Nineteenth-Century African American Women's Autobiography - Essay Example

Incidents is a text that describes the life of a slave girl from her own perspective. It functions in several important ways when re-imagined as a transcultural or autoethnographic text. One of the most important things in Linda’s life is her family, something that crosses cultural boundaries, and creates a sense of continuity between all of the cultures that surround her situation – family is the thing that shapes her life more than anything, and it is easy to imagine the ways that these ideals of family would cross cultural boundaries even in her time. As an autoethnographic text, however, Incidents also demonstrates that Linda, the main character, has a very clear idea of her own cultural identity, and that that cultural identity is in large part imposed upon her from beyond her control. As a black salve girl, she is expected to fit those cultural norms regardless of anything else in her life, and she recognizes that she must take every step she can to navigate theses issues throughout her life. Linda’s family situation is one of the main things that creates an autoethnographic understanding of herself. A child is usually innocent with the social environment during the early stages of his/her life. However, as time passes, a child is faced with the inevitable task of acknowledging the state of affairs surrounding his/her life. For Linda this meant one thing: dealing with the situation of slavery, which she experiences almost entirely through the lens of her family. The story Incidents is, in large part, the story of Linda’s growing understanding of her family. In the first paragraphs of the story, Linda begins to tell us about the life of her grandmother and the factors that led to the slavery state of affairs faced by her family in the story. Linda used to overhear her grandmother tell her the stories that surrounded the early times of her life. Linda’s grandmother meant a lot to her, especially with respect to accounting for the factors that led to the slavery state of her family. Linda remembered every detail she was told by her grandmother concerning their family life with their masters. However, a slave, Linda would like to communicate about her grandmother’s hard work and her fight to liberate her family from the grip of their master. Linda admires her grandmothers hardworking nature and appreciates all the efforts she made while trying to free her family from bondage. This aspect of hard work and objectivity in her grandmother chores even as a slave encouraged Linda in many aspects of her life. It is through the lenses of these stories about family that Linda begins to understand her own cultural identity – her cultural understanding of self is constantly influenced by the way her family describes their interactions with slave owners. In every slavery situation, the victim faces unfair and unjustified treatment from their masters. Such mistreatments extend from basic acts of discrimination to other inhumane acts. In her narration about the condition surrounding the childhood life of her mother, the girl highlights this act of oppression on the relationship between her mother and the grandmother’s mistress daughter. Linda’s maternal grandmother was used as the foster mother of her mother’s mistress. After birth, her mother as weaned from her grandmother so as to give the mistress the chance to be breast fed sufficiently by her grandmother. In the story, Linda is bitter about this content and feels that the people who at the same time pretended to care for her mistreated her mother as a child. Linda’s identity formation process is not solely centered on her blood family, however. Her extended family in the form of other slaves, and especially god-parents, leads in large part to Linda understanding her cultural place in the world. Jacobs illustrates the roles played by the people who care about us in life. Jacobs is not different to the significance of Linda’s mother mistress in taking care of her and her sibling. As we can witness from the text, Linda’s mother was treated fairly well by her mistress. Actually, her mother was more of a relative to the mistress than a slave. Since her mother was like a twin sister to her mistress, she was treated with respect in all undertakings within the slavery boundaries, and was only considered slave by name and not by actions. The death of her mother touched her to the extent that she sought to know who she and her brother were, since she had no one left for them. Linda learns of her slavery after her mother’s death. He mother’s mistress took care of her younger brother and her during their childhood lives (Stover 148). To help them grow peacefully, their mistress related with the children in an understanding and caring manner in all duties she assigned to Linda and her sibling. A few years after her mother passed on, her mother’s mistress also died. This was when Linda was 12 years old. With this illustration, Jacobs depicted the social roles played by the women who care on the lives of their children. It is now of the text that we hear Linda pray for the life of her mother’s mistress. However, Jacobs illustrates the unthankful nature of the slave masters to their slaves. The writer is indifferent on the steps taken by the masters after the death of then mistress. Jacobs also criticizes the caring nature of the befallen mistress terming it as an act of pretence. This is illustrated in the context of the role played by the mistress in administering Christian values to Linda and his sibling. The mistress taught Linda of the principle of loving the neighbor as loving oneself. Though the mistress was virtuous enough to insinuate this Christian principle to Linda, she was not practical enough to demonstrate the actions underlying it. In addition, the mistress also pretended to acknowledge the fact that women have rights in the society just like their male counterparts. Jacobs portrays Linda’s grief of this sad revelation of pretence after her mother’s mistress death. As she been virtuous enough, the mistress would have let the slaves under her free before her death. Although Linda still remembers the humane acts of the mistress and the role she played in bringing her up after her mother’s death, she is reluctant to forgive her of her pretence. The text then moves on to show how all of these relationships are societally constructed by adding new accounts of different people in the society following the same rules. Dr. Flint, the new master, serves as one of the best examples of this. One of such incident is illustrated in the death of Linda’s father. Though Linda was allowed to go and collect flowers for decoration following the death, she was not allowed to stay at the place where her father body was kept before burial. This was in contrary with the moral principles governing the action responses to the death. Dr Flint was inconsiderate to the extent that she regarded Linda’s father death as a negligible act of nature even to the lives of those who mattered to them. Dr Flint, though affluent, treated his slaves in a more inhumane manner that the other masters encountered so far. Jacobs discredits Dr Flint as being selfish and uncaring. He highlights the complaints concerning food in Dr Flint’s place (Stover 145). Linda asserts that as a slave, food was hard to come by in this new slavery environment. Still in this context, Jacobs shows the role played by Linda’s grandmother in the misery resulting from the new slavery environment of her grandchild. Her grandmother would provide Linda with food as she ran her errands while in servitude under Mrs Flint’s mastery. Jacobs then shows the terrible cost of the societal relationships that slavery creates. Jacobs depicts the extent to which slavery subject the victims to acts of violence and unfair punishments. Terrible punishments administered in an unjustified manner and these acts degrade the human rights of slaves. Jacobs also illustrates the inconsiderate and inhumane acts of slave mistreatment during their trade exercises. This is highlighted during the incident where a new slave was brought to Dr Flint custody (Stover 153). The man was hanged with his feet dangling in the cells waiting for Mrs Flint to finish drinking her tea. When the trader brings the man’s wife to the new master, Dr Flint mocked and insulted her for her request to be treated with respect. In the whole of this context, Jacobs’s comments are filled with contempt concerning the manner in which Dr Flint is handling his slaves. Jacobs is full of hate with the affluent members of the society who still exploits the poor for their own selfish interests. The text of Incidents serves as a powerful tool for understanding the process of slavery, especially in cultural terms. It demonstrates clearly how people create and take on their own societal identities based on the treatment and stories they hear from those around them, their family and close friends especially, and then internalize that to create a cultural identity. It also shows how slavery, as the domination of one culture by another, creates an incredibly destructive view of self both amongst slaves and salve owners, leading to horrible atrocities. Work Cited Stover, Johnnie. Nineteenth-Century African American Women's Autobiography as Social Discourse: The Example of Harriet Ann Jacobs. New York: National Council of Teachers of English. Read More