Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: The Identity of an Enslaved Woman

In her memoir Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs, a former slave, examines the hardships experienced by female slaves. Unlike the prevailing slave narratives of her time, which were written by men, Jacobs' account remains unique for revealing the specific atrocities faced by women in slavery and exposing the double standard by which they were viewed by slaveowners. Jacobs also illustrates that, despite the numerous roles imposed on her as a female slave, she could still forge a new identity—one that was uniquely American.

The dream of my girlhood was over. I felt lonely and desolate. (917)

Marriage and the domestic life, in Jacobs’s time, surrounded a woman’s examination of herself and her success. Women’s identity revolved around marriage and a home, regardless of race and situation. Enslaved women strived for this ideal as well, but their experience vastly differed from the experience of a free white woman. Jacobs’s mother, at least, achieved marriage and a household. However, many slaves did not possess such fortune. Enslaved women faced extreme difficulties in achieving this idealized identity of wife and mother. Jacobs’s mother’s blessing of a marriage was uncommon. This ideal of marriage and virtue, held by many as a standard for women at the time, was impossible for the female slave. Jacobs expresses how she was unable to marry a young man she loved due to her master’s refusal to give permission (914). Marriage would have been a central part of a woman’s identity. But not for the slave. Jacobs expresses her pain of being unable to marry: “The dream of my girlhood was over. I felt lonely and desolate” (917). Like many slaves, Jacobs was denied this identity of marriage and a home, leading her to form her own identity. Jacobs reminds her white female readers of the desolation female slaves felt when kept from marriage, setting the stage for her explanation of the double standard of virtue female slaves endured. Trapped with no way to marry and live a traditional lifestyle, she was forced into desperate measures.

I wanted to keep myself pure...I tried hard to preserve my self-respect. (918)

An identity of virtue and purity, hallowed by society, was impossible for the female slave. Jacobs expresses this in her discussion of her master’s sexual advances. Society demanded that she, as a woman, remain pure and virtuous, and yet it was tolerated for her master to seduce her as a teenage slave. “I wanted to keep myself pure…I tried hard to preserve my self-respect,” Jacobs affirms (918). The hopelessness of her circumstances, in which it was nearly impossible for her to remain pure, drove Jacobs to seek the support of a young lover who could protect her from her master. She explains that the standard held to enslaved women was unfair. For a female slave, surrounded by a master who wanted to take her innocence, driven by horrific circumstances, unable to marry, Jacobs argues that she must be allowed some grace. White women could, for the most part, chose whom they married, raise a family in freedom, and have a household without fearing their children being sold away. Jacobs and many other enslaved women enjoyed no such hopes (918). Society viewed them as promiscuous, ready to steal the husbands of white women, as Jacobs’s mistress fears (913). Jacobs demonstrates that despite her position, where she could easily be taken advantage of, her master still expected purity and virtue from her. Though he tries to seduce her, somehow she remains more sinful than he is for having children with another man. As Jacobs’s master pursues her, she writes that he simultaneously chides her for “having forfeited his good opinion” when she becomes pregnant with a child out of wedlock (921). Desiring only the white woman’s ideal of marriage, but forced by her master into the role of being promiscuous and wicked, Jacobs is caught between these two identities.

You never knew what it is like to be a slave; to be entirely unprotected by law or custom; to have the laws reduce you to the condition of a chattel, entirely subject to the will of another. (919)

Perhaps the central part of Jacobs’s—and the enslaved woman’s—identity is bondage. Jacobs’s work demonstrates how a slave’s identity was synonymous with property. Every part of Jacobs’s fate—who she married, where she lived, her children—was decided by her master. She was constantly reminded that her children could be sold away from her, solidifying her place as property. For Jacobs as slave, bondage was what defined her in the eyes of her master. Her state affected every part of her life. Pleading with her readers, Jacobs tries to help them understand the slave’s existence as property: “You never knew what it is like to be a slave; to be entirely unprotected by law or custom; to have the laws reduce you to the condition of a chattel, entirely subject to the will of another” (919). Jacobs, as a woman, also perpetually feared being raped by her master. This horrible fact was the final reminder of her status as completely his—even her body was his. She could be assaulted at any time because she had no rights.

 At the end of her narrative, Jacobs is grateful to merely be free. She affirms her identity as an individual, desiring only freedom. She did not achieve a domestic life, with marriage and a household. In that way she challenges the identity of being a woman in the 1860s. Contrary to the usual fate of marriage and a household, Jacobs ends her tale content with freedom (930). Her life has been spent to achieve freedom, whether to escape her master’s cruelty or to forge her own future in the North. Through her toils, she wrapped much of her identity in freedom. Instead of being defined by her position as a slave, Jacobs defines herself as simply a mother desiring freedom for herself and her children—something with which her American readers would heavily identify. Jacobs exemplifies a strikingly American identity in her quest for liberty. Jacobs’s work shows that all Americans, enslaved or not, hold to this identity. America revolves around this shared love for freedom, and Jacobs demonstrates in her work that the enslaved are part of this American identity of desiring liberty to enjoy private property, a family, and safety.

Jacobs, as a female slave, writes of numerous roles the slaveholding society of the South forced upon her. Desiring the traditional role of a wife and homemaker, but expected to be an iniquitous slave girl—property—Jacobs faces the pressures of an enslaved woman before the Civil War. Instead of being cowed into this role, however, Jacobs’s identity as a freedwoman is brought to fruition with her and her children’s freedom. Pursuing liberty is the identity she takes, an identity that she shares with her fellow Americans.

Work Cited

Jacobs, Harriet. “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.” The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Ninth Edition, edited by Robert S. Levine, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2017, pp. 910-931.