University of Bielefeld
Anglistik: British and American Studies (BA)
"It's Moe, the White Slave," Slave and Neo-Slave Narratives (230594)
Profile Module 6: American Literature
Harriet Jacobs - Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
The Question of True Womanhood
Gender and Race Conventions
Daniela Schulze
Anglistik (KF) / Germanistik (NF), Semester 5
Due to: 02.03.2009
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"Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" (1861) by Harriet Jacobs is a multilayered slave
narrative, it concerns many major subjects like the violent, regardless behaviour of white
middle class women towards slaves in the U.S. South during the antebellum years as well as
the peculiar institution and social cohesion within the family. But in this essay I will
concentrate on gender and race conventions and the protagonist's struggle of gaining true
womanhood. First I will examine what true womanhood is and how it developed. Ongoing I
will also analyse these conventions in relation to Linda Brent, the protagonist of Harriet
Jacobs' autobiographical narrative, and other characters having an influence on Linda. As a
last point I will examine the author's intention to stress the ideal woman.
The cult of true womanhood was a cultural convention only for white upper-class women
of the mid-nineteenth century America. It was their ultimate ambition to maintain their
womanhood and live according to its attributes. Poorer white women also tried to reach these
standards but often failed. Black woman, especially slaves in the South, usually had no
chance to acquire it at all. But these virtues mentally applied for every woman although not
every woman could achieve the standard publicly in society. It was like a very strict guideline
for young girls to become a respectable woman in the social order. (Garfield 48 51).
There was a closed set of attributes describing true womanhood: piety, purity, domesticity
and submissiveness. Piety described the women's relation to religion. The women should
have been born as Christians but not belong to any Afro-American religion. They should
have believed in God and work with him to improve the world. He was the source of strength
and dignity for women. Their behavior should have been innocent and gentle. An advantage
of the church was that it also supported the other attributes of true womanhood better than
many other movements (Welter 152). Purity was the factor that was most important but also
most difficult to achieve for blacks, it meant that the woman had to be sexually pure and
chaste; otherwise she had to face terrible consequences. Women who lost their purity (except
for the wedding night, when she bestowed her body on her husband) usually turned mad or
they allegedly even died (Welter 154 155). Black slaves were on the horns of a dilemma
because they were often raped by their masters and are therefore not pure any longer but on
the contrary they had no chance to defy themselves. Like Washington writes in her article,
Jacobs herself said that the women were not permitted to have control over their womanhood
although they might have a strong moral sense because they were only property ("Modern
Voices"). Domesticity instead was a virtue to be proud of for every woman. Wifely duties
were to set up one's own house and to take care for the children. It was self-evident that men
had to work hard outside the household. Many black female slaves worked in the household
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but were still not domestic according to the virtues of true womanhood because it was not
their own but the master's household. The last attribute, submissiveness, stated that women
should have been passive and obedient and men served as the protectors of the family
(Johnson 18 28). The only place where women were allowed to move was in the house,
they were the master's hostels. A true woman was also never allowed to be part of a dispute.
All fugitive slaves and their anti-racist helpers were absolutely disobedient and not
submissive at all, because one of the biggest malpractices concerning submissiveness was to
hide a slave in his house or help him in any other way (Logan "Feminism and Slavery").
The concept of true womanhood was culturally determined by powerful white men and
had the special function which allowed masters to condemn their female slaves. The masters
could always put pressure on their slaves because of their wrong behavior concerning the
current gender conventions. On the one hand black women could never reach true
womanhood as it was restricted to white women; on the other hand they had to be ashamed of
being impure (after being harassed or raped by their masters, which is paradox: the master
expects his female slaves to be pure but he rapes them and thus makes them impure) and not
devoted enough to their masters (Garfield 182). Moreover the slaveholders and overseers
were aware of the fact that they were unjust to their slaves and therefore afraid of the slaves
killing them, so they decided to "give the slaves enough of religious instruction to keep them
from murdering their masters" (Jacobs 105). The slaveholders were in the opinion that the
more the black people believed in God and the Ten Commandments, the less was the
probability of committing a crime or even a murder. It was important for a white woman to
be pious, because religion also made them submissive. Now we have come to a full circle, if
the women fulfilled the attributes of true womanhood, they felt socially accepted but they
were also totally dependent on men. Those men requisitioned their "rights" forcefully with
dishonourable inhuman punishments (Jacobs 46). Nevertheless almost all mid-nineteenth
century American women wanted to live according to the standards of true womanhood.
For a slave girl like Linda Brent, the cardinal virtues of true womanhood were not
possible to fulfil. She was a moral Christian person and she considered her moral behavior as
an attribute of true womanhood. But her living conditions made it almost impossible to live
according to her ethical principles, because the whole social system was immoral; so again,
she had no real chance to become the ideal woman (Washington "Modern Voices", Jacobs
85). She could never be truly domestic because as a slave she was property and therefore not
allowed to hold property herself (Jacobs 13), so she had no own household to run. She could
only acquire the proficiencies of a housewife in Mrs. Flint's household, but she made no own
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benefit. There is a big difference between slave motherhood and the concept of white
motherhood, too. White women's children were nursed by black slaves, they were educated
and beloved. Mulattoes were the tragic figures because they were not accepted by their father
(usually the master) and his wife, only their biological mother (a slave) supported them.
Moreover they were mostly born slaves. For Linda her two children, her son Benny and her
daughter Ellen were the only reason for living on and fighting for her rights as a human
being. For them, she persevered her suffering in slavery and in the attic for example
(Cenciola "Presentation").
Linda found herself in a dilemma, on the one hand she had to be submissive to Dr. Flint
and always do what he demanded of her, and on the other hand she wanted to remain pure
which was incommensurate with his request for sexual intercourse (Jacobs 84). So she could
not be pure and submissive at the same time. She said that she "turned from him with disgust
and hatred" (Jacobs 44). Linda was in the opinion that it was illegitimate to be submissive to
a brutal slave master. Consequently she replaced submissiveness with a claim for respect in
her own ideal of a true woman and chose to retain pure (Logan "Feminism and Slavery"). But
in her girlhood she did not know what to do, where to "turn for protection" (Jacobs 45). For
escaping the brutal situation at her master's, Linda entered into an affair with young Mr.
Sands. She was forced to do that, she never had a choice and was not proud of it. He was
white, unmarried and he promised to help her, she trusted him. She always claimed that she
and all the other black slave women wanted to have the power to choose their destiny and to
be able to live according to the standards of true womanhood but they never could because
they were property and the masters decided how to live (Washington "Modern Voices"). So
Linda had a plan to become free: she expected Dr. Flint to sell her when he finds out about
her love affair with Mr. Sands and Mr. Sands should buy her then. Moreover her children
should have a chance to be born free and not suffer like her, so she chose Mr. Sands as father.
Her decision also showed her strength, because she had the power to choose her lover herself.
The plan failed, her children had to "follow the condition of the mother" (Jacobs 118) which
meant that they were Dr. Flint's slaves, too. But when Linda ran away, her not being
submissive paid. Her children Benny and Ellen were sold to a slave trader, impersonated by
Mr. Sands. They were free then and Linda felt happy for the first time in awhile (Jacobs 165
166).
When it came to piety, Linda told Dr. Flint that he was not religious only because he
attended the church service and that she wanted to live truly Christian. He said to her that she
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