In “Incidents in the life of a slave girl,” Harriet Jacobs presents many social issues to the reader. One of the main issues was that of equal rights and citizenship for African Americans. Throughout Jacobs’ story we follow her many trials to gain freedom from her master Mr. Flint. Her parents died at a young age and she was given to Mr. Flint’s daughter.
During this time slaves were not given rights to education, citizenship, property, or marriage unless they received their master’s consent. Rifkin states in his article that the argument for citizenship in Jacobs story is not one of the widely recognized pieces of her story. According to the article Jacobs is constantly hunting for rights and citizenship by attempting to gain a domestic home life. Throughout her story we see the constant struggle for a way to avoid her masters oppressive and obsessive rule, and one of the ways she attempts to gain her freedom is by having children with another man.
Rifkin also argues that the life Jacobs and other female slaves were forced to live manipulated their own sense of belonging. Their views were changed because the tasks expected from slaves varied with their gender, and caused a daily interruption of their natural desires and wills. When Jacobs was sent to be a house slave with her baby son she was forced to continue her work while her child cried for her outside the house. This shows that being a slave requires complete submission to your masters will, and to always put the tasks assigned to you first.
In his article Rifkin points out an important argument that is often overlooked. The slaves of the south are the natural born citizens of America, that they “replenish the country by their sweat and blood.” Their contribution to the land and the way of lives that many southern families had inevitably led to Jacobs desiring a right to be able to keep the earnings of her work, and be able to raise her family herself. Freedom was not only viewed as freedom from her master, but freedom to work and provide for, and raise her family in her own way, and get away from slaves “complex and uneven position in society.”
Works Cited
Rifkin, Mark "A Home Made Sacred by Protecting Laws": Black Activist Homemaking and Geographies of Citizenship in 'Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl." Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 18.2 (2007): 72-102. Academic Search Premier.
EBSCO. Web. 30 Oct. 2009.
Jacobs, Harriet. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Dover Publications, 2001.
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I agree with Rifkin, that slaves were both physically and socially controlled by their white masters. Both men and women were given degrading titles, such as boy for men and victim for women. Men were denied their manhood by being compared to a child by their master and women were denied their purity by their masters sexually overpowering them. The slaves in the South didn't have a chance against their white masters.
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