The text in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl does what it does by giving the reader a singular perspective of a young slave girl by means of persuasive and rhetorical language to awaken the human sensibilities to appeal to empathy and reason. Why we should care about this text is because, as singular as this perspective is, many young women of her skin color living in her time period underwent similar circumstances or worse just to survive. This text serves and means to not just connect women of color, but mothers and all women. Jacobs appeal to the struggle of womanhood and motherhood were the devices she employed to evoke sympathy and understanding from her readers (mainly white women in the northern states) and the society of her time. As known, during that time period was a harsh environment for women of her kind.
In Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs went through continuous misery, agony, torture and absolute grief that was suffered by a slave woman. The text shows multiple uses of figurative language that describe her physical and emotional pain along with how much she expresses to her readers in reference to how she wants them to feel. Jacobs knew that if her readers didn’t have sympathy for her as a slave they would at least feel sympathy for her as a woman considering that her intended audience during this time period were white women of the northern states. Consider this moment, “Before dawn, they came to take me back to my den. I drew aside the window curtain, to take a last look of my child. The moonlight shone on her face, and I bent over her, as I had done years before, that wretched night when I ran away, I hugged her close to my throbbing heart; and tears, too sad for such young eyes to shed, flowed down her cheeks, as she gave her last kiss, and whispered in my ear, ‘Mother, I will never tell.’ And she never did” (552).
Jacobs uses figurative language in one passage, “So, then, after all I had endured for their sakes, my poor children were between two fires; between my old master and their new master!” (550). These two fires Jacobs is referring to are used in such a way to represent two evils, the two evils being her old master and the children’s new master. Neither master would be a good choice for the children to work for because they would both bring harm to them. Jacobs is telling her readers in this specific passage that she feels confined to make a decision between two bad choices. By telling her white female readers the situation she was in at the time with her children, she’s allowing them to relate to her in hopes that they will familiarize themselves with something in their own lives. Taking into consideration the bloodiest four years in the United States history with the Civil War, Jacobs northern readers would see fire as a threat in such a way as she herself does. By using the word fire, Jacobs makes a comparison that allows her readers to see how significant the danger of her situation actually was. By heighting the intensity of emotions, Jacobs is more capable to ignite her readers against slavery. Jacobs is often able to make her readers feel more sympathetic towards the predicament slaves were in by continuously expressing the emotions of terror and rage.
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In addition, Jacobs influences the reader through language by appealing to rhetorical imagery and the sensibilities of mere humanity. A crucial paragraph that illustrate Jacobs use of rhetoric and figurative language is shown in the passage mentioned above “So, then, after all I had endured for their sakes, my poor children were between two fires…” (550). This imagery is what being caught between a rock and a hard place feels like to the highest nth, synonymous to elements of nature that can be causes of massive destructions. These destructions would be massive, but massive in terms of Jacobs perspective.
The feeling of entrapment is apparent, she has no trust in not only slavery but in the white man figures in her life. These figures manifest in form of her masters who have done nothing but take from her. Fire is the most efficient rhetoric Jacobs could use to emphasize her distrust and pain of living a life in slavery and watching her children face a fate she cannot defend them from. Fire represents the fear, helpless, and pain. In her eyes, her unfortunate children are on the verge of inheriting the same fate. If fire were to be replaced with fear in the passage above, the sentence would still make significant and symbolic sense.
Furthermore, the powerful tool of figurative language is used in a specific passage in order to give her readers a sense of the pain she was feeling. “How could she look me in the face, while she thrust such a dagger into my heart?” (579). At this moment Jacobs is referring to Mrs. Sands who tells Jacobs that her daughter, Ellen, was given away to her oldest daughter who will make a nanny out of her. Jacobs is telling her readers that what Mrs. Sands is so nonchalauntly telling her about Ellen’s future put a dagger through her heart. Even though not literally, readers know that an actual dagger would hurt tremendously. Jacobs uses the word dagger with the intent to make her readers feel the excruciating pain she felt when hearing about her daughter’s future. This is one way in which she hopes her readers would relate to her as a mother because she knows that her readers wouldn’t want their children’s’ future in the hands of someone else.
Due to the majority of Jacob’s readers being white women in northern states, she reinforces that she is the victim simply because she wasn’t the owner of her life or choices, therefore readers should have sympathy. But Jacob’s knows that if her readers didn’t have sympathy for her as a slave they should at least as a woman. Jacobs makes this sentimental connection with her audience by telling how she, like any other woman, aspires to devotion and abstinence as consummate feminine decency. By doing so, she would only hope she be rewarded in life with a healthy marriage and children while living under a lawfully protected home. In whole, Jacobs apologizes for her actions but she acknowledges that the entire slavery institution is to blame when she states, “but the condition of a slave confuses all principles of morality, and, in fact, renders the practice of them impossible” (465). In conclusion, Jacobs demonstrates how there is the morality of the slaves and the morality of the free people which she tells her readers to not hold her to the same judgement standards as the free people. She admits to her wrongdoings, which in fact were decisions she had to make as a result of the slavery institution as a whole and this seemed to be the larger goal of her text.
