Harriet Jacobs (1813-1897) was a writer whose autobiography is the most complete, concurrent record of the life of an enslaved woman in America.
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Hello, from Wonder Media Network I’m Jenny Kaplan and this is Encyclopedia Womannica.
Today we’re talking about a woman whose autobiography is the most complete, concurrent record of the life of an enslaved woman in America. Although the voracity of her story was challenged for decades, our storyteller of the day is now recognized as the true author of her work. We’re talking about Harriet Jacobs.
Harriet Jacobs was born in 1813 in Endenton, North Carolina to Delilah and Daniel Jacobs. Both her mother and father were enslaved. Her grandmother had been emancipated by her former enslavers.
When Harriet was six, her mother died, and she was left in the care of her enslaver, Margaret Horniblow. Margaret taught her to read and write, an uncommon practice for the time.
But when Harriet was twelve her fortune changed. Margaret passed away, and instead of emancipating Harriet, bequeathed Harriet to her three year old niece: Mary Matilda Norcom. Harriet subsequently moved into the Norcom household, a family that did not share Margaret’s relatively more progressive views.
Within three years, though Harriet was just a young teenager, she had become the sexual fixation of Mary’s father, Dr. James Norcom. His sexual harassment was unrelenting and he refused to allow Harriet to marry. It was then that Harriet made a calculated decision. She decided to return the advances of another white man, a local lawyer by the name of Samuel Tredwell Sawyer. She hoped that bearing the children of a different white man would spur her master into a rage. Her goal was to drive Dr. Norcom to sell her.
Her plan did not succeed.
After bearing two of Sawyer’s children, Dr. Norcom punished Harriet by sending her to do back-breaking labor on his plantation. While there, Harriet escaped.
She fled to her grandmother’s house and hid in a crawl space. Harriet remained in hiding at her grandmother’s for seven years. During this time, she revised her plan. Harriet wrote letters to Dr. Norcom falsely claiming she’d escaped to the North. This time around, she hoped Dr. Norcom would sell her children to their father. Eventually, this plan came to fruition and Sawyer bought both of his own children back from Dr. Norcom. Soon after, Sawyer was soon elected to the House of Representatives and moved with the children to Washington D.C. Desperate to reunite with her children, Harriet too fled North.
While searching for her children, Harriet found work as a nursemaid for the abolitionist Nathanial Parker Willis and his wife, Cordelia Willis. Dr. Norcom continued to pursue Harriet and she was frequently forced to go into hiding, often relocating between Boston and New York. Eventually, in 1852, the Willis family was able to buy Harriet her legal freedom.
During her time in the North, Harriet became involved with a feminist abolisionist group. It was there that she met Amy Post. Amy, taken with Harriet’s personal journey, recommended that she write a book about her life. Harriet agreed, and decided to write her autobiography under the pen-name: Linda Brendt.
Her book, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, was published in 1861. With the rise of the American Civil War, the book quickly faded from public discourse and remained relatively unknown for the remainder of Harriet’s lifetime.
Harriet was eventually reunited with her daughter, Louisa. During the Civil War, she worked to aid former slaves who arrived as refugees in Washington D.C. Dedication to the recently freed community brought Harriet back to the South in 1865. Harriet and Louisa settled in Savannah, Georgia to continue relief efforts, but due to persistent racial persecution, they were forced to flee North once more. This time, Harriet settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she opened a boarding house. Not much is known about the final chapters of Harriet’s life, but we do know that she eventually returned to Washington D.C. with her daughter. It was there that Harriet died in 1897. She was 84 years old.
It wasn’t until the feminist movement of the 1960s and 70s that that Incidents reappeared. Initially, it sparked controversy. The book’s editor, Lydia Maria Child, was a white woman. Common thought at the time was that the autobiography was actually a novel, written by Child.
In 1987, historian Jean Fagan Yellin corrected that narrative with her annotated edition of Incidents. Yellin lays bare the true identity of the author and the limited role Child played in publishing the original manuscript. At long last, Harriet’s name was attached to her work. Her role as autobiographer transformed the significance of the text.
In Harriet’s writings, she describes her state of mind as she rejected the advances of Dr. Norcom in favor of Sam Sawyer. She explicitly discusses using her sexuality as a tool to manipulate the white men who sought to further subjugate her. Harriet also acknowledges the judgement she received as a woman with two children born out of wedlock. In her book, she argues that it is cruel to prescribe 19th century morality onto enslaved women, as their fundamental rights had already been so profoundly violated.
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl remains one of the most important books of its kind. It is the only firsthand account of the life of an enslaved woman at the time and gives unmatched insight into Harriet’s perspective as she fought against forces of sexual and racial oppression. In doing so, the autobiography occupies a unique space in both African American and feminist literature.
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Talk to you tomorrow!