Running Away, Hiding (Contemporary Connection, Challenge Post)

” Considering Linda’s means of escape from slavery by hiding in the garret in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs, think of a technology today that allows you to run away without going anywhere.” Today, almost all forms of technology allow the user to hide away from society without having to physically…

Where Girlhood Ends

In Jacobs’, The Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Linda’s “girlhood” seems to begin at the start of the novel, which is her early childhood. Even through the death of her mother, her mistress, and her father, this idea of girlhood remains intact. She has a sense of purity and innocence- and most…

(Pop-Up Challenge) Social Media: A Form of Escapism

In Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Linda successfully “runs away” from slavery without actually ever running away at first. Without anybody ever knowing about her whereabouts (with the exception of her grandmother) after she escaped the wrath of Dr. Flint, Linda hides in a crawl space in her grandmother’s attic,…

The Language of Ingratiation

In the title of Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, she uses the term incidents which describes her own flee from adversity coupled with scattered accounts of generalized slave experiences of a similar flight that are unbound by a singular event but rather a lifetime of incidents in which an opportunity…

Harriet Jacobs: The Play Versus The Book

Both The Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl (1861) by Harriet Ann Jacobs and Harriet Jacobs (2011) by Lydia R. Diamond intend to illustrate the life of a black slave woman, but both use different techniques in doing so. The play relies on its audience’s reaction to the plot of the play and…

A Cordial Letter, from Slave Master to Slave?

In Chapter XXXIV, titled “The Old Enemy Again”, Harriet Jacobs (Linda Brent) recounts the arrival of a letter from Dr. Flint, the man who presently holds claim to her, while in New York staying in the Bruce household after escaping from the Flint plantation.  The letter is peculiar in itself as it is a formal…