Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself: A Feminist and Gender Studies Approach

Abstract

[Abstract] The object of study of this BA thesis is Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself, published in 1861. My aim is to demonstrate that, apart from race, gender conforms a crucial factor around which the mistreatment of slaves revolves. To demonstrate such objective, I will concentrate on three aspects developed in Incidents: black female identity, the black female body and enslaved motherhood. Moreover, it is my intention to praise Jacobs’ renewal of the slave narrative genre through her inclusion of the slave woman. The methodology that I followed for the elaboration of this thesis consisted, first of all, in the in-depth reading of Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself. It was after this task that I was able to understand the three aforementioned topics as the most relevant for the objectives of my work. Then, I did research on bibliographical resources which aided in broadening my knowledge and thus my capacity for discussion. I consulted several sources, both on line (from JSTOR or Encyclopedia Britannica) and printed ones. The edition of Incidents I used, by Nellie Y. McKay and Frances Smith Foster, is one of the most fruitful references I encountered, since it includes not only annotations, but also “Context” and “Criticism” sections. Some authors whose work I found useful were William Andrews and Philip Gould, regarding the slave narrative formal features and historical context; Hazel Carby, Lana Rakow and C. Riley Snorton, for the examination of black female identity; Mary Vermillion, with regard to the black female body; together with Stephanie Li and Patricia Hill Collins, in relation to slave motherhood as a motif in Jacobs’ work. My end-of-degree project consists of two parts. The first one examines the formal features of the slave narrative and is divided in two subsections: genre and structure. In the first of these, I provide the main characteristics of the genre and its historical context, and I introduce two key aspects: authorship and thematic. As for the structure, first, I comment on the introductory texts to the narrative; then, I present a suggestion for structuring the book in four stages grounded on the thematic of the chapters. I titled the second part of my thesis “The Female Slave and the Dangers of Patriarchy.” Here, I examine three aspects treated in Jacobs’ narrative which demonstrate patriarchy’s consequences on the female slave: female identity, its lack and its achieving; the female body, in relation to autonomy and sexuality; and motherhood, as an instrument for resistance. I finalize my project with a conclusion which summarizes and explains its main ideas and in which I also demonstrate that my aims have been fulfilled. I would like to add that the body of the text below is immersed in the analysis of a story of strength, pain, power, sexuality and, most importantly, a defense of womanhood and the right to identity