So, this is the only second post on this log simply because I haven’t been doing anything much. Reading has been slow and I really need to dig deep for that well of motivation. Get it together, girl! Anyway, I have been solely focusing on Toni Morrison’s Beloved for the past few months because I knew that this novel would be the crux of my thesis. However, I had been told that focusing only on one novel is not feasible since I have to write 30,000 words to complete this dissertation. In comes Harriet Jacobs. It’s a last minute addition and I’m worried that I wouldn’t be able to give enough attention or time in researching about her and her slave narrative. Beloved is currently in the first main spot so I’m trying to balance it out. Hopefully, this week will fill in some of the blanks.
Playing Dead: Harriet Jacobs’s Survival Strategy in “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” by Georgia Kreiger
A lot of informative insights here but not loving some of the angles and perspectives taken. Well yes, research is not about love and favouritism but questioning the article in every other paragraphs does take a damper on things
Meh:
- I think one of the key point that I disagree with Kreiger is the authenticity of Jacobs’s work. There are many articles and statements claiming that Jacobs’s work is inauthentic or pandering to a white female audience. Frankly, Douglass never had to prove the authenticity of his narratives but I guess his gender and popularity helped him there.
- Implies that Jacobs is manipulative and calculative in her narrative: “Her concerns about her audience lead Jacobs to create an argument that simultaneously espouses her readers’ values and disarms them from employing those values to judge her. Saidiya Hartman defines this duplicity in Jacobs’s aims as a form of seduction, suggesting that the impact of Brent’s involvement in sexual seduction is defused by the seductiveness of Jacobs’s argument” (608). I don’t know, Kreiger, “duplicity” is a strong word. I think she’s just an excellent writer with good points, you know?
- Anyway, Kreiger truly took to the task to prove that “Linda Brent” is merely a persona for Jacobs and even implying that certain scenes, mainly Brent hiding in the garret, as a writing strategy to absolve her sins from her “willful plunge into the abyss of sexual license, miscegenation, and unwed motherhood” in the eyes of white female abolitionists (616). More: “Jacobs narrates what can be interpreted as an act of compensation for her past, a death penalty – the ultimate punishment for sin. Brent’s self-incarceration in the garret is construed as a self-sacrifice offered in payment for her own and her children’s redemption” (607). It makes sense, to view Jacobs’s “sins” from the perspective of white Christian women and yet, I can’t help ignoring the cynical tone that Kreiger adopts in evaluating Jacobs’s attempt to dehumanise herself. Then again, I am defensive when it comes to Jacobs. This could be a good example of the obstacles Jacobs face in championing her voice and her story, posthumous however.
- There is a strange lack of focus on slaveowners themselves or how slavery influences Jacobs’s actions. Everything is based on the perception that Jacobs is trying to pander to her audience rather than motivated by resistance. Like for the above quote, the “self-incarceration” is seen as a punishment and yet, not much emphasis on Dr Flint’s constant sexual harassment and the fact that the family is introducing her children to life at a plantation, which is her main objective to hiding away in the first place? Convenient.
- Slut-shaming: “Brent declares that she accepted Sands’s advances as a “deliberate calculation” in the hope of securing her freedom (54-56). She admits to offering sex in exchange for possible advantage” (608). More: “Presenting Brent as ambiguously innocent and guilty, pure and defiled, victim and perpetrator of a crime, Jacobs manages to define precisely her own troubled position in relation to her readers” (617). A) Black women are allowed to be complex B) if getting impregnated by your consensual white lover is a “crime” then I don’t want to be right, dammit!
- During her voluntary “entombment”, Brent indulges in needlework, writing letters, reading and praying so Kreiger is stating that Jacobs is presenting an “image of ideal womanhood”. Mentioned “angel in the house” which honestly, is an overkill. She is trapped in a garret, not transcending spiritually, so there are limitations on what she could do. “She practices domesticity and feminine piety in preparation for her rebirth from the tomb of slavery, at which time she hopes to arise a free woman and eventually to obtain a home” (618). Bless you, Jacobs.
I am spending too much on commenting what I disagree with this article, so let’s go into some of the more useful and insightful parts of the article!
Goodie:
- I like the framing of Harriet Jacobs as a fallen woman, mainly because this will work very well with the comparison with Sethe! Sethe is definitely a fallen woman. I could also compare the response of Brent’s community as opposed to Sethe’s. I suppose I probably should have seen this, since Brent apologises and excuses her own “misconduct” throughout her narrative but my feminist self just wouldn’t allow myself to see her as “fallen”. She had sex with a white man, big deal. Q: “Unlike many American slave narratives by women, Incidents offers its author’s confession of what her readers might regard as a sin-ridden past and a justification of her motives to a potentially condemnatory readership” (608). Also, like a total doofus, this line made me realise there are other slave narratives by other women. Let’s not go there.
- Kreiger calling the slave narrative as morbid for mentioning death several times is a fascinating one, mainly because I think, of all slave narratives and neo-slavery novels, Jacobs’s work is the least violent I’ve read. Kreiger noted that there are 28 mentions of death in the text. Kreiger’s points on the concept of “liberty or death” is very important to take down and note. Q: “Several slaves, including Brent herself, express death wishes, contending that death is preferable to life in slavery. Brent also voices the “liberty-or-death” imperative that fuels American civil religious ideology” (610). In footnote 12, Kreiger claims that Jacobs is quoting Patrick Henry “‘Give me liberty, or give me death’ was my motto”.
- Jacobs’s being compared to sentimental novels. Worth checking out? Yay/nay?
- Most importantly, this death wish is extended to her children! Ding, ding, ding! Well, I knew of this reading through the narrative of course but it’s worth mentioning that Kreiger agrees. Q: “Brent’s own death wish extends to her children, as she confesses that after the troubled birth of her son she “wished that he might die in infancy … and she recovers her daughter Ellen from the crawlspace under the house to which she has retreated, Brent admits: “I thought how well it would be for her if she never waked up” (610).
- MOST IMPORTANT: “Though Brent is moved to proclaim decisively that “liberty is more valuable than life” (43), and thus that a failed escape is better than continued enslavement, Jacobs’s narrative also demonstrates that, for slaves who must leave behind family and friends in order to escape, the issue is not so easily decided” (610). A failed escape is better than continued enslavement? Can you say MARGARET GARNER? Why hello there, Sethe. Great to see you all have company among each other. But I think this also emphasises on the difficulty of escaping with family members in tow. This is probably where I mention the usefulness of Mr Sands, aka white baby daddy, in this situation of giving the children a quick exit out of the South.
- Another great point: the gendered perceptions of resistance. Jacobs’s presented two different viewpoints, one from the father, and one from the grandmother. This is excellent because it confirms that men consider liberty as an individual aspiration while women have a harder time due to matrilineality and respectability. “Brent is confronted by the old woman, who advises her, “Stand by your own children, and suffer with them till death. Nobody respects a mother who forsakes her children; and if you leave them you will never have a happy moment. If you go, you will make me miserable the short time I have left to live” (91). To the grandmother, Brent’s respectability as a mother and her devotion to family obviously take precedence over personal liberty and self-determination. But to fully appreciate her view, we must consider who the grandmother is and what she represents in the narrative … Aunt Marthy upholds the morals and values associated with true womanhood, giving voice to the ideals of Jacobs’s white female readers” (611). These are great points, showing that seeking liberty doesn’t conform to the values and ideals of womanhood and motherhood in that time. Great segue to Michele Wallace. That line about “Nobody respects a mother…” IS SO RELEVANT TO SETHE. Also, include an example of Fanny who ran off with Brent on the same ship with no hope to meeting her own children ever again.
- Interesting point, in line with “Jacobs used writing strategies to manipulate her readers’ feelings”: some scholars find that the grandmother’s values may be exaggerated. Q: “In her biography of Jacobs, Jean Fagan Yellin speculates that Jacobs waited until her grandmother died to write and publicize her own story to protect Molly Horniblow’s reputation as a woman of high moral character while she lived. But perhaps Jacobs took advantage of the fact that her grandmother had deceased to re-invent the woman as a mouthpiece for white Northern women’s values” (611). Might be necessary? It could just be that the grandmother wishes her grandchild could be an example that she herself couldn’t follow? An interesting tidbit nonetheless.
- Weirdly enough, although Kreiger pointed out that although the father and grandmother have opposing values regarding liberty and individualism, Kreiger rejects that this concept proves resistance is gendered?? In footnote 9, Kreiger mentions Jennifer Fleischner views that “these opposing positions as gender-inflected- male slaves concentrate on escape at any cost; female slaves decide to remain in slavery out of loyalty to family“. Kreiger argues that Benjamin, Jacobs’s uncle, decided to let himself be captured rather than throw himself into the river after thinking of his mother. I feel like there are many slave narratives from the perspective of men that would consider Ben’s POV an exception rather than the rule. However, to not even consider this as gender differences is odd but I appreciate Kreiger including this so I could at least check up Fleischner myself.
Unfortunately, I did not complete this post and had abandoned this entire blog for a few months. Hopefully, I am not missing on other points.
My Thesis Log 