Through Space and Motherhood: The Dual Struggles of Enslaved Women in Harriet Jacob's Work

This essay explores the themes of space, motherhood, and resistance in Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, focusing on the struggles of enslaved women.

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, written by herself is an autobiographical piece depicting the horrors of slavery, namely the putrid and unique experience of enslavement as a woman and mother. Harriet Jacobs efficiently produces an emotionally rancorous piece by interweaving several narrative devices alongside thematically political and emotional notions- creating an autarkic and convincing account of the intricately devastating circumstance of female slavery. 

Jacob’s utilisation of space and its social allegorism brings her work to life. For instance ‘It was impossible for me to move in an erect position’ highlights how truly miniscule the space was, and Jacob’s decision to portray this by using movement as an example is more effective than a simple string of words supplying the reader with the dimensions of the space. Moreso, the utilisation of imagery through a depiction of circumstance conjures the physical space that accompanies the metaphysical concept of a female slave’s place in society; the small confined space paralleling the expectation of women to make themselves small and digestible and the treatment of slaves being one of confinement, restriction, and control. Critic Fagan Yellin encompasses this notion by exclaiming ‘Incidents is an account by a woman of her struggle against oppression in slavery as a sexual object and as a mother…double critique of our nineteenth-century ideas and institutions…challenges not only the institution of chattel slavery and its supporting ideology of white racism…[also] traditional patriarchal institutions and ideas.’ (Fagan Yellin 1981: 486)​ This, in terms of the space Jacobs erects, is taken as an allegorical manifestation of the hierarchical and ironclad positioning of people of colour in the societal and political standards of the period. Specifically, the space’s restriction of movement being a direct parallel of the almost impossible feat of escaping enslavement, and the social expectation of women to be quaint, reticent, and small is effectively portrayed in the space’s physical parameter and Linda’s survival’s reliance on being undetectable and quiet. 

Diane Calabrese claims that an ‘interest in the importance of insects in literature grows, the possible evolution in the precision of observation, or level of engagement, will be tested’ (Calabrese 2008: 2210) noting a common trait between writers being the utilisation of varying insects- from complex narrative ideas to simple literary devices. This encourages us to delve deeper into the utilisation of insects in the depiction of Linda’s crawlspace: ‘But for weeks I was tormented by hundreds of little red insects, fine as a needle’s point, that pierced through my skin, and produced an intolerable burning.’ Furthermore, the connection between entomology and race can be noted through critic Jean-Thomas Tremblay’s article on black ecologies: ‘The first concerns environmental racism, a significant configuration of environmental inequality. Dorceta E. Taylor (2014), for instance, models an environmental justice scholarship attuned to the disproportionate exposure of Black communities, communities of colour, and low-income communities to environmental hazards like pollution.’ (Tremblay 2023: 129�"139) This, when taken into account, places importance on the depiction of Linda’s physical space being infested with insects, connotatively making it unclean or unkept. As aforementioned, the physical space depicted parallels the metaphysical narrative tool of space and an allegorical portrayal of social standing; by describing the crawl space as dirty and grotty, Jacobs hammers down on previous, indirect commentaries on the social standing of slaves at the time.

Additionally, the piece places significant importance on the identity of women and motherhood in relation to the experience of enslavement, producing a multiplexed and  dimensionally thought-provoking narrative. This can be instantiated by Linda’s desire to see her children, ‘I said to myself, “Now I will have some light. Now I will see my children”’going as far as to risk an opening in her confinement for a chance to glimpse them, and further supported by her joy at achieving this ‘At last I heard the merry laugh of children, and presently two sweet little faces were looking up at me, as though they knew I was there, and were conscious of the joy they imparted. How I longed to tell them I was there!’ Stephanie Li defends this by claiming ‘It is precisely through her flesh as both mother and slave woman that…[Harriet Jacobs] claims the insurgent ground of her social identity and…resistance to human bondage…resists prevailing beliefs concerning black women’s indifference to their children.’ (Li 2006: 14) All together, this highlights the innately cruel affair of women under human subjugation through the consideration of motherhood and the grandiose emotional effects of a maternal bond in the face of servitude. Jacob outright rejects the notion of a black woman’s indifference to her children, purposely reintroducing a characteristic humanity to slaves that has been diminished by white supremacists, slave-owners, and general supporters of slavery; redefining the general societal definition of slaves by purging the connotation of lesser-beings/animals. Furthermore, this places an emphasis on perspective in Jacobs’s work by discussing the notion of serfdom through the perspective of a woman, formulating a rich cosmos of hardship and mimicking a striking mosaic of the double prejudice placed on female slaves under the presumptions of the hyper racist and sexist 19th century southern United States.

To conclude, Harriet Jacobs’s autobiography is a vastly immersive piece that serves as a testament to the horrors of slavery- interweaving with the emotional grips of motherhood, therefore creating a dual faceted impression of prejudice endured by Jacobs and the many Lina Brents of the world. Moreso, this retelling of agonies is acutely multifaceted and intricate- as the work capitalises on seemingly ordinary literary devices to create an allegorical nod to societal faults, effectively naming Jacobs as a true wordsmith.

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Yellin Fagan, Jean, Written by Herself: Harriet Jacobs' Slave Narrative (Yonkers: Duke University Press, 1981)

Li, Stephanie, Motherhood as Resistance in Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (Rochester: Legacy, 2006)

Calabrese, D.M, Encyclopedia of Entomology (Dordrecht: Springer, 2008) p. 2207-2211

Tremplay, Jean-Thomas, Black Ecologies (Humanity, Animality, Property) (Durham: Duke University Press, 2023)