Introduction
This narrative condemns the laws that got laid out for slavery and the political argument that condemns such laws. "Incidents in the life of a slave girl" has incidents that have helped reshape the slave narrative as a genre. Harriet Jacobs has represented slave narration from a woman’s point of view. Her focus mainly was to look at family and constitutes of womanhood. Their sexuality and other issues that often got told differently from the perspective of a male narrator. She replaces fiction with the truth; she was strongly against human enslavement. She says that the laws of slavery sought to deny the African Americans any constitutional right. The laws stated that they did not exist as individual and hence had no power of reproduction; they got raped, treated as non-humans who had a sexuality that got described as dangerous. She criticized the slave’s law. The black women had got associated with being overly sexual, and they were said to have a charm that led white men to desire them.
Discussion
Harriet Jacobs acted as a ‘self’ and resisted to get sexually exploited and protected her children. She used a style of writing that reflected her principles and beliefs while rejecting the ideology of true womanhood in actuality. She shared her principles with her family and children and even the white women who she addressed her work to. By sharing her opinions with the white women, she showed them that slavery was perversely being viewed, and she was not going to let it go unchallenged. Harriet Jacobs target audience were a white women and hence she wrote the narrative in the familiarized text of literalized genre that they were used to which was a domestic novel. She captures the expectation of the white female audience. She talks about her relationship with the white man Mr. Sands and seeks sympathy from her audience by using tender words. She narrates how pure she views the marriage institution and respects it. She manages to transform the empathy felt by the white audience to empathy. It is rhetoric how her narrative is not of a woman who thinks happiness and final goal in life is to get married. To her not getting married to the father of her children is freedom for her. She says “Reader, my story ends with freedom; not in the usual way, with marriage. I and my children are now free”. She takes pride in her children and says that she would love to have a house of her own someday. Slavery institution has robbed her life wishes, but she has not given hope yet, she cannot have an ideal domestic life of being an ideal mother who stays home all day to look after her children. She says, “The dream of my life is not yet realized. I do not sit with my children in a home of my own. I still long for a hearthstone of my own, however humble.” She says that being a slave confuses morality principles; she says practicing morality as a slave is almost impossible. She rhetorically shares the same thought with her audience when she says that she was in love with a black man she longed for marriage purity and virtues.
In her narratives she shows the power of resistance by addressing her white female audience as ‘I’ to give their subjectivity. Such kind of relation between her as ‘self ‘and ‘others’. She manipulates her words very well to achieve her goal. The manner in which she addresses her audience is subversive and still appeals to the white women. The appeal she creates come up with issues that get complex. Her narratives are very effective as they have to bring a tear to her audience without telling them of the gruesome sexual exploitation details faced by slave women. She would not want to appear as if she is being too confrontational about the slavery under the arms of the white men. It seems her aim is to project sexual anxieties of the white woman to the female slave’s body that is sexualized. The slave’s woman concern over victimization sexually puts the fear that the free woman has on sexual elements of the bodily experience of her own. It does not matter whether it is a positive or an oppression mechanism. She narrates evidently about her own sexual exploitation to stimulate sympathy from her audience. Harriet Jacobs does not distract the audience from her events that bring back attention to her oppression narrative.
It is rhetorical how she voices that a slave woman should not get treated as a free woman, yet that’s what her aim is from the beginning. It is her desire and sole purpose to write the narration to the white women. She also does not attempt to bond with women who support anti-slavery regarding issues of sexual desire or gender. She is very discreet in her mission because she knows that her mission is to communicate with the terms that the white woman understands. She talks of Mr. Sands being her lover and how a shaming her actions are. She gives her audience power to judge her depending on her circumstances as a slave. She comes off to her audience as incompetent because she is a slave, by saying “I was born and reared in Slavery; and have remained in a Slave State for twenty-seven years.” She is very modest but at the same time she remains clear as day and night. Jacobs knows how to relate consciously enough to ‘other’ in a manner that is progressive to her cause.
Her roles in this narrative are as a resister, a mother and a lover. She showed great sacrifice by securing her children’s freedom by dwelling in a tiny space. As a resister she sired her children with another man while refusing advances from her master Mr. flint. She shows her ‘self’ by showing us that she was strong willed and did not cower easily to sexual exploitation. However, when playing these roles she was a woman who spoke of motherhood. Even though, the slavery system degraded her and brutalized her since she was small, she has instincts like any mother about her children and has the capacity to feel misery as a mother. She says that all she had was a determined will while her master had law and power on his side. There is great difference between her oppressors and the essence of true womanhood. The perception she formed of other slave women assisted her to know the true identity of other women slaves and she got to know more about her ‘self ' and her heart.
Conclusions
When looking at her complete picture using perceptions formed of her ‘self’ and other her identity gets ambiguous. "Incidents in the life of a slave girl" revealed the true womanhood as a concept of being an ideology. Her resistance gets clear because she is sheltered in the fixed self like passive victims, and that is what her oppressors observe. Her resistance against sexual oppression is very important compared to other resistance. She resists true womanhood, an ideology the white society holds. She needs the slave woman to behave differently from the white woman who is free. She definitely challenges perception of being a submissive woman. We find that self-perception from her view is very complex and that is why she feels a duty to apply certain forms of resistance. The themes discussed in this essay are important for my social interaction because they will help me become independent while making decisions.
