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sereneThe way I think this will work is I'll post each of my essays, lit reviews, or link lists under a cut, and tag the living daylights out of each, so that the collection can grow organically. I'm pondering how to best use tags (compound author:name tags, maybe?), so if you have suggestions, please pipe up. I want this to be pretty awesome in just ten weeks, so I'm open to tutelage.
First up is an essay I wrote for a Black Lit class about Harriet Jacobs, drawing on four articles about her work.
Harriet Jacobs on the Authority of Black Women
Harriet Jacobs never wanted to be a spokesperson, though that is what she became by writing and publishing her Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Written by Herself. In her statement in the book's appendix, Amy Post quotes Jacobs as saying, in demurring to write the book at first, "You know a woman can whisper her cruel wrongs in the ear of a dear friend much easier than she can record them for the world to read" (Jacobs, "Appendix"). Nonetheless, the reluctant author was courageous, and ultimately decided to use her story to raise awareness and present a call of action to Northerners, chiefly Northern women, against slavery and toward the cause of freedom.
Jacobs's masterpiece has been historically discounted as a mere melodrama, but many scholars today see it as a work of great skill and eloquence. Moreover, they see her shrewdness in the realm of marketing her message to a Northern audience of mostly middle-class women as groundbreaking and subtle in its effectiveness. "Jacobs’s complicated relationship with her audience—her efforts to navigate the sexual norms of the evangelical abolitionists as well as the contested status of African American self-expression—required elaborate techniques of encoding and displacement" (Smith 747). As is nearly always the case, the person under oppression understands her oppressors much better than they understand her, and she uses that understanding to argue, both with her book and in her letters, for the authority of the Southern Black woman. Jacobs makes the authority of Southern Women plain in many places in the book, from the title, in which she asserts that this is her own story, to the epigraphs, throughout the text, and on through her choices for endorsers.
In the book's first epigraph, a woman credited simply as "A Woman Of North Carolina" says, "Northerners know nothing at all about Slavery. They think it is perpetual bondage only. They have no conception of the depth of degradation involved in that word, SLAVERY; if they had, they would never cease their efforts until so horrible a system was overthrown" (Jacobs). The second epigraph reads "Rise up, ye women that are at ease! Hear my voice, ye careless daughters! Give ear unto my speech." (Isaiah xxxii. 9) These two epigraphs taken together are a clear case for the authority of the woman who has experienced slavery, and a call to those who have lived in freedom all their lives, to those women "at ease," to listen to the lived experience of the women, and of Jacobs in particular.
"Jacobs makes southernness a type of authority and also distinguishes between the lived experience of a place and a discourse about it, whether that discourse be abolitionist rhetoric or sketches from casual social observation" (Warner 31). In much the same way, the epigraphs and the whole of Jacobs's narrative argue for the authority of the lived experience of women. "Jacobs' [sic] authority rests upon her being a southern slave and a woman" (Warner 33). That is, she dismisses the idea that the white women who are her patrons are the best authority about their cause; rather, she insists that her story is hers to tell—an idea foreshadowed in the title of the book, and carried on throughout the work.
Though scholars are now paying attention to Jacobs, and though she achieved some popularity in her time, her reception at the time was not welcoming on the whole, nor did the white world suddenly look to her success and consider that they were wrong about Black people all along. Quite the contrary. "Female abolitionists faced a special measure of public resistance, ridicule, and censure.... For a great many women, however, the anti-slavery cause was a matter of conscience that overrode convention" (Doherty 81). Women speaking out against injustice were clearly an exception to social norms. Even the women who were using Jacobs's story to put forth their own abolitionist agenda saw her as an anomaly, and used problematic language to describe Jacobs and her literary achievement. From Child's introduction:
It will naturally excite surprise that a woman reared in Slavery should be able to write so well. But circumstances will explain this. In the first place, nature endowed her with quick perceptions. Secondly, the mistress, with whom she lived till she was twelve years old, was a kind, considerate friend, who taught her to read and spell. Thirdly, she was placed in favorable circumstances after she came to the North; having frequent intercourse with intelligent persons, who felt a friendly interest in her welfare, and were disposed to give her opportunities for self-improvement. (Jacobs, "Introduction by the Editor")
The unfortunate implication here, from someone who is actually on Jacobs's side, is twofold: One, that it's not normal for slave women to be intelligent; and two, that being near white benefactors is the reason Jacobs is able to write well.
Aside from assumptions of low intelligence, women of the day were not expected to be the seats of actual power; women, instead, were seen as being influential behind the scenes, if they were influential at all. The belief in this gendered expectation was not limited to men. Child herself gave two calls to action in the introduction, one to men and one to women: the former called for action, while the latter called for women to exert their "moral influence" (Jacobs, "Introduction by the Editor"). "Child’s gendered vision of Jacobs’s reception recalls the familiar ideology of separate spheres. Women exercise their 'moral influence.' Men make binding oaths and take public actions" (Smith 757). Jacobs's preface, on the other hand, addresses only the women directly: "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" (Jacobs, "Preface by the Author). Doherty says that Jacobs's strategy of aiming her narrative at women is "both demographically and rhetorically astute" (81). It does not pander to men, or call on them for aid. Instead, it recognizes the power and influence of women whose hearts are stirred to action.
Racial justice is certainly an obvious subject of Jacobs's work, but Incidents is especially important in its groundbreaking gender specificity. Not merely an indictment of slavery in general, "Incidents is an account by a woman of her struggle against her oppression in slavery as a sexual object and as a mother" (Yellin 486). Historically, American narratives have been told primarily from the standpoint of the male gaze and experiences; early slave narratives were no exception, and often women's special plights were treated as an afterthought or subplot in these narratives.
It is vital to her call to action to the Northern women that Jacobs present those women with something they care about, in a form that stirs them. Using the sentimental novel as a template, "Jacobs’s book offered the rare testimony of a woman, documenting the peculiar terrors of sexual vulnerability and violation.... Jacobs presented herself as a woman addressing other women, on behalf of her sisters in bondage" (Smith 748). Though she knows she is seen as an outsider, the author chooses a way of presenting her subject that emphasizes the commonalities among women—their vulnerabilities, their fears, their love of family, and their unjust treatment at the hands of men. It is unlikely that many women of Jacobs's day, Black or white, were unfamiliar with the sexual oppression of their gender that was commonplace in the time (and sadly continues to our time, as well). Jacobs enlists the Northern women's empathy by telling a story that middle-class women could identify with, even though they were socially inclined to put Black women into the category of "other."
The sexual subject matter in the book is presented with delicacy and decorum. Jacobs does not relate the story of her degradation in coarse terms—mirroring the coarse subject matter—and expect women to be angry on her behalf. Jacobs uses her literary skill as a spoonful of sugar, in a sense: "In style and in subject, her first public letter reflects her private correspondence and prefigures her book by using the language of polite letters to discuss the sexual exploitation of women in slavery" (Yellin 484). Jacobs is no fool; she knows these women value elevated language, modesty, and self-effacement. She does not disappoint them. She gives them language that she knows will be palatable to her readers, and in doing so, she gains more allies than if she were to present her anger bald-faced.
Over and over, Jacobs aligns herself with women not only stylistically and rhetorically, but in the marketing of her work to the world. Just to take one example, she could have relied on the men in her life, such as her employer N. P. Willis, to lend credence to her work, but she sought the endorsement of other women, instead. "As her manuscript neared completion, Jacobs asked Post to identify herself with the book in a letter expressing her concern about its sensational aspects and her need for the acceptance of another woman: 'I have thought that I wanted some female friend to write a preface or some introductory remarks...'" (Yellin 485). Jacobs could not have been ignorant of the greater weight generally afforded to men's endorsements, but she consistently chose women to act as her envoys and champions, even when they turned out to be bad fits, as was Harriet Beecher Stowe (Stowe's treatment of Jacobs was condescending and dismissive at best). Jacobs clearly valued the authority of women, even when she denigrated her own skill as a writer, or doubted her fitness as a spokesperson.
From start to finish, Incidents is a masterwork of political rhetoric, not at the expense of storytelling, but in tandem with it. Jacobs wisely tailored her language to make her message palatable, but in so doing, she did not water down the message itself.
That has to be some kind of lesson.
Works Cited
Doherty, Thomas. "Harriet Jacobs' Narrative Strategies: 'Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl'." Southern Literary Journal 19.1 (Fall 1986): 79-91. Web. 6 Feb. 2013.
Jacobs, Harriet (a.k.a. Linda Brent). Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Written by Herself. 1861. Gutenberg e-text. Web. 4 Feb. 2013.
Smith, Caleb. "Harriet Jacobs among the Militants: Transformations in Abolition's Public Sphere, 1859-61." American Literature 84.4 (December 2012): 743-68. Web. 6 Feb. 2013.
Warner, Anne Bradford. "Harriet Jacobs at Home in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl." Southern Quarterly. 45.3 (Spring 2008): 30-47. Web. 6 Feb. 2013.
Yellin, Jean Fagan. "Written by Herself: Harriet Jacobs' Slave Narrative." American Literature. 53.3 (Nov. 1981): 479-86. Web. 6 Feb. 2013.
First up is an essay I wrote for a Black Lit class about Harriet Jacobs, drawing on four articles about her work.
Harriet Jacobs on the Authority of Black Women
Harriet Jacobs never wanted to be a spokesperson, though that is what she became by writing and publishing her Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Written by Herself. In her statement in the book's appendix, Amy Post quotes Jacobs as saying, in demurring to write the book at first, "You know a woman can whisper her cruel wrongs in the ear of a dear friend much easier than she can record them for the world to read" (Jacobs, "Appendix"). Nonetheless, the reluctant author was courageous, and ultimately decided to use her story to raise awareness and present a call of action to Northerners, chiefly Northern women, against slavery and toward the cause of freedom.
Jacobs's masterpiece has been historically discounted as a mere melodrama, but many scholars today see it as a work of great skill and eloquence. Moreover, they see her shrewdness in the realm of marketing her message to a Northern audience of mostly middle-class women as groundbreaking and subtle in its effectiveness. "Jacobs’s complicated relationship with her audience—her efforts to navigate the sexual norms of the evangelical abolitionists as well as the contested status of African American self-expression—required elaborate techniques of encoding and displacement" (Smith 747). As is nearly always the case, the person under oppression understands her oppressors much better than they understand her, and she uses that understanding to argue, both with her book and in her letters, for the authority of the Southern Black woman. Jacobs makes the authority of Southern Women plain in many places in the book, from the title, in which she asserts that this is her own story, to the epigraphs, throughout the text, and on through her choices for endorsers.
In the book's first epigraph, a woman credited simply as "A Woman Of North Carolina" says, "Northerners know nothing at all about Slavery. They think it is perpetual bondage only. They have no conception of the depth of degradation involved in that word, SLAVERY; if they had, they would never cease their efforts until so horrible a system was overthrown" (Jacobs). The second epigraph reads "Rise up, ye women that are at ease! Hear my voice, ye careless daughters! Give ear unto my speech." (Isaiah xxxii. 9) These two epigraphs taken together are a clear case for the authority of the woman who has experienced slavery, and a call to those who have lived in freedom all their lives, to those women "at ease," to listen to the lived experience of the women, and of Jacobs in particular.
"Jacobs makes southernness a type of authority and also distinguishes between the lived experience of a place and a discourse about it, whether that discourse be abolitionist rhetoric or sketches from casual social observation" (Warner 31). In much the same way, the epigraphs and the whole of Jacobs's narrative argue for the authority of the lived experience of women. "Jacobs' [sic] authority rests upon her being a southern slave and a woman" (Warner 33). That is, she dismisses the idea that the white women who are her patrons are the best authority about their cause; rather, she insists that her story is hers to tell—an idea foreshadowed in the title of the book, and carried on throughout the work.
Though scholars are now paying attention to Jacobs, and though she achieved some popularity in her time, her reception at the time was not welcoming on the whole, nor did the white world suddenly look to her success and consider that they were wrong about Black people all along. Quite the contrary. "Female abolitionists faced a special measure of public resistance, ridicule, and censure.... For a great many women, however, the anti-slavery cause was a matter of conscience that overrode convention" (Doherty 81). Women speaking out against injustice were clearly an exception to social norms. Even the women who were using Jacobs's story to put forth their own abolitionist agenda saw her as an anomaly, and used problematic language to describe Jacobs and her literary achievement. From Child's introduction:
It will naturally excite surprise that a woman reared in Slavery should be able to write so well. But circumstances will explain this. In the first place, nature endowed her with quick perceptions. Secondly, the mistress, with whom she lived till she was twelve years old, was a kind, considerate friend, who taught her to read and spell. Thirdly, she was placed in favorable circumstances after she came to the North; having frequent intercourse with intelligent persons, who felt a friendly interest in her welfare, and were disposed to give her opportunities for self-improvement. (Jacobs, "Introduction by the Editor")
The unfortunate implication here, from someone who is actually on Jacobs's side, is twofold: One, that it's not normal for slave women to be intelligent; and two, that being near white benefactors is the reason Jacobs is able to write well.
Aside from assumptions of low intelligence, women of the day were not expected to be the seats of actual power; women, instead, were seen as being influential behind the scenes, if they were influential at all. The belief in this gendered expectation was not limited to men. Child herself gave two calls to action in the introduction, one to men and one to women: the former called for action, while the latter called for women to exert their "moral influence" (Jacobs, "Introduction by the Editor"). "Child’s gendered vision of Jacobs’s reception recalls the familiar ideology of separate spheres. Women exercise their 'moral influence.' Men make binding oaths and take public actions" (Smith 757). Jacobs's preface, on the other hand, addresses only the women directly: "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" (Jacobs, "Preface by the Author). Doherty says that Jacobs's strategy of aiming her narrative at women is "both demographically and rhetorically astute" (81). It does not pander to men, or call on them for aid. Instead, it recognizes the power and influence of women whose hearts are stirred to action.
Racial justice is certainly an obvious subject of Jacobs's work, but Incidents is especially important in its groundbreaking gender specificity. Not merely an indictment of slavery in general, "Incidents is an account by a woman of her struggle against her oppression in slavery as a sexual object and as a mother" (Yellin 486). Historically, American narratives have been told primarily from the standpoint of the male gaze and experiences; early slave narratives were no exception, and often women's special plights were treated as an afterthought or subplot in these narratives.
It is vital to her call to action to the Northern women that Jacobs present those women with something they care about, in a form that stirs them. Using the sentimental novel as a template, "Jacobs’s book offered the rare testimony of a woman, documenting the peculiar terrors of sexual vulnerability and violation.... Jacobs presented herself as a woman addressing other women, on behalf of her sisters in bondage" (Smith 748). Though she knows she is seen as an outsider, the author chooses a way of presenting her subject that emphasizes the commonalities among women—their vulnerabilities, their fears, their love of family, and their unjust treatment at the hands of men. It is unlikely that many women of Jacobs's day, Black or white, were unfamiliar with the sexual oppression of their gender that was commonplace in the time (and sadly continues to our time, as well). Jacobs enlists the Northern women's empathy by telling a story that middle-class women could identify with, even though they were socially inclined to put Black women into the category of "other."
The sexual subject matter in the book is presented with delicacy and decorum. Jacobs does not relate the story of her degradation in coarse terms—mirroring the coarse subject matter—and expect women to be angry on her behalf. Jacobs uses her literary skill as a spoonful of sugar, in a sense: "In style and in subject, her first public letter reflects her private correspondence and prefigures her book by using the language of polite letters to discuss the sexual exploitation of women in slavery" (Yellin 484). Jacobs is no fool; she knows these women value elevated language, modesty, and self-effacement. She does not disappoint them. She gives them language that she knows will be palatable to her readers, and in doing so, she gains more allies than if she were to present her anger bald-faced.
Over and over, Jacobs aligns herself with women not only stylistically and rhetorically, but in the marketing of her work to the world. Just to take one example, she could have relied on the men in her life, such as her employer N. P. Willis, to lend credence to her work, but she sought the endorsement of other women, instead. "As her manuscript neared completion, Jacobs asked Post to identify herself with the book in a letter expressing her concern about its sensational aspects and her need for the acceptance of another woman: 'I have thought that I wanted some female friend to write a preface or some introductory remarks...'" (Yellin 485). Jacobs could not have been ignorant of the greater weight generally afforded to men's endorsements, but she consistently chose women to act as her envoys and champions, even when they turned out to be bad fits, as was Harriet Beecher Stowe (Stowe's treatment of Jacobs was condescending and dismissive at best). Jacobs clearly valued the authority of women, even when she denigrated her own skill as a writer, or doubted her fitness as a spokesperson.
From start to finish, Incidents is a masterwork of political rhetoric, not at the expense of storytelling, but in tandem with it. Jacobs wisely tailored her language to make her message palatable, but in so doing, she did not water down the message itself.
That has to be some kind of lesson.
Works Cited
Doherty, Thomas. "Harriet Jacobs' Narrative Strategies: 'Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl'." Southern Literary Journal 19.1 (Fall 1986): 79-91. Web. 6 Feb. 2013.
Jacobs, Harriet (a.k.a. Linda Brent). Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Written by Herself. 1861. Gutenberg e-text. Web. 4 Feb. 2013.
Smith, Caleb. "Harriet Jacobs among the Militants: Transformations in Abolition's Public Sphere, 1859-61." American Literature 84.4 (December 2012): 743-68. Web. 6 Feb. 2013.
Warner, Anne Bradford. "Harriet Jacobs at Home in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl." Southern Quarterly. 45.3 (Spring 2008): 30-47. Web. 6 Feb. 2013.
Yellin, Jean Fagan. "Written by Herself: Harriet Jacobs' Slave Narrative." American Literature. 53.3 (Nov. 1981): 479-86. Web. 6 Feb. 2013.