom. Through this struggle she begins to recognize that she must choose between her freedom and being a mother, two conflicting ideals that she must try to reason with. Throughout the story, Jacobs describes Brent dealing with the issues of slavery, death and rebirth, and the worth of women.
Throughout the story, the character of Linda Brent narrates her life from the time of her mother’s death when she was six years old until she obtained her freedom in the North. But it is to be noted that the character of Brent is but a pseudonym for Harriet Ann Jacobs herself who underwent all of the same trials and difficulties as her character (Yellin 804-805). In fact, the story can be read as a memoir of sorts, describing the horrors of slavery that Jacobs went through personally. In the story, Brent is born to a slave mother and carpenter father, both of whom enjoy relative freedom with their work. However, she is a slave and even though she enjoyed a good mistress during her childhood, her mistress still does not treat her as Brent feels she should be treated, saying “But I was her slave, and I suppose she did not recognize me as her neighbor... I try to think with less bitterness of this act of injustice” (Jacobs 807). By being raised in a household where her elders are seemingly free, Brent seems to develop the idea that she should be treated better, closer to an equal, though this sort of thinking is taboo and unheard of for the time. Eventually she is sold to a cruel and abusive master named Doctor Flint, who tries to sexually assault Brent, though her attempts to thwart him succeed in the cruelest way. She resigns herself to becoming a sex tool to an unmarried white man who is empathetic of her plight, a sort of sexual entrapment. But she is ultimately locked away in her grandmother’s attic garret for seven years, a different kind of captivity, but she escapes the assault of her master. At one point, she visits her father’s grave to hear his words of wisdom on her predicament. “The father's words allude to American culture's legendary imperative to seek liberty or death, a sentiment Brent later repeats as she echoes Patrick Henry in defense of her determination to escape… the father's words… lend validation to Brent's desire to rid herself of Dr. Flint's oppression” (Kreiger 611).
The issue of freedom or death often leads to internal struggle for Brent. Slavery is seen as death while freedom is rebirth. The story itself is laden with the description of deaths, with a total roughly around 28 described or noted deaths surrounding those that Brent or her family knew (Kreiger 607). But to Brent there is a distinct link between survival and death as she utilizes what Kreiger calls “thanatomimeses, acts such as those of wounded soldiers who feign death on a battlefield in order to survive, or those of victims of animal attacks who play dead in order to thwart the animal's further aggression” (Kreiger 607). Brent constantly employs this act through her use of sex with Mr. Sand to thwart Doctor Flint’s attempts at assault but also her seven years spent pent up in her grandmother’s garret. But she laments her position and struggles with the decision to stay there as she says, “But though my life in slavery was comparatively devoid of hardships, God pity the woman who is compelled to lead such a life” (Jacobs 818). This feigning is no less significant than a literal death to Brent, and she views the eventual emergence from this state of death as a rebirth and resurrection, much like the Christ figure from Christian mythology, which plays a heavy hand in the story through morals and death imagery. Kreiger notes of an abolitionist writer who makes the connection between slavery and the story of Lazarus rising from the dead (Kreiger 610). But sometimes this act of thanatomimeses backfires and is instead a detriment, as noted when Brent records three separate images of live burials; the first is a slave who works in the same household who is punished by being locked into a cotton gin who dies four days later, the second is Brent’s daughter hiding underneath Doctor Flint’s house, and finally Brent’s entombment in the garret (Kreiger 613). Even though she views the emergence from death as revival, Brent also expresses her wish numerous times to die instead of remain in slavery, often wishing for her children to die instead of know slave life. This is not a unique sentiment but one shared amongst most slaves that Brent describes, as they all mourn their lot in life and see death as the ultimate freedom.
The only thing stopping Brent from running away to the North to secure her freedom is her children. The idea of taking them with her is nearly impossible, as the statistics of her getting caught would be high, but she refuses to compromise on her freedom, especially with the advances of Doctor Flint. Jacobs writes that in that day and age, a woman’s worth was measured by her skills as a mother, and were even more harshly judged if the woman was a slave, lamenting,
O, you happy free women, contrast your New Year's day with that of the poor bond-woman...They are your own, and no hand but that of death can take them from you. But to the slave mother New Year's day comes laden with peculiar sorrows...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).
Even mothers wish for the death of their children, closely tying the motifs of death and motherhood together for the slave woman. However, a major voice in this issue is Brent’s grandmother, who, despite her own freedom, stresses the importance of children and being a good mother over wishing for ones freedom. Kreiger states, “To the grandmother, Brent's respectability as a mother and her devotion to family obviously take precedence over personal liberty and self-determination” (Kreiger 611). But when Brent appears to hear the voice of her deceased father telling her to pursue freedom, Brent finds a way to achieve both by feigning death yet staying alive, seemingly abandoning her children while staying close; she hides away in her grandmother’s garret for seven years, hiding from Doctor Flint but staying close enough to see and hear her children. Her father represents freedom while her grandmother represents motherhood, two distinct aspects of life that a slave may not always obtain together, but by hiding herself away, Brent finds a way to merge these two aspects together, ultimately ensuring her survival and eventual freedom.
Jacobs’ story as understood as a slave narrative works to showcase the life of slave women, a generally unpublished topic for the time. She chronicles how a slave woman dealt with her own slavery, her thoughts on death and resurrection, and how she was viewed in terms of being a mother. Slavery was already hard as it was, but slave women were burdened with much more.
Works Cited
Jacobs, Harriet. “From Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.” The Norton Anthology of American
Literature. Ed. Jean Fagan Yellin. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2007. 805-825. Print.
Jacobs, Harriet. “From Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.” Documenting the American
South. Ed. L. Maria Francis Child. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Library,
2004. Web. December 3rd, 2013. https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/08/
Kreiger, Georgia. “Playing Dead: Harriet Jacobs’s Survival Strategy in Incidents in the Life of a
Slave Girl.” African American Review. 42.3 (2008). 607-621. Print.
Yellin, Jean Fagan. Ed. “Harriet Jacobs.” The Norton Anthology of American Literature. New
York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2007. 804-805. Print.
