"A vague but still heart wrenching recollection of the hardships and depravity of slavery and what one woman must go through to secure her and her children's freedom." 3 Stars
Pros: Well written/unflinching and honest in describing the brutality of slavery/A much needed look into the life of a female slave when all that was available at that time were recollection of male slaves, the sexual exploitation and depravity was endless and terrible.
Cons: The author came off as incredibly well spoken and educated while all others, including other slaves seemed simple, ill mannered and unlearned, it hinted at a sense of arrogance from the author (my own personal opinion)./Sometimes a few too many characters that were intermingled and connected, the relationships became confused and it was difficult to decipher friend from foe.
Full Review:
Harriet Jacobs, who is referred to as Linda in this account was born into slavery but did not know it until she was six years old. He Mother passed away and it was only then did she learn that she was in fact thought of as simply a piece of property, to be bought and sold at her Master's whim. It was the same for the rest of her family. She and her brother were sold to a neighbor and she learned what slavery really was.
It was not just hard, physical toil, especially in the fields, as her Brother learned, but it was also attempting to avoid the lecherous advances of her dominating Master. He is a truly reprehensible character and Jacobs' hatred of him is palpable. The reader is sympathetic towards her plight, knowing that she can only deny his advances for so long. She is considered his property and he can do with her what he will, as he very often reminds her. And the advances of her master makes her an easy target for the master's wife; knowing that her husband lusts after a young slave girl, her mistress is furious and does all she can to make Jacobs' life miserable.
It is not until Jacobs befriends a neighbor, an unmarried white man, that she becomes pregnant. In some way she hopes that having children from another man will deter her master's advances, but it only pushes him into a rage. He does all he can to make sure she understands how vile he thinks she is, how she is now impure and has thrown away her virtue.
Jacobs' had had a man that she wished to marry in the past. He was a free man but their marriage would not have been legal and if they had had children, they would have been born under the yoke of slavery, as was custom and law. So she begs the man that she loved to leave and go somewhere safe, due to her masters' continued threats against him. He does leave and with it, Jacobs' loses her heart and all that she feels is useful in love.
Though her children are the offspring of a white man, he is kind to her and to them. He offers to give them his name, but Jacobs knows that if he does so, then her master will learn who the father of her children is and it will end in misery, so she refuses. The master takes every chance he can to constantly remind Jacobs that she is his property and her children are his property now too. And when she is sent to the master's sons plantation as punishment and it is deemed that her children are to be sent there too, she knows it is time to act. She is terrified that her young daughter will grow up to suffer the same as she has, so she returns to her Grandmother's house, who is a free woman, and devises a plan. She hides in the house of a friend and waits until the search for her fades.
She then spends seven years in a cramped, small crawl space in the attic of her Grandmother's house. She only comes out into the store room every now and again to exercise her severely stiff muscles and the only visitors she has are her Grandmother and her Uncle Philip. Needless to say, life is extremely difficult.When the chance to escape to the North presents itself, Jacobs' hesitates at first but then takes the opportunity as her old Master has been hunting for her like a bloodhound on a trail for the last seven years.
She escapes to New York, where she is employed as a Nurse to the infant of a well to do Family, who are also abolitionists. And though the years following are not always easy, she at last, with the help of her new master, manages to purchase herself and her freedom. The last few lines of Jacobs' saying that her story ended with freedom and not marriage, are both bittersweet and resonating. The simple fact that she lived for so long at the mercy and whim of a vengeful, cruel, lecherous master, stays with the reader and the disdain she feels at having to purchase her own freedom, is palpable.
Slavery is something I have never been able to understand. How one race of people could possibly think they were above another and thus own them, as property, treat them horribly...the idea is just completely unfathomable to me. Having grown up with the golden rule of "treat others as you wish to be treated" I just have such a hard time understanding how people in the South and even the North, sadly, thought it was okay, thought it was their right, even, to own slaves. And Jacobs' account, though her life in comparison to some slaves who worked in the fields and were subject to terrible punishments, was almost ideal, there still is the fact that she was not considered a person. She was property and that fact sickens me as I hope it would sicken anyone else who chooses to read this.
I would recommend this book to anyone interested in American history, slavery (and its horrors) and an unflinching, brutal depiction of one of America's darkest times.
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