Incidents in the life of a slave girl, by Harriet Jacobs

Résumé du document

The novel Incidents in the life of a slave girl is an autobiography written by Harriet Jacobs in 1861. In this book, she relates various events of the life she had when she was a slave in South Carolina. She confides in the reader and gives details of the difficulties she had to face in her everyday life.
We are going to show to which extent this book can be seen as a female Bildungsroman. First, you have to know that a Bildungsroman is the story of a single individual's growth and development within the context of a defined social order; it is a novel about a main character's self-development from childhood to adulthood.Can we say that Harriet Jacobs reached that self development when reading her story? And how does she manage to tell the reader about her experience? In a first part, we'll show that Incidents in the life of a slave girl is a Bildungsroman (according to the criteria that we've just mentioned). Then, we'll analyse the book as a female narrative. And eventually, we'll clarify the relations between the author, the heroine and the reader in the book.

Extraits

[...] Indeed, as she clearly explains in the book, the life of a slave girl is very different from that of a boy. She mentions the work in the plantations, which is a task reserved for men. Besides, throughout the book, H Jacobs speaks of the burden, which is incumbent on girls in slavery. Regarding her own story, she had to stay at her master's home to look after the children, to do the housework, to help her mistress. But there was more than that. [...]

[...] To transmit the message to the readers, she uses rhetorical means. Indeed, she often addresses directly to the reader. She wants him to believe her: “Reader, if you have never been a slave, you cannot imagine the acute sensation of suffering “reader, I draw no imaginary pictures of southern homes. I am telling you the plain truth”; she appeals to his compassion and his reflection: you think this proves the black man to belong to an inferior order of beings? [...]

[...] In this book, this misunderstanding is blatant, reinforced by the hatred of the slaves and their masters for each other. This misunderstanding is formulated in the narrative by the author, who wonders and asks questions about the legitimacy of slavery: “Some poor creatures have been so brutalized by the lash that they will sneak out of the way to give their masters free access to their wives and daughters. Do you think this proves the black man to belong to an inferior order of beings?” On the side of the slaveholders, the misunderstanding is anchored in the laws, the established thesis at that time of the inferiority of black men the narrator talks about this feeling saying that white people considered the slaves as “cattle”. [...]

[...] Then, her two children boy and a girl) soon became very precious to her. All her life, she has tried to be close to them, to protect them from some possible slaveholder. When she stayed in her grandma's attic for seven years, she managed to overcome her difficulties by thinking that her children were on the floor behind, laughing or playing; they symbolize hope and life to her; she even confesses heat of my den was intense, but I had my consolations: I could watch the children and when they were near enough, I could hear their talk”. [...]

[...] In Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, concerning the character, there is superiority, because the narrator, who is the author, is older than her character. She is telling her past life. Thus she can analyze her acts and the innocence of Linda, attempting to apologize for the bad things she did and to justify those acts to appeal the compassion of the reader: e.g. when she reveals that she slept with a white man: “Pity me and pardon me, o virtuous reader!” know I did wrong [ Still, in looking back, calmly, on the events of my life, I feel that the slave woman ought not to be judged by the same standards as others.” Concerning the reader, we don't feel any superiority from the narrator. [...]