Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

by

Harriet Jacobs

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Metaphors 3 key examples

Definition of Metaphor
A metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two different things by saying that one thing is the other. The comparison in a metaphor can be stated explicitly, as... read full definition
A metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two different things by saying that one thing is the other. The comparison in a metaphor... read full definition
A metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two different things by saying that one thing is the other... read full definition
Chapter Four: The Slave Who Dared to Feel Like a Man
Explanation and Analysis—Mystic Clock:

In Chapter 4, Jacobs describes her uncle Benjamin's run-in with a white man from South Carolina after Benjamin has escaped to Baltimore. Jacobs uses the metaphor of a "mystic clock" to describe the white man's conscience:

[Benjamin's] first impulse was to run; but his legs trembled so that he could not stir. He turned to confront his antagonist, and behold, there stood his old master’s next door neighbor! He thought it was all over with him now; but it proved otherwise. That man was a miracle. He possessed a goodly number of slaves, and yet was not quite deaf to that mystic clock, whose ticking is rarely heard in the slaveholder’s breast.

Benjamin has already run away and been caught once. He is terrified that the neighbor of his former enslaver is going to recognize him and bring him back to South Carolina. This man is an enslaver himself, so it stands to reason that he would see Benjamin as his neighbor's "property." Benjamin is shocked to find that the white man does recognize him, but he allows Benjamin to go free. By describing the man's conscience as a "mystic clock," Jacobs suggests that his morality comes from an internal sensor marking the time until slavery will die out or blow up.

It was fairly common by the mid-19th century for white people to believe that slavery was an immoral institution and yet to enslave people anyway. Even white people whose wealth was built on slavery felt uncomfortable with it. Many of them believed that slavery would have to go eventually, but they hoped not to deal with its end themselves. In 1788, one man at the Massachusetts convention to ratify the United States Constitution claimed that if slavery did not die by an "apoplexy" (a quick death, like a stroke), it would surely die by "consumption" (a slow and wasting death, often caused by tuberculosis). The Black abolitionist Frederick Douglass compared slavery to a slumbering volcano, waiting to erupt. Around the same time as Jacobs was writing, the white novelist Herman Melville foregrounded Douglass's comparison in his novella Benito Cereno. The mystic clock represents the idea of slavery as a ticking time bomb. People knew that something like the Civil War was coming on account of slavery. The neighbor who spots Benjamin in Baltimore has not yet divested from the institution by ceasing to enslave people, but he does not want to entangle himself in it any further by turning Benjamin in.

Chapter Fourteen: Another Link to Life
Chapter Thirty-Four: The Old Enemy Again
Explanation and Analysis—Snakes and Enslavers:

In Chapter 34, Linda gets a letter from Emily Flint, her former enslaver who could still legally kidnap her and bring her back to South Carolina. Dr. Flint also shows up in New York, and Jacobs uses a metaphor to compare enslavers to snakes:

But when summer came, the old feeling of insecurity haunted me. It was necessary for me to take little Mary out daily, for exercise and fresh air, and the city was swarming with Southerners, some of whom might recognize me. Hot weather brings out snakes and slaveholders, and I like one class of the venomous creatures as little as I do the other. What a comfort it is, to be free to say so!

The comparison begins as a simile: she claims to like snakes as little as enslavers (or "slaveholders" as she calls them). However, she ventures a more direct metaphor when she calls both snakes and enslavers "venomous." She notes that this comparison is daring, and that she likes being free to make it. Linda has a long-established fear and hatred of snakes, which she has encountered on her way to escape. They seem to her like an uncomplicated symbol of evil. Not only do they attack her, but they are also largely interpreted as a biblical symbol for sin and the devil. In the Book of Genesis, a serpent tricks Eve into eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This event is what instigates the fall of man: Adam and Eve are expelled from Paradise, and humans become mortal. By comparing enslavers to snakes, Linda is emphasizing the idea that enslavers are deceitful, malicious, and responsible for much of humanity's suffering. Especially now that the Fugitive Slave Act means that Emily Flint might sneak up on her and kidnap her out of any free state at any time, Linda has reason to see enslavers as serpents threatening the sanctity of her own Paradise. On the other hand, the metaphor also taunts enslavers. Linda has endured snakebites before. If enslavers and snakes are equally venomous, she is confident that she can survive the enslavers' bite as well.

The metaphor also reveals how freedom allows Harriet Jacobs to begin practicing the art of writing. "What a comfort it is," she exclaims, to be able to compare enslavers to snakes. She is relieved to speak her mind, but she also seems to take pleasure in the freedom to use figurative language. Jacobs's memoir is more than a simple catalog of the events of her life. It is also a rich literary work. She knew this and was protective of it, refusing to allow Harriet Beecher Stowe to publish sections of it in Uncle Tom's Cabin. This passage hints at Jacobs's self-image as a literary artist.

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