Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

"Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" is a book that was published in 1861 by Harriet Jacobs, using the pen name "Linda Brent". While on one level it chronicles the experiences of Harriet Jacobs as a slave, and the various humiliations she had to endure in that unhappy state, it also deals with the particular tortures visited on women at her station. Often in the book, she will point to a particular punishment that a male slave will endure at the hands of slave holders, and comment that, although she finds the punishment brutal in the extreme, it cannot compare to the abuse that a young woman must face while still on the cusp of girlhood.

"Incidents in the Life of Slave Girl" is considered a slave narrative. Portions of it were first published in serial form before being published as a complete work in 1861, after some difficulty finding a publisher. It is also considered an example of feminist literature.

Publication and response

Jacobs began composing "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" while living and working at Idlewild, the Hudson River home of writer and publisher Nathaniel Parker Willis, [Yellin, Jean Fagan. "Harriet Jacobs: A Life". Cambridge, Massachusetts: Basic Civitas Books, 2004: 126. ISBN 0465092888] who was fictionalized in the book as Mr. Bruce. [Baker, Thomas N. "Nathaniel Parker Willis and the Trials of Literary Fame". New York, Oxford University Press, 2001: 4. ISBN 0-19-512073-6] Portions of the book were published in serial form in the "New York Tribune", owned and edited by Horace Greeley. Her reports of sexual abuse were considered too shocking to the average newspaper reader of the day, and publication ceased before the completion of the narrative.

Boston publishing house Phillips and Samson agreed to print the work in book-form — if Jacobs could convince Willis or Harriet Beecher Stowe to provide a preface. She refused to ask Willis for help and Stowe turned her down, though the Phillips and Samson company closed shop anyway.Yellin, Jean Fagan. "Harriet Jacobs: A Life". Cambridge, Massachusetts: Basic Civitas Books, 2004: 140. ISBN 0465092888] She eventually managed to sign an agreement with the Thayer and Eldridge publishing house and they requested a preface by Lydia Maria Child. Child also edited the book and the company introduced her to Jacobs. The two women would remain in contact for much of their remaining lives. Thayer and Eldridge, however, declared bankruptcy before the narrative could be published. The narrative in its final form was published by a Boston, Massachusetts publisher in 1861.

Abby Kelley praised the book for its "simple and attractive style". She wrote: "You feel less as though you were reading a book, than talking with the woman herself". [Yellin, Jean Fagan. "Harriet Jacobs: A Life". Cambridge, Massachusetts: Basic Civitas Books, 2004: 146–147. ISBN 0465092888] A critic for the "London Anti-Slavery Associate", likely its editor Richard D. Webb, wrote: "This book shows as forcibly as any story we have ever read the moral pollution and perversion inevitable in a community where slavery is a recognized institution". [Yellin, Jean Fagan. "Harriet Jacobs: A Life". Cambridge, Massachusetts: Basic Civitas Books, 2004: 147. ISBN 0465092888]

Critic Mary Vermillion compares this book to Maya Angelou's depiction of her rape in Angelou's 1969 autobiography "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings". [cite book | last = Vermillion | first = Mary | editor = Joanne M. Braxton | title = Maya Angelou's I know why the caged bird sings: A casebook | publisher = Oxford Press | location = New York | isbn = 0-1951-1606-2 | page = 66 | chapter = Reimbodying the self: Representations of rape in Incidents in the life of a slave girl and I know why the caged bird sings]

References

External links

*gutenberg|no=11030|name=Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl