So, I’ve been doing a lot of reading regarding the The Cult of True Womanhood and also, the social values regarding women during the 19th century. I’ve also read up on articles and topics related to motherhood and Harriet Jacobs specifically. It has altered my perspective on HJ’s work considerably. Even before this, I knew her narrative was special simply because she was the first black women’s slave narrative to date her story is unique and her voice is powerful.
However, now with a little bit more information regarding on the ideals of white women at the time, I realised that she was multi-tasking while telling her incredible story. Some, including dear Toni Morrison, assumed she was pandering to her white female audience. She wasn’t, she was simply using the Master’s tools to tear down the oppressors’ walls. HJ would first invite sympathy by relating her helplessness against her slaveowner, whether it is about having a legitimate partner or keeping her children safe (which are all great values upheld by The Cult of True Womanhood). After all, women depended on their husbands and needed to keep their children safe, etc. Then, she would turn around to chastise the slavery institution, including the silent majority that allowed slavery to happen! So, she would appeal to the conservative values of True Womanhood at the time but also, inspire them to go beyond the supposedly “safe” sphere of a home with Real Womanhood action through the abolitionist movement. HJ is anything BUT passive in her narrative, yet all she craves for according to her narrative, is the freedom to have a stable family of her own.
Now, of course, there is a chance that this is simply what her heart desired and she is stating it as such. However, thanks to the article by Stover, I could see the writing strategies she had done to get the message across. Even the fact that she first used the pen name Linda Brent, but later came out public as the author of Incidents according to Jean Fagan Yellin, means that she had anticipated backlash in telling her personal story. It is fascinating, especially if you compare the narrative with Yellin’s biography of Jacobs because you can see the writing choices that Jacobs had done, especially in the case of her partner, Mr Sands.
On the other hand, I’ve been reading a book called The Politics of M(o)thering, which should be right up in my alley, my supervisor suggested it to me, but turns out to be a bust. First of all, the anthology of essays itself focuses on African Literature, not African American, and most of the essays fall under the postcolonial theory. Secondly, the perspective on motherhood here is not in any way comparable. The arguments about motherhood suggested in the essays are more in line with the 20th century feminist perspective on motherhood, which is that women should not be pigeonholed by their “sacred” responsibility to rear children, especially with the violence set upon women in a patriarchal society.
For one thing, black enslaved women in the 19th century are not beholden to ideals of motherhood – they were barely regarded as human beings. Motherhood for them was an impossible concept as their reproduction abilities were commercialised for profits. They were labelled as “breeders” rather than mothers. So, motherhood is an important concept for the slaves themselves in order to retain their sense of humanity. Ergo, this book is useless for me.
However, it did gave me an idea. In the Introduction of the book, Obioma Nnaemeka said:
the essays speak eloquently to the complexities and ambiguities of African literature … calling into question some of the existing feminist studies … that insist on straitjacketing the complex web of issues raised in the literary works into oppositional binaries, such as traditional/modern, male/female, agent/victim, when the central arguments of the works and their appeal … rest on the authors’ insistence on border crossings, gray areas and the ambigious interstices of the binaries where woman is both benevolent and malevolent with powers that are healing and lethal … (2)
It should probably have occurred to me before, but I didn’t notice it, is how both the identities of motherhood and womanhood should be explored in less of a cut and dry manner but more of a gray area. (This is me trying to make sense of the thoughts in my head into words but they are not coming out). Or my introduction chapter should at least indicate so. Another great line is this: “In my view, what much of the existing feminist analyses of African literature designate as irreconcilable ‘unfeminist’ contradictions are actually the tensions of mutuality, not antagonism (complementary not oppositional) that give life, vibrancy, and meaning to the African environment (3)”.
The way I have been considering both motherhood and womanhood is in the frame of oppositional binaries but I realised now that the exploration of these two identities shows how much they can also be complementary. For example, it is obvious that being a mother while being a slave hinders HJ’s ability to escape as she constantly has to consider how to free her children as well. In comparison to many of the slave narratives written by men, black enslaved women tend to be tied down to her immediate family members whereas the men can just up and leave. So, having children equals complicating path to freedom that’s already harrowing in the first place. But, a lot of the instances in both Incidents and Beloved claim that their children is the main motivation to seek freedom in the first place.
So, what is freedom for an enslaved mother? What does motherhood mean in the pursuit of freedom? What does individuality mean when your identities are external to yourself (slave, mother, etc)? SO MANY QUESTIONS AND I HAVE NO ANSWERS (YET).
The fact that I’ve squeezed my brain dry to write this post is making me wary of writing the actual thing.
My Thesis Log 