Houses and Homes Symbol Analysis

Traditionally, houses evoke security, family, and tranquility – but for Linda and those around her, this is often an empty promise. In the narrative, houses often fail to provide security to their inhabitants or even serve as the sites for corrupted family dynamics. As a child, Linda feels secure and happy in the home of her first mistress but that security is destroyed when the mistress bequeaths her to the Flints instead of freeing her on her death. The Flint household is the setting of Linda’s sexual persecution by Dr. Flint and her abuse at the hands of Mrs. Flint. It’s a trap rather than a refuge for her, and it also symbolizes the decay of family cohesion among the Flints themselves, who are completely self-serving and vindictive towards each other as well as to their slaves. Linda frequently invokes the uncomfortable household dynamics that arise due to the presence of illegitimate mixed-race children, who are both sources of marital dispute and victims of cruel abuse. Grandmother’s house is then a place of limited safety for Linda, who flees there after becoming pregnant and raises her children within its bounds. Yet even though this is a home with positive associations, it’s not secure: after the failed Nat Turner rebellion, white search parties tear the house apart and mock Grandmother for daring to own nice silverware and tablecloths. Moreover, when Linda is forced to hide in the crawlspace for seven years, even this house becomes a prison, emphasizing vulnerability to oppression rather than safety from it.

Linda’s fixation on houses that fail to protect their residents or that conceal degraded family dynamics argues that slavery prevents the possibility of domestic happiness and safety for everyone in the community, not just slaves. It’s important that Harriet Jacobs wrote in the mid-19th century, when the “cult of domesticity,” or emphasis on the importance of the home, was extremely popular. By using this rhetoric, she’s tapping into well-known tropes and universal values in order to argue against slavery, and to establish her own credibility as a writer. By the end of the narrative, Linda is happy to be free, and looks forward to one day establishing a home for her children. Her hopeful but tempered tone shows the advantages that freedom brings to domestic life, but warns that such advantages are only secure when slavery is abolished completely.