Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Written By Herself

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Written By Herself. By Harriet A. Jacobs. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000. xli + 228 p. $39.95 (cloth); $17.95 (paper).

Edited and introduced by Jean Fagan Yellin, this enlarged edition of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Written by Herself is the incredible epic of Harriet Jacobs, 1813-1897, who endured and escaped from slavery in Edenton, North Carolina. I am especially drawn to Incidents since I was born in North Carolina and serve as a priest in the Episcopal Church in which Jacobs struggled fiercely to understand God's presence in relation to her tragedy of slavery. Jacobs writes to Amy Post, her white Quaker friend, "I have ... striven faithfully to give a true and just account of my own life in Slavery-God knows I have tried to do it in a Christian spirit. . ." (p. xv).

Jacobs expertly narrates her harsh life as a slave under the sexual exploitation of her North Carolina master. Technically, Jacobs was the slave of a three-year-old girl, whose father, the Episcopalian Dr. Flint, proved to be "a licentious master." As Jacobs matured, he made her endure unrelenting sexual harassment. These tragic circumstances were further complicated by Jacobs's sexual relationship with a young, white lawyer with whom she had two children. Because of her lack of loyalty to Dr. Flint, Jacobs was subjected to even harsher treatment by her jealous master and this forced her to the extremes of escape. For example, she states that she lived for six years hidden in a tiny crawlspace above a storeroom in her grandmother's house (p. 144). Jacobs recounts:

Dark thoughts passed through my mind as I lay there day after day. I tried to be thankful for my little cell, dismal as it was, and even to love it, as part of the price I had paid for the redemption of my children. Sometimes I thought God was a compassionate Father, who would forgive my sins for the sake of my sufferings. At other times, it seemed to me there was no justice or mercy in the divine government. I asked why the curse of slavery was permitted to exist, and why I had been so persecuted and wronged from the youth upward. These things took the shape of mystery, which is to this day not so clear to my soul as I trust it will be hereafter (p. 123).

During this hiding period, Jacobs practiced writing and reading to fill up her days. Perhaps most sustaining for her during this time was the Bible, to which she makes constant reference throughout her narrative. She eventually escapes her "cell of six years" (p. 144) and survives a sea voyage to New York where she finds both her freedom and her brother, John Jacobs, whose own narrative accompanies this enlarged edition.

For much of the twentieth century, Incidents was forgotten or thought to be an antislavery novel written by a white woman author. In fact, Jacobs's life is so incredible a narrative that both Yellin and the original editor, Lydia Maria Child, spend a significant portion of their introductions authenticating Jacobs's authorship. It was only when Yellin stumbled upon Jacobs's letters and John Jacobs's own narrative, "A True Tale of Slavery," that Yellin put this volume together. Incidents is stunning for two reasons: a slave girl wrote it, and she wrote it with a cosmology of Christian forgiveness. I turn now to these two reasons as I encourage readers to indeed experience this story for themselves.

As to why this story is stunning, first, the reader will be enthralled by a self-educated slave girl who grew up to tell her life story through compelling prose. We learn from Yellin's masterful edition of Incidents that much of the controversy surrounding the authenticity of Jacobs's narrative concerns the fact that twentieth-century scholars of Afro-American literature assign importance not only to the role of white editors of slave narratives but also to the authenticating documents that accompany these texts. The problem here, however, is that the authenticating documents for Incidents are by persons without authority in an historical setting. For example, Incidents was not endorsed by a prominent white male but by a white woman (Lydia Maria Child) and a black man (John Jacobs). Therefore, the whole question about who has authority to verify the truth is a crucial aspect of what makes Incidents an invaluable and controversial work. About such authentication, Jacobs converses with Amy Post, "for I must write just what I have lived and witnessed myself, don't expect much of me dear Amy you shall have truth but not talent" (p. xxii).

Secondly, Jacobs's story is amazing because it articulates forgiveness. As a product of chattel slavery in which black women's sexuality was seen as a commodity by white men, Jacobs continues to narrate a Christian ethic of forgiveness. She does this throughout her dual oppressions as a sexually exploited black woman and as a single mother trying to nurture her children despite the law that her children were the property of another white master. Jacobs's understanding of the Christian ethic of forgiveness contained the complexity of making sense of her own sexual history in light of a legal system in which she was not in possession of herself or her children. Jacobs reconciles her lack of chastity in such a system as she states: