Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Chapter 9 Summary & Analysis

Linda describes some of the other slave owners in the city, and the violence they inflict on their slaves. One planter, Mr. Litch, devises grotesque punishments like tying a man under a piece of roasting meat, so that drops of fat continuously fell and burned him. Mr. Litch doesn’t give his slaves enough to eat and encourages them to steal from the neighbors; he frequently murders his slaves, but is so wealthy he never faces punishment.

Linda says that “cruelty is contagious in uncivilized communities.” A neighbor of Mr. Litch punishes a slave by forcing him to spend a winter night outside and naked.

One female slaveholder whips her slaves “with the might of a man.” On her deathbed, she forbids any of her slaves from looking at her after she’s died, but one maid sneaks into her room and slaps her dead face. She’s later discovered and sold to Georgia.

A slave named James tries to escape his cruel master but is recaptured; his master punishes him by flogging him and locking him inside a cotton gin, where there’s no room to sit up or turn around. The man dies of his wounds and is partially eaten by rats before being discovered. No one comments on his cruel death, because masters are allowed to do whatever they want to slaves. James’s master is a “highly educated” man considered a “perfect gentleman” and a devout Christian, although “Satan never had a truer follower.”

Exceptions to this trend are rare. Linda knows one young woman who owned a woman and six children, whom she treated very kindly. When the young woman becomes engaged, she offers to free the slave family, but they decide to stay with her, having been well-treated for so many years. Soon, the new husband sells many of the children and rapes the eldest daughter, who gives birth to his illegitimate child. The young woman is devastated to see that “her own husband had violated the purity she had so carefully inculcated.” Although she tries her best to shelter the other daughters, many of them suffer the same fate. Linda concludes that the husband would have been a better man, and the wife much happier, without slavery.

In fact, the “all-pervading corruption produced by slavery” is so great that Linda can hardly describe it. No matter how kindly raised a slave girl is, she will eventually succumb to the atmosphere of “licentiousness and fear” created by her masters, whom it’s impossible to resist.

Meanwhile, the sons of slave owners grow up believing it’s completely acceptable to sexually abuse slave women, and even their daughters become corrupted by the rumors they hear or arguments they observe. Sometimes, white women become sexually involved with enslaved men; this is considered scandalous, and any children they have are killed or sent away.

In short, slavery is “a curse” to white families as well as black ones, destroying their happiness and moral integrity. However, almost no slave owners are concerned with “the widespread moral ruin” that attends their way of life.