Writing Homework Help

need help with synethesis post In Harriet Jacob’s autobiography Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, she discusses many of the trials and tribulations she experienced, not only as a slave but also as a woman and a mother. The book is a gripping account of her life and out of all the issues she faced, there was one particular portion that stood out to me. There’s a portion of the narrative where she describes her master Dr. Flint’s attempts to court her, as well as his wife’s growing jealousy. It’s interesting because what it shows is that through all of the racism and violence Jacobs faced in her life as a slave, she was still a woman first and had to face the same kinds of sexism every woman faces, such as a forceful pursuit from a man in a position of power (which has unfortunately become a time-honored tradition).

But first…

Who was Harriet Jacobs?

Harriet Jacobs was born into slavery and lost her mother when she was still a young child. As she grew up, she learned to read and write and would eventually use those skills to become an author and publish her autobiography under the pseudonym “Linda Brent”.

As a teenager, she would become intimate with a young white lawyer named Mr. Sands, giving birth to two children. She wanted desperately for her children to be free, and to do so spent seven long years hiding away in a crawl space to try and force the sale of her kids to their biological father, eventually succeeding.

Jacobs was eventually able to escape herself and find her children, beginning her life as a writer and abolitionist. Her autobiography would remain fairly obscure in her lifetime, however, it would finally gain significant notoriety over 100 years later during the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s.

Being a Woman and a Slave

In the earlier chapters of the narrative, Harriet Jacobs discusses the advances her master Dr. Flint makes towards her when she was only fifteen years old.

He peopled my young mind with unclean images, such as only a vile monster could think of. I turned from him with disgust and hatred. But he was my master. I was compelled to live under the same roof with him—where I saw a man forty years my senior daily violating the most sacred commandments (Jacobs 44).

Jacobs was disgusted by this, but she was also terrified. She was just a young girl and this older man who held so much power over her was making all of these sexual remarks towards her. If she rejected his advances, who knows what his reaction might be.

This leads to a lot of uncomfortable moments, especially between Jacobs and Dr. Flint’s wife. Flint would eventually decide he wanted to have his youngest daughter sleep in his room as an excuse to have an “attendant” staying with them to take care of her, this attendant of course being Jacobs. Real smooth…

The wife became so angered by this that she made Jacobs swear on a bible that she had no prior knowledge of this plan and that she had never been intimate with her husband. Mrs. Flint then starts to try and sour her husband on Jacobs by accusing him of various things and claim Jacobs had told on him.

But Harriet was able to see through these petty tactics and realize Mrs. Flint was scared of him just like she was. She was a white wealthy woman, and yet she too dealt with the fear that came from an abusive and unfaithful husband.

Moments like these show that for all the pain Harriet had to endure as a slave, even after freedom she would always be a woman and would have to deal with sexism forever…

Discuss:

Question 1: How are Harriet Jacobs and Mrs. Flint both dealing with their vulnerability as women in regards to Dr. Flint?

Question 2: How do the ways Dr. Flint abused his position of power on Jacobs mirror some more recent examples such as the fallout from the Me Too movement?

2 thoughts on “Harriet Jacobs: Being a Woman and a Slave”

look at example In response to this blog post, there were two major lines of discussion (likely because most people either responded to the first discussion prompt, which asked about modern presidents’ usage of Winthrop’s “city upon a hill” concept, or the second prompt, which asked responders to explore Winthrop’s idea of shared struggles).

In terms of the first prompt, pretty much everyone agreed that the continued use and activation of the “city upon a hill” concept in modern America is symptomatic of American exceptionalism. Basically, if Americans continue to believe that we are some ideal model that all other nations and cultures should look to for inspiration, then it follows that Americans also believe that their country is somehow unique from and superior to all other countries. Here is where we divided a bit: some of us believed that this makes sense and that the US benevolently wants to help other countries to be better versions of themselves, whereas others felt that this was an ignorant and naive view of the world. Pretty much everyone felt that President Obama, however, was using the concept slightly differently: rather than claiming America is perfect, he seems to instead celebrate what he views as continued progress towards becoming something better. For President Obama, it’s this commitment to progress that the rest of the world should look to as an example. Chris Carmody notes that Obama “talked of the work that still needs to be done” as opposed to the work that was already completed.

In regards to the second prompt, many of us noted how ridiculous and unfair it was for Winthrop to celebrate and encourage inequality in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. For example, Madison noted that people tend to only celebrate struggles in society “IF they aren’t doing too bad themselves… it sounds like a cop-out from the upper classes…” In addition to supporting inequality, Winthrop also claimed that the struggles that all of the colonists shared would bring them together. There were some fantastic discussions of how Winthrop is using a sort of “us vs. them” dynamic in order to bring his community together. For example, Maddy Kye compared this rhetorical strategy to the one used in the US following 9/11, and Ashley Tin compared it to the “New York Tough” campaign during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Overall, I think this was a great discussion! The only thing I would add is a clarification on WHY Winthrop claimed that inequality was actually a good thing. Basically, according to Winthrop, the fact that there were people living in poverty and/or illness in their community was a good thing because it provided an opportunity for the rich, powerful, and/or healthy to provide charity and support for the most vulnerable. In so doing, these rich and powerful community members were able to prove themselves worthy to their God. So… although he’s encouraging charity, I still don’t think this is a great sentiment. He’s basically viewing the poor not as human beings in their own right, but as opportunities for the elite members of the Massachusetts Bay Colony to engage in moral behavior.

Here’s reply and comments to this post

1. raharrisonJune 24, 2021 at 1:18 pm EditI find your blog particularly touching because it demonstrates the way in which solidarity between women, through subjugation, is somehow always created. This forging of a bond through suffering is reminscient of the essence of Christianity, which is interesting.
   Regardless, to answer your question, the first, the way in which the two women react to their relation with Dr.Flint, I’ll say that they both react with fear. Fear however, in different social circumstances, is expressed differently.
   Both, as is unfortunately the case with women often in relationships, are chancing loss in the scenario.
   One, Mrs.Flint, risks losing faith in her husband, a feeling of intimacy(if there was any), and possibly honor.
   Jacobs, as a slave, in other words as property, could lose much more. She could be physically abused, or worse, if she refused his advances.
   Mrs.Flint has the luxury of reacting, excuse the mildly loaded term, “hysterically”, to her husband’s behavior, while Jacobs can afford no such behavior and has to totally annihalate her will so that she could keep living a more or less predictable day to day life.Reply

Caitlin DuffyJune 24, 2021 at 2:42 pm EditHi Nick,Yes! It’s always important to remember what some term “indexes of identity” – basically, each aspect of a person’s identity (race, gender, sexuality, class, nationality, etc.) has a different impact on that person’s experience. So, for instance, while both Harriet Jacobs and Mrs. Flint are both women, because of the fact that Mrs. Flint is a white woman while Harriet Jacobs is a Black woman, they are treated very differently. Similarly, Jacobs’s brother is treated differently from Jacobs because he is a Black man while she is a Black woman. One of Jacobs’s major arguments in Incidents is about how particularly difficult slavery is for Black women because of the opportunity slavery allows for sexual assault.