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Teaching Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Christine Agnew This paper argues that Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl would be a valuable addition to a high school English class curriculum. If a high school class reads a slave narrative, they usually read Frederick Douglass. While reading Douglass is valuable, I argue that Jacobs is also a great option for high school English teachers to consider. In this paper, I detail specific passages and aspects of the work that present opportunities for discussion in class. I also examine the relationship of Jacobs with her publisher, prominent abolitionist Lydia Maria Child. Through the study of this particular narrative, I prove that students can learn valuable lessons about the writing process, social justice, and the interaction between a writer and her publisher.

Agnew 2 I was a junior in college the first time I read a slave narrative. I had never even heard the words slave and narrative together until that point. The literature I remember reading in high school is a blur, and I do not remember thinking past the words on the page. The teacher would present the story, throw in an activity or two to spice it up, and test my knowledge base at the conclusion of the novel for assessment. I was asked questions like “What were the names of the feuding families in Romeo and Juliet?” and “What happens to Gatsby at the end of the story?” With the exception of my AP English class my senior year, I was never asked to delve deeply into literature and ponder the tough questions. I have found the genre of literature I wish I had been challenged to read in high school: the slave narrative. If high school students read slave narratives, they read Frederick Douglass. Reading Douglass is not a waste by any means, but I believe Harriet Jacobs is a valuable author to introduce to high school students. She will help teachers to ask their students questions that make them analyze, synthesize, and evaluate. Harriet Jacobs‟ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is not a diary or even an autobiography. The narrative is an abolitionist narrative, and the editorial work of the white abolitionist Lydia Maria Child is the factor that separated the narrative from one of autobiographical or memoir purpose to one of abolitionist purpose. Teachers should emphasize the fact the Jacobs and Child worked together to serve a specific purpose. In doing so, students will come to understand the process of writing as a valuable tool for social justice. While Jacobs tried to work with writers such as Harriet Beecher Stowe, her attempts at establishing a relationship failed. The publishing house of Philips and Samson in Boston consented to publish her work if she could find a prominent author to write a preface for it, yet that arrangement failed as well; another publisher made the same proposal, this time naming Lydia Maria Child as the one to write a preface (Yellin 140). The title page of Incidents bears

Agnew 3 the inscription “Edited by Lydia Maria Child”. The only author stated is “Written by Herself”. The inscription on the title page reads, “Northerners know nothing at all about Slavery. They think it is perpetual bondage only…” The statement is issued from “A woman of North Carolina”. I found that as I read the narrative that I “knew nothing” as well, and I know that many high school students do not come face to face with this issue of our nation‟s past. By reading the Preface, the part of novels many people skip over, students will find answers. In the Preface, Child states, “…the experiences of this intelligent and much-injured woman belong to a class which some call delicate subjects….I do this for the sake of my sisters in bondage….I do it with the hope of arousing conscientious and reflecting women at the North to a sense of their duty…”(6). The Preface is just the starting point, and the rest of the narrative is ordered to the abolitionist purpose. This presents an interesting genre for students to examine beyond the boundaries of biography and autobiography. A biography is the written account of a person‟s life by someone else, and an autobiography is a biography written by the person. These two genres are the ones high school students know quite well. Granted, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is about Jacobs‟ life, but it is specifically aimed towards the discussion of slavery and her escape of that institution. Jacobs was selective in writing it. In the Preface to Incidents, Jacobs states her purpose for the work and a description of it. She states, “I have not written my experiences in order to attract attention to myself; on the contrary, it would have been more pleasant to me to have been silent about my own sufferings. Neither do I care to excite sympathy for my own sufferings” (5). Yet Lydia Maria Child, in her editorial introduction, states, “The author of the following autobiography is personally known to me…” (5). Why would Child refer to this as an autobiography? The narrative was classified in that genre at the time. Child could not refer to this

Agnew 4 as “an abolitionist narrative” to Northern readers. In this way, the narrative was disguised as an entertaining novel, and it had a better chance of selling copies. Yet how did Jacobs come to write the narrative? The answer proves to be a lesson for high school students in the importance of finding purpose in writing. After her escape to the North, Jacobs felt confused and unmotivated. Yellin states, “She did not feel free. Although no longer legally a slave, Harriet Jacobs needed to act in order to feel liberated….Amy Post suggested that—despite Jacobs‟ isolation from the activists‟ centers—she could make a contribution to the movement by writing the story of her life” (117-119). Jacobs did not immediately feel qualified to write her story. She was not educated like Harriet Beecher Stowe and Lydia Maria Child. The one event that spurred her confidence to write was in the simple form of a letter. By examining this letter with high school students, a teacher can introduce a wealth of historical information. Students can learn to think critically and evaluate through examining secondary pieces that relate to the focused novel. A letter high school students should read is the one written by former first lady Julia Tyler, to the Duchess of Sutherland in England. Published in the New York Times in 1853, the letter was a response to the Duchess‟s “[appeal] to the white women of the South to end chattel slavery” (Yellin 122). Tyler begins her letter by blaming England for the presence of slavery in the States, saying, “…England not only permitted, but encouraged, the slave trade, for the period of a century and a half, as a means of swelling her coffers; and the infamous traffic could only be expelled from this country by the force and power of the sword” (February 1853). Tyler also admonishes the English women, the Duchess of Sutherland particularly, to “Manage your own affairs as best you may, and leave us to manage ours as we may think proper”. What angered Jacobs, however, was Tyler‟s idealistic portrayal of slavery:

Agnew 5 The negro of the South lives sumptuously in comparison with the 100,000 of the white population in London. He is clothed warmly in Winter, and has his meat twice daily…the separation of husband and wife, and parents, and children, under our system of negro slavery— [is a] thing, by the way, of rare occurrence among us, and then attended by peculiar circumstances… In light of that letter, Jacobs wrote one of her own to the New York Daily Tribune: I was born a slave, reared in the Southern hot-bed until I was the mother of two children….And as this is the first time that I ever took my pen in hand to make such an attempt, you will not say that it is fiction, for had I the inclination I have neither the brain or talent to write it….I would tell you of wrongs that…England ever dreamed of in this free country where all nations fly for liberty, equal rights and protection under your stripes and stars. It should be stripes and scars, for they go along with Mrs. Tyler's peculiar circumstances, of which I have told you only one. (June 21, 1853) Yellin states, “When the letter was printed two days later, an author was born…Jacobs was emboldened by seeing her words in print…She immediately began a second letter for the press” (123) When students are not merely handed the story, but asked to examine the purposes behind writing, they can learn multitudes about the writing process. Many high school students think of writing as a chore or nuisance. Yet a high school teacher can creatively illustrate purpose and audience through the powerful example of a freed slave‟s prewriting process. Suddenly prewriting isn‟t about making little charts or a list of topics. It becomes a passionate action.

Agnew 6 After her taste of published writing, Jacobs had the fuel to begin her narrative. She states in the Preface of the work, “But I do earnestly desire to arouse the women of the North to a realizing sense of the condition of two millions of women at the South, still in bondage, suffering what I suffered, and most of them far worse. I want to add my testimony to that of abler pens to convince the people of the Free States what Slavery really is” (5). The focus of her argument, then, is to appeal to women, just as the letters in the newspapers of New York did. That “abler pen” Jacobs spoke of would be the one of Lydia Maria Child, prominent female abolitionist. Literary scholars receive information about the editorial work of Lydia Maria Child through her letters to Jacobs, and one letter in particular talks about the desired order of events in the narrative. Child states, “The events are interesting, and well told; the remarks are also good, and to the purpose. But I am copying a great deal of it…so as to bring the story into continuous order, and the remarks into appropriate places. I think you will see that this renders the story much more clear and entertaining” (Selected Letters, 1860). The interesting words used in the letter are order, appropriate, and entertaining. From this letter, one can see that Child wanted the events in specific places. Child also wanted phrases in the right places, and she thought that her changes would make the story more entertaining. Why did it need to be entertaining? Literature was the media of the day, and the Northern females reading the work needed to be interested for it to be effective. Another phrase to note is “to the purpose.” Child believed that the story was aligned with the abolitionist purpose. The abolitionist purposes are illustrated in several major chapters of the narrative. Chapter eight of Jacobs‟ narrative is titled “What Slaves Are Taught to Think of the North.” Jacobs states, “I admit that the black man is inferior. But what is it that makes him so? It is the ignorance in which white men compel him to live; it is the torturing whip that lashes

Agnew 7 manhood out of him….and the scarcely less cruel human bloodhounds of the north, who enforce the Fugitive Slave Law. They do the work” (39). Jacobs states here that the black man is lesser, yet his condition is due to the North‟s enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law, a law highly protested by abolitionists. The law required that runaway slaves be returned to their masters, even if those slaves had escaped to the North. Child speaks of her opinion of the law in one of her letters, stating, “Mainly by the agency of a man drunk with Southern wine…a diabolical law was passed, by which the citizens of Massachusetts were turned into slave catchers; and…my soul was boiling over with shame and indignation” (Selected Letters, 1857). Through this chapter, Jacobs and Child address the Fugitive Slave Law, citing it as a reason for the inferiority of the black race, and they address the North by implicating them in the practice. Here is where students can start to see the complex relationship between African Americans and Caucasians at this point in history, and they can recognize practices that still exist today. The practice of prejudice, another demon abolitionists were fighting in their work, also resided in the North. Prejudice is present throughout the narrative, and is obviously seen in the very practice of slavery. Yet Jacobs directly addresses the ugly system in the chapter “Prejudice against Color.” In the chapter, Jacobs describes a visit into cities of New York. She states, “…every where I found the same manifestations of that cruel prejudice, which so discourages the feelings, and represses the energies of the colored people” (137). In that statement, Jacobs makes the claim that the existence of prejudice in the North made it difficult for African Americans to think strongly of themselves and to live a life separated from slavery. The presence of prejudice was binding in itself; the African American might be “free” in the North, but through prejudice, they became slaves in a different way. Here is an opportunity to relate the material to student‟s lives. Prejudice still exists. Where do the students see it? Why do they think it is there? Students

Agnew 8 could write responses to these questions and other thoughts in a social justice notebook, which, according to textbook authors Betty Roe, Barbara Stoodt, and Paul Burns, is a place “students can examine controversial human rights issues” (108). The student responses can lead into the most interesting editorial work done by Child. While the North and prejudice are appealing topics, the most fascinating editorial work comes in the chapter “Sketches of Neighboring Slaveholders.” The title is not one that would typically draw a female reader in, and as Carolyn L. Karcher reports in Child‟s biography, “[Child] did, however, acknowledge having made one major change for the sake of increasing the book‟s potential readership…: „I put the savage cruelties into one chapter…in order that those who shrink from supping upon horrors might omit then, without interrupting the thread of the story‟” (436). Karcher goes on to describe this act as “hardheaded editorial judgment” and relates, “she had taken similar liberties with the texts of her contributors, when she felt the needs of the cause required greater tact” (436). It is interesting that this type of editing would occur, and it proves that the abolitionist cause was most important to Child. The chapter goes on to describe the atrocious acts committed against slaves by other owners: “If a slave resisted being whipped, the bloodhounds were unpacked, and set upon him, to tear his flesh from his bones. The master who did these things was highly educated, and styled a perfect gentleman” (Jacobs 43). Child also focused on violence in the chapter “Fear of Insurrection.” If the reader did choose to read the chapter, the goal was credible shock. The chapter details the Nat Turner rebellion, and Child encouraged Jacobs to elaborate in gory detail, stating in a letter, “„You say the reader would not believe what you saw inflicted on men, women, and children…What were those inflictions? Were any tortured to make them confess? and how? [Were] any killed? Please

Agnew 9 write down some particulars, and let me have them to insert‟” (Karcher 436). In the narrative students can see that Jacobs listened to Child‟s advice, for right after the original “reader would not believe” statement, details are added: “Every where men, women, and children were whipped till the blood stood in puddles at their feet. Some received five hundred lashes; others were tied hands and feet, and tortured with a bucking paddle, which blisters the skin terribly” (Jacobs 54). The elaboration is effective. The violence also adds more entertainment factor to the work. The emphasis is also on the reliability of Jacobs—she saw everything happen. The passages examined have a specific rhetorical purpose, and the statements made by Jacobs and edited by Child stand by the abolitionist purpose. While it is impossible to know the extent of Child‟s editorial work on Incidents without examining the original manuscripts, letters and biographical information give clues to scholars. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is an abolitionist narrative, for the events included in the narrative were carefully selected and arranged by the two women. The work, published in 1861, was used for the cause. In fact, Child sent copies of the narrative to Union soldiers “as a means of arousing their hatred of slavery” (Karcher 437). Other literary figures, such as John Greenleaf Whittier, read it and were inspired. High school students, when presented with the narrative, along with supporting material such as letters and biographies, can be influenced too. The reading of Incidents, if introduced, would not be just another state standard met, but a valuable opportunity for students to examine the purpose behind the relationship of a former slave and her white publisher. Through the thinking process of evaluation, synthesis, and analysis, students will face the tough questions, and they can be challenged to find answers. Through intensive study of literary social justice, students can begin to see literature as a powerful medium instead of a mere blur to look back on when they move to higher education.

Agnew 10 Works Cited Hanrahan, Heidi. "Harriet Jacobs‟s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: A Retelling of Lydia Maria Child‟s 'The Quadroons'" The New England Quarterly 78 (2005): 599-616. Jacobs, Harriet. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. New York, NY: W.W. Norton and Company, 2001. Jacobs, Harriet. "June 21, 1853." Letter to New York Daily Tribune. 21 June 1853. New York. The New York Daily Tribune. NY, 1853. Karcher, Carolyn L. The First Woman in the Republic: A Cultural Biography of Lydia Maria Child. Durham, NC: Duke University, 1994. Meltzer, Milton, and Patricia Holland, eds. Lydia Maria Child: Selected Letters, 1817-1880. Amherst, MA: The University of Massachusetts, 1982. Roe, Betty D., Barbara D. Stoodt, and Paul C. Burns. Secondary School Literacy Instructions (The Content Areas). Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006. Tyler, Julia. "To the Duchess of Sutherland." Letter to Duchess of Sutherland. Feb. 1853. Virginia. The Richmond Enquirer. VA, 1853. Yellin, Jean. Harriet Jacobs: A Life. New York, NY: Basic Civitas, 2004.