Harriet Jacobs: A Life of Courage, Agency, and Abolitionism

Harriet Jacobs's Narrative in Literary History. Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl was the first autobiography to be published by a formerly enslaved African-American woman. The stated purpose of the narrative was practical: Harriet Jacobs wanted to "arouse the women of the North to . . . the condition of two millions of women at the South, still in bondage, suffering what I suffered" (1). However, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is far more than just a political statement. In order to describe the mental, as well as physical, struggles of her early life fully, Harriet Jacobs departs from the prescribed slave narrative formula by incorporating some techniques more commonly used for writing fiction. For this reason, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl has been embraced by modern scholars interested in the development of African-American fiction, particularly fiction by and about women. Although Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl shares many characteristics with other antebellum slave narratives, its creative synthesis of narrative styles and forthright discussion of female sexuality sets it apart from any other narrative of that time.

Early Life and Family Circle in Edenton. Harriet Ann Jacobs was born in 1813 in the town of Edenton, North Carolina. Harriet Jacobs’s mother, Delilah, belonged to Margaret Horniblow, the invalid daughter of the proprietors of Horniblow’s Tavern in Edenton. Harriet Jacobs’s father, Elijah Knox, was a talented carpenter who was allowed to hire himself out and earn money on his own as long as he paid a certain amount to his owner. This allowed him to live in town with his wife and children rather than on the plantation. Harriet Jacobs tells us that she and her brother, John S. Jacobs, enjoyed the unusual privilege of living in a "comfortable home" with both of their parents (5).

Loss of Parents and Transmission of Literacy. This family circle was broken in 1819 when Harriet Jacobs’s mother died. Delilah’s mistress promised that she would care for the children. She taught Harriet Jacobs to sew and, more importantly, to read and write. However, at her own death in 1825 she did not free either child. Instead, she willed Harriet Jacobs to her three-year-old niece, Mary Matilda Norcom, while John S. Jacobs went to her mother. That same year, their father was recalled to his owner’s plantation. He died a year later, having never realized his dream of purchasing his own freedom and that of his children.

The Influence of Molly and Community Standing. After the death of her parents, the most important person in Harriet Jacobs’s life was her grandmother, Molly. Although she was an enslaved woman, Molly was greatly respected by many of Edenton’s influential white citizens and was able to run a successful baking business in her spare time. After her mistress died, Molly used her savings, and the legal aid of some of the town’s white inhabitants, to purchase herself and her son, Mark. Molly’s home was to become Harriet Jacobs’s refuge from the increasingly intolerable conditions she encountered in her life under bondage in the Norcom house. Her grandmother’s characteristic strength and dedication to her family would be an inspiration to Harriet Jacobs for the rest of her life.

The Norcom Household and Systemic Abuse. Although Harriet Jacobs had been willed to Mary Matilda Norcom, she was actually under the control of the three-year-old’s father, Dr. James Norcom. Historical documents testify to Dr. James Norcom’s love of power and control; his treatment of his family as well as those he enslaved could be hard and unforgiving (Yellin 23). His wife, Maria Norcom, was a difficult and demanding mistress. When Harriet Jacobs was 15, Dr. James Norcom began targeting her with relentless advances. Harriet Jacobs resisted, but Dr. James Norcom continued to pressure her.

Strategic Relationships and Maternal Sacrifice. In 1829, faced with Dr. James Norcom’s increasing hostility and her mistress’s violent jealousy, Harriet Jacobs made a difficult decision. In order to avoid her master's unwanted attentions and to assert her own control over her life, Harriet Jacobs accepted the advances of another white man, Samuel Tredwell Sawyer. Harriet Jacobs describes Samuel Tredwell Sawyer, a young lawyer, as "kind," and she firmly believed that he would, given the opportunity, purchase her and any children she might have (54–55). When Dr. James Norcom discovered that she was pregnant by another white man, he flew into a passion and Mrs. Maria Norcom ordered her not to return to the house. Harriet Jacobs moved in with her grandmother and there gave birth to her son, named Joseph. She continued her liaison with Samuel Tredwell Sawyer and in 1833 had another child, a daughter she named Louisa Matilda. Both Samuel Tredwell Sawyer and Harriet Jacobs’s grandmother made attempts to purchase her and the children, but the doctor refused to sell them.

Escalation and the Ultimatum of 1835. Dr. James Norcom continued to harass Harriet Jacobs throughout this period and often became violent. Finally, in 1835, Dr. James Norcom gave Harriet Jacobs an ultimatum. She could either yield to his demands or be sent to his plantation to be "broken in". Harriet Jacobs chose to leave her children with her grandmother in town and go to the plantation. She worked there until June 1835, when she heard that Dr. James Norcom planned to send her children out to the plantation as well. Harriet Jacobs had often had reason to rejoice that her family lived in town, where fear of public opinion and her grandmother’s friendliness with influential whites had restrained Dr. James Norcom’s violence. In her narrative she writes that if she had grown up "on a remote plantation, or lost among the multitude of a crowded city, I should not be a living woman at this day" (35).

Escape and the "Loophole of Retreat." Afraid of what would happen to her and her children once away from the supportive town community, Harriet Jacobs made a second difficult decision. On Sunday night, June 28, Harriet Jacobs ran away. Friends, both black and white, hid her during the first weeks after her escape. Finding that there was no safe way to send Harriet Jacobs north, her family contrived a more permanent hiding place in the attic of her grandmother’s house.

· Dimensions and Architecture: The space was tiny, measuring nine feet long, seven feet wide, and only three feet tall at the tallest point.

· Living Conditions: The only light and fresh air she had were through a hole that was barely an inch square, and she had to remain silent in order to escape detection.

· Strategic Outcome: Harriet Jacobs’s only comfort was that she had guessed correctly; Dr. James Norcom had lost interest in the children after her disappearance and had finally sold Joseph, Louisa Matilda, and Harriet Jacobs’s brother, John S. Jacobs, to a speculator who was acting for Samuel Tredwell Sawyer and Molly.

Seven Years in Confinement. Harriet Jacobs spent almost seven years in that small attic, which she dubbed her "loophole of retreat," crawling around the floor for exercise, suffering extremes of heat and cold, and listening to her children grow up in the house below. Dr. James Norcom became convinced that she had escaped north and traveled to New York twice in search of her. He also regretted his hasty decision to sell John S. Jacobs and the children. John S. Jacobs had escaped from Samuel Tredwell Sawyer two years previously, during a trip to New York, but the children were still living with their great-grandmother. Dr. James Norcom claimed that, since the children had belonged to his daughter rather than him, their sale was illegal and they still belonged to her. In light of this, Harriet Jacobs agreed to let Samuel Tredwell Sawyer send Louisa Matilda to New York to live with his cousins in Brooklyn, although she was uneasy because he did not legally free Louisa Matilda first.

Flight to the North and the Struggle for Freedom. Finally, Harriet Jacobs’s family found an opportunity to smuggle her out of Edenton and send her north. In June 1842, Harriet Jacobs escaped by boat to Philadelphia, and from there she made her way to New York City. There she was reunited with Louisa Matilda, who was acting as a servant for Samuel Tredwell Sawyer’s cousins rather than being given the schooling she was promised. Harriet Jacobs wished to take her away to a home of her own, but economic circumstances forced her to leave Louisa Matilda where she was and go to work.

Employment with the Willis Family. Harriet Jacobs found employment as a nursemaid in the family of Nathaniel Parker Willis, a well-known writer and editor. Nathaniel Parker Willis had proslavery tendencies, but his British wife, Mary Stace Willis, was firmly opposed to the institution. When Harriet Jacobs discovered that Dr. James Norcom was searching for her in New York, she confided in Mrs. Mary Stace Willis, who encouraged Harriet Jacobs to take Louisa Matilda and flee the city. John S. Jacobs, who had just returned from a whaling voyage, escorted them to Boston.

· Stage 1: They settled in Boston for a year.

· Stage 2: Harriet Jacobs received news that Mrs. Mary Stace Willis had died and Nathaniel Parker Willis wanted Harriet Jacobs to take charge of the baby during a planned trip to England.

· Stage 3: Harriet Jacobs left her children with her brother in Boston and accompanied Nathaniel Parker Willis and the baby, Imogen, to England, where she enjoyed comparative freedom from persecution and color prejudice.

· Stage 4: Once she returned to Boston, Harriet Jacobs received harassing notes from the Norcom family, insisting that she return to slavery.

Impact of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. In 1849, Harriet Jacobs sent Louisa Matilda to boarding school and went to Rochester to join her brother, now a prominent abolitionist, who wanted to open an antislavery reading room in the city. While she was in Rochester, Harriet Jacobs met Amy Post, an abolitionist who would become a very close and dear friend. The reading room did not prosper, so Harriet Jacobs returned to the Willis family to look after the baby of the second Mrs. Willis, Cornelia Grinnell Willis.

In 1850, the Fugitive Slave Law was passed, which made it legal for an owner to go north to the "Free States" and recapture any escaped person. Harriet Jacobs’s son and brother both left Massachusetts for California to participate in the Gold Rush and to escape recapture. From California they went on to the Australian gold rush. Disappointed at his luck, John S. Jacobs left to become a sailor; Joseph remained there, but eventually disappeared and was presumed dead. Harriet Jacobs continued to work for the Willis family but had to flee the city in 1851, and again in 1852, with the aid of her employer, Mrs. Cornelia Grinnell Willis. After the second episode, Cornelia Grinnell Willis insisted on buying Harriet Jacobs’s freedom so that she would be spared any more persecution. By then old Dr. James Norcom was dead and Harriet Jacobs’s young mistress was happy to sell her missing slave. Harriet Jacobs was finally free, but she was never able to reunite with the members of her family in Edenton. Her grandmother died in 1853, without having seen either her grandchildren or great-grandchildren after their escape from the South.

Literary Authorship and the Publishing Process. After achieving her freedom, Harriet Jacobs continued to work for the Willis family, but she maintained her connections with the abolitionists she had met, particularly Amy Post, to whom she wrote often. It was Amy Post’s suggestion that Harriet Jacobs publish her autobiography in order to help the antislavery cause. After some hesitation, Harriet Jacobs agreed. Uncertain of her own literary powers, her first thought was that she might commission Harriet Beecher Stowe to write the story for her. However, Harriet Beecher Stowe refused to deal directly with Harriet Jacobs (writing instead to her employer, Mrs. Cornelia Grinnell Willis) and seemed uninterested in the story except as it might add to her soon-to-be published A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin. Harriet Jacobs, irritated and hurt by Harriet Beecher Stowe’s patronizing attitude, refused to have her story co-opted as part of another project and determined to write it herself.

Composition and Editorial Collaboration. In 1853, she published her first writing, three anonymous letters published in the New York Tribune regarding the terrible conditions of slavery, and she started her autobiography. Finding time to put her story on paper was difficult. In March 1854, Harriet Jacobs wrote to Amy Post that she had begun writing but that "as [of] yet I have not written a single page by daylight"; the demands of her job meant that she had "but a little time to think or write" (Yellin 129). Writing at night and in odd moments during the day, Harriet Jacobs finally finished her manuscript in 1858.

She tried unsuccessfully to sell it in England and in Boston before finding the firm Thayer and Eldridge, who agreed to print it if she could persuade Lydia Maria Child, a famed white abolitionist, to supply a preface. Harriet Jacobs met Lydia Maria Child through her abolitionist connections, and Lydia Maria Child agreed to act as general editor and supply the preface. Although she did alter the manuscript, she writes in her introduction to the text that it was "mainly for purposes of condensation and arrangement" (3). The publishing firm became bankrupt in 1861, but Harriet Jacobs managed to raise enough money to pay to have her book printed. That same year her brother John S. Jacobs, who had moved to England and married an English woman, published his own narrative, "A True Tale of Slavery," in the Leisure Hour, a British periodical. In 1862 a British edition of Harriet Jacobs’s narrative was published under the title The Deeper Wrong.

Civil War Relief Work and Later Activism. Harriet Jacobs spent the years of the Civil War working for relief agencies among the former slaves who were refugees in Washington, D.C., and Alexandria, Virginia. Louisa Matilda joined her in 1864, and together they opened the Jacobs School in Alexandria to teach the newly freed people. During her time in Alexandria, Harriet Jacobs sent letters and reports to her friends and contacts in the North, many of which were published in the Freedman’s Record, the Liberator, and other antislavery publications. After the war ended, Harriet Jacobs and Louisa Matilda went south to Savannah to aid in relief efforts, but they returned north in 1866, feeling anxious about the future of their people because of racist violence and governmental policies that blocked the freed people’s access to land, education, and enfranchisement. In one letter that Harriet Jacobs wrote from Savannah to the Freedman’s Record about the state of affairs there, she closes by noting ominously, "We shall be badly off when the military protection is withdrawn" ("From Savannah").

Post-War Initiatives and Final Years. Back in the North, Harriet Jacobs and Louisa Matilda became interested in the American Association for Equal Rights, but they soon became disgusted by the racism of white feminists, particularly their verbal attacks on black men. In 1868, Harriet Jacobs and Louisa Matilda went to England to raise money for an orphanage and old-age home for the freed people, to be built in Savannah, but the conditions in the South were so bad that the money they raised could not be put to its intended use. After this disappointment, Harriet Jacobs gave up her active relief work and settled down to run a boardinghouse in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Harriet Jacobs’s brother John S. Jacobs returned from England in 1873, but he died shortly thereafter. Four years later, Harriet Jacobs and Louisa Matilda moved to Washington, D.C., where many of their activist friends had settled. Harriet Jacobs again opened a boardinghouse, while Louisa Matilda tried to find work as a teacher or government worker.

In 1892, Harriet Jacobs sold her grandmother’s house in Edenton, which she had inherited. She had only returned to the town twice after the war and had decided that she could not resettle there. Harriet Jacobs’s health was failing, and Louisa Matilda became her mother’s full-time nurse. On March 7, 1897, Harriet Jacobs died in Washington, D.C.. She is buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, Massachusetts, beside her brother John S. Jacobs. Louisa Matilda lived until 1917 and is also buried at Mount Auburn.