Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Foil 2 key examples

Mrs. Bruce sends Linda into hiding, even parting temporarily with her own child so that if Linda is caught, the authorities will have to get Mrs. Bruce involved. This emphasis on Linda's safety, and willingness to sacrifice closeness with her own child for it, indicates that Mrs. Bruce understands the gravity of enslavement and the precarity of Linda's situation. Enslaved people endure family separation all the time, and Mrs. Bruce is willing to endure at least temporary family separation to combat the institution of slavery.

In Chapter 27, by contrast, Mrs. Flint goes out of her way to try to get Mrs. Sands to develop a grudge against Linda and her children. She knows that she is putting them at risk of abuse and likely even separation from one another, and this harm is exactly what she wants to cause:

Mrs. Flint proclaimed her intention of informing Mrs. Sands who was the father of my children. She likewise proposed to tell her what an artful devil I was; that I had made a great deal of trouble in her family; that when Mr. Sands was at the north, she didn’t doubt I had followed him in disguise, and persuaded William to run away.

Cite this Quote

For all Mrs. Flint's venomous behavior toward Linda, Jacobs does not paint this white woman as an uncomplicated villain. Rather, she explores the ways Mrs. Flint's behavior is driven by the social dynamics that arise under the institution of slavery. Enslaved women frequently received unwanted sexual attention from the men who enslaved them. This was in part because there were few protections in place for these women and in part because the child of an enslaver and an enslaved woman would also be enslaved. Dr. Flint's sexual advances toward Linda are motivated not only by his interest in her, but also by his appetite to increase his wealth. Hopeless to compete with this promise, white women like Mrs. Flint often fostered deep grudges toward the enslaved women they saw as rivals for their husbands' sexual attention.

The fact that Emily Flint was kinder to Linda when she was young, and the fact that the younger and older Mrs. Bruce are both kind to Linda, demonstrates that the cruelty Mrs. Flint exhibits is due to her conditioning. Jacobs delivers a cautionary tale to female readers in particular about the ways the institution of slavery can corrupt them. Women in the South, like Mrs. Flint and eventually Emily, are taught to hate and torment Black women. Had these same women been born in the North, it seems possible that they may have become more like the younger and older Mrs. Bruce. The opposite is true as well, and Jacobs wants Northern women readers to be scared by the possibility that Mrs. Sands (also a Northern woman) will take Mrs. Flint's bait.

Linda has been presented with the opportunity to escape South Carolina. She is ready to take her chance, even if it means that she will be separated from her children. She knows that she cannot do anything for her children while hiding from Dr. Flint. Her hope is that once she is in the North, she will have a better chance to engineer Benny and Ellen's freedom. Grandmother, on the other hand, has long tried to protect her family by saving money to buy loved ones out of enslavement. It seems to her like the safest option.

Linda and Grandmother's disagreement represents a real conundrum that faced enslaved people looking to carve out a future for themselves and their families. Running away carried the risk of being caught, and as the memoir makes clear, those who were caught were usually tortured and sometimes killed. It was legal for enslavers to impose whatever cruel consequences they wished because legally, an enslaved person was their "property." Even those who were successful in their escape often never saw their family again. In fact, Linda never sees Grandmother again after she finally escapes South Carolina. Grandmother hopes that she can eventually buy her whole family's freedom and that they will be able to live together in the place that has always been home.

Linda and some of her other family members are adamant throughout the book that they don't want to buy their freedom because to do so would be to acknowledge the institution of slavery as legitimate. They do not want to validate the idea that anyone has ever owned them as property. Buying freedom carried lower immediate risk than running away, but it took a long time to save up money, especially for an entire family. Often, enslavers would set a price for someone's freedom and later raise it or deny having agreed to any such deal. To Linda and those with her beliefs, buying freedom was a losing batter that was never going to get a family entirely out of bondage.

Jacobs depicts this difference of opinion not to argue that Grandmother is wrong, but rather to demonstrate that as long as the institution of slavery exists, no enslaved person has a good way to go about breaking out of it. Despite her own beliefs, even she eventually allows a white woman in the North to buy her freedom so that she has some legal protection under the Fugitive Slave Law. Bettering one's circumstances legally or subverting the law is a debate that people are still having within and about marginalized communities. Jacobs's memoir helps demonstrate that working within the law is sometimes necessary but not always effective. It also helps demonstrate that navigating legality and morality is complex and extremely personal.

Mrs. Bruce sends Linda into hiding, even parting temporarily with her own child so that if Linda is caught, the authorities will have to get Mrs. Bruce involved. This emphasis on Linda's safety, and willingness to sacrifice closeness with her own child for it, indicates that Mrs. Bruce understands the gravity of enslavement and the precarity of Linda's situation. Enslaved people endure family separation all the time, and Mrs. Bruce is willing to endure at least temporary family separation to combat the institution of slavery.

In Chapter 27, by contrast, Mrs. Flint goes out of her way to try to get Mrs. Sands to develop a grudge against Linda and her children. She knows that she is putting them at risk of abuse and likely even separation from one another, and this harm is exactly what she wants to cause:

Mrs. Flint proclaimed her intention of informing Mrs. Sands who was the father of my children. She likewise proposed to tell her what an artful devil I was; that I had made a great deal of trouble in her family; that when Mr. Sands was at the north, she didn’t doubt I had followed him in disguise, and persuaded William to run away.

Cite this Quote

For all Mrs. Flint's venomous behavior toward Linda, Jacobs does not paint this white woman as an uncomplicated villain. Rather, she explores the ways Mrs. Flint's behavior is driven by the social dynamics that arise under the institution of slavery. Enslaved women frequently received unwanted sexual attention from the men who enslaved them. This was in part because there were few protections in place for these women and in part because the child of an enslaver and an enslaved woman would also be enslaved. Dr. Flint's sexual advances toward Linda are motivated not only by his interest in her, but also by his appetite to increase his wealth. Hopeless to compete with this promise, white women like Mrs. Flint often fostered deep grudges toward the enslaved women they saw as rivals for their husbands' sexual attention.

The fact that Emily Flint was kinder to Linda when she was young, and the fact that the younger and older Mrs. Bruce are both kind to Linda, demonstrates that the cruelty Mrs. Flint exhibits is due to her conditioning. Jacobs delivers a cautionary tale to female readers in particular about the ways the institution of slavery can corrupt them. Women in the South, like Mrs. Flint and eventually Emily, are taught to hate and torment Black women. Had these same women been born in the North, it seems possible that they may have become more like the younger and older Mrs. Bruce. The opposite is true as well, and Jacobs wants Northern women readers to be scared by the possibility that Mrs. Sands (also a Northern woman) will take Mrs. Flint's bait.