Huihui Zong
Ally Day
Women’s Studies 367.01
2/13/2011
Sexuality for Slave Girls In the book, “ Incidents in the life of a salve girl” (Jacobs, 1861), the writer Harriet Jacobs presents how a slave girl, Linda Brent, who mirrors Jacobs’s real experience, being suffered under the control and threaten of his master and how she escapes from the captors and finally gets free. The main character, Linda Brent, who is a slave girl working for Dr Flint’s daughter, is an epitome of the resistant black women. Having a master like Dr Flint, who threatens Linda constantly with violence and humiliating words, Linda shows intelligence and endurance to escape being further offended by Dr Flint. After Linda has children with Mr Sands who appears to be truly cares for Linda, Linda is threatened by Dr Flint again by being offered to buy her children’s freedom if Linda agree to live with him as his mistress. Linda refuses him and begins to plan her escape from that time. Linda has spent seven years hiding in her grandmother's attic and this exhibit her extraordinary psychological and spiritual strength. During the seven years, to elude her captors, she has moved several times to different cities within the help by some kind white people. Linda manages not only to survive but also to transcend seemingly insurmountable barriers, showing the difficulty for slave to live, especially women slave. Although some male authors of slave narratives had mentioned that African American women had been enslaved by white men, none of them had shown this subject as directly as Jacobs does. Jacobs not only described the sexual abuse she suffered, but also explained how she uses her sexuality as a means to avoid exploitation by her master. Risking her reputation in the disclosure of such intimate details, Jacobs appealed to a northern female readership that might sympathize with the plight of a southern mother in bondage. In this book, Harriet Jacobs reveals the cultural binary constructions of black and white womanhood. Jacobs focuses on the topic of a woman’s sexual history to present that gender stereotypes make the life of women slaves more difficult than slavery for man. By discussing her own sexual history, Jacobs appeals to an audience white Northern women whose Christian religion valued sexual abstinence. After Linda moved to Dr Flint’s home, her first impression about sexuality issues that women slave have to suffer is that a man slave nearly beat his wife to death because he finds that the master is the real father of his children (15). This incident impressed Jacobs deeply because of the woman’s miserable cry and her husband’s piteous shout. For women slaves, if being required by their masters to have sexuality, they have no choice but to obey them. However, they need to suffer all the aftermath alone. This kind of sexual issue among women slaves and their masters is very common at that time. However, according to Mary Helen Washington, “most male narrator was under no compulsion to discuss the sexuality or his sex life; he did not have to reveal the existence of children he may have fathered outside marriage” (Washington, 249). Since the male authors only reclaim their manhood and the good qualities of the white males, the sexuality issues which brings women salve disasters cannot be pointed. Other than the torture by masters, the slave girls also need to tolerate the humiliation from their mistress. In the 1800s, for these white northern women, “the availability of black women slaves as their masters’ sexual partners destroyed the sexual relations of white women and men” (John D’ Emilio, 95). As Jacobs described in the book, a girl slave who dies in childbirth soon after her baby dies (15). The girl does not get any sympathy from her mistress but only mockery. Moreover, as a slave girl, they usually need to be pre-matured. According to Jacobs, Dr Flint tells Linda that she is made for his use and she need to obey his command in everything(18). As a little girl, Linda cannot figure out what her master means clearly, however, she can feel some and this makes her feel uncomfortable and despise him. Though sexuality is prohibit topic for women at that time, the slave girl is forced to know about it. Under this situation, Linda still tried to delight herself to regain hopes for free life regardless of the master’s threatening. When Linda is fifteen years old, which is the best age for a girl, she feels her sad epoch in life is going to start (26). She is pursued by her master, Dr. Flint, who is already 55 years old. Being refused by Linda, Dr Flint decides to bring his daughter to his apartment and requires Linda to sleep in the little girl's room to take care of her. He then brings his daughter into his own bedroom, which requires Linda to sleep in his room (30). When Mrs Flint knows this arrangement of her husband, she is jealous of Linda and transfers her anger towards her husband to Linda. As a result, she is in a dangerous situation that she cannot control. By presenting this, Jacobs shows that both black and white women are worth sympathizing since white men have complete control over their wives. The white women are afraid that if they point out their husbands‘ sexual misconduct, their marriage problem will be enlarged, as a result, they choose to vent their anger on the women slaves. Just like Mrs. Flint, even thought she knows that Linda is also powerless as herself to change this situation, she still treat Linda badly. On the contrast, according to Jacobs, Linda pities Mrs Flint because Linda knows that Mrs Flint has tried hardly to be a better wife and she is foiled completely by her husband (32). Linda points out that since white women cannot change the facts that “their husbands are fathers of many little slaves, they just regard the children as one of their properties, just as pigs on the plantation” (33). Though their behavior towards the slave girls is unendurable, the white women are also victims of their husbands’ exploitation of the slaved black women and they are accomplices in their husbands’ misconduct. To escape from Dr Flint’s control, Linda has a sexual relationship with Mr Sands, who is a white lawyer and seems to be a gentleman. When Linda finds that she has the child of Mr Sands, she is so excited to tell Dr Flint about this because she has revenged by telling him she has another man’s child. However, being early pregnant at that time is shame for woman at that time. According to Washington, “her pregnancy makes her grandmother nearly disowns her, Brent herself degraded, and, when Brent comes to write her story, she chooses to tell in a form that made it impossible for her to discuss her sexual abuse openly” (Washington, 250). Linda is a black women with great courage. However, she is also a woman slave who is powerless. Linda claims that: “I feel that the slave woman ought not to be judged by the same standard as others”(50). Like many other women in history, Linda is judged by a moral standard that she wasn't allowed the personal power to adhere to. She can not fight against her master since she is a black slave and she cannot escape the destiny of being pursued by her master since she is a women. When Linda steps on her escaping tour, she has numerous opportunities to escape, but chooses to give up her freedom and her own life to save her children. Being duty of her children, Linda’s escape becomes more difficult and dangerous. When Jacobs writes her narrative, she addressed the women of the North, hoping to make them aware that, unless they spoke out in protest, they were just as guilty as Southern slaveholders of supporting and perpetuating the system of slavery.

Work Cited
Jacobs, Harriet. Incidents in the Life Of A Slave Girl. 1861.
Washington, H. Mary. Meditations on History: The Slave Women’s Voice. 1987.
D'Emilio, John. Intimate Matters :A History of Sexuality In America. 1988.