Unrated
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs; narrated by Lisa Renée Pitts | 2011; originally published 1861 | Tantor Media | Audiobook $ 17.99
Written and published in 1861 after Jacobs’ harrowing escape from a vile and predatory master, the memoir delivers a powerful and unflinching portrayal of the abuses and hypocrisy of the master-slave relationship. Jacobs writes frankly of the horrors she suffered as a slave, her eventual escape after several unsuccessful attempts, and her seven years in self-imposed exile, hiding in a coffin-like “garret” attached to her grandmother’s porch.
A rare firsthand account of a courageous woman’s determination and endurance, this inspirational story also represents a valuable historical record of the continuing battle for freedom and the preservation of family.
This was a difficult book to get through — not because it’s boring or badly written, quite the opposite. It was difficult to get through because the subject is so brutal. I’m left feeling simultaneously grateful for the experience of having read it, and wishing it’d never made it onto my to-read list.
The narrative follows the life of an enslaved girl from her early childhood to her escape and early years of freedom. She grew up in a comparatively good situation for a slave, in which she learned to read and write and was able to spend much of her time with her extended family, but she was eventually forced into servitude under a predatory master with an abusive wife who blamed the slave child for her husband’s depravity.
Harriet Jacobs focused particularly on her continual victimization has an enslaved woman, not because she wanted to be seen as helpless or hopeless, but because she wanted to draw attention to the impossible position of enslaved women more generally; they were treated as usable property good for hardly more than breeding additional slaves, then they were deemed immoral and undeserving of respect because of that treatment.
As the descendent of at least a couple of documented slaveholders, I often struggle with the implications of what that peculiar institution meant for the day-to-day lives of my ancestors. It’s too easy to take the comforting point of view that they might have been comparatively kind to the enslaved people they held in bondage, that perhaps they didn’t abuse them or sell away their children. But the reality of that situation might be so much worse, if this story is anything to judge by. Even many not-as-bad white people in this narrative are still pretty disappointing, making promises of freedom that they won’t keep or being cowed into petty brutishness by their more powerful slaveholder neighbors, with only a few exceptions. Thinking that my own ancestors could have acted the same way feels me with anger at their complicity in such cruelty, and deep sadness for the people whose lives they may have crushed. Of course it’s impossible to atone for the sins of one’s forebears, nor should anyone be individually held to that kind of standard, but still… that sense of shame over our country’s legacy of slavery is particularly potent to me right now, after reading Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.
I don’t really know how to recommend this book. The story is a real bummer, to put it politely, even though the author did eventually make her way to freedom and even joined the fight to end slavery in America. The book ends on a note of hope, and with a clarion call to action for its mid-nineteenth-century readers. It’s a story that should be required reading for any student of the history of our country, personalizing as it does the horrors of slavery — but it’s also the kind of book that a reader has to brace for before jumping in.
List:
- Biography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s “Documenting the American South”
- Biography from the New Bedford Historical Society
- Primary source set from the Digital Public Library of America
- Encyclopedia entry in the North Carolina History Project
Publication information: Jacobs, Harriet. Incidents in the life of a slave girl. Saybrook, CT: Tantor Media, 2011. Audiobook.
Source: Public library, via Overdrive/Libby.
Disclaimer: I am not compensated, monetarily or otherwise, for reviews of books or other products.
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