Harriett_Jacobs_as_a_Gothic_Fiction_Writer

In the nineteenth century, American writers faced the daunting task of breaking away from European themes and values, in an effort to develop a unique style and voice.  Writing in America during this time began to differentiate itself from its European roots by the generation’s fascination with the individual.  The work produced dealt with human perception, experience, and psychology.  This American Romantic movement was able to distinguish itself from its European counterpart through unending innovation; possibly the most fascinating genre within the American Romantic movement was the disturbing and often macabre Gothic fiction.  While this genre’s most famously known through the work of Edgar Allan Poe, Gothic fiction encompasses much more than his personal style. It is not simply horror, rather, it is a fascination with darkness and oppression.  Every single work that we have read so far in this class contains elements of gothic fiction; therefore, while it is quite evident that Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, falls neatly into the category of a nineteenth century anti-slavery tract, the novel also must be counted amongst the time period’s gothic fiction.              Harriet Jacobs’s work was the first autobiography by a female slave, yet, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is vastly different from the other slave tracts of that time.  Jacobs ends her story as it is, with no positive uplift and no fighting back.  Her work is dark and vivid in its description of the horror she faced in her lifetime.  She was even known to have criticized Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin for romanticizing slavery too much.  In writing Incidents of the Life of a Slave Girl, she did not attempt to prove her triumph in escaping bondage and in gaining an education like so many other slave tracts.  On page 1, she writes “I have not written my experiences in order to attract attention to myself; on the contrary, it would have been more pleasant to me to have been silent about my own history.  Neither do I care to excite sympathy for my own sufferings,” she continues by declaring that her purpose in publishing the narrative lies in her “[earnest] desire to arouse the women of the North to a realizing sense of the condition of two millions of women at the South, still in bondage, suffering what I suffered, and most of them far worse.” She writes in an effort to educate Northern white women of her desperate and horrific plight and the plight of countless others in similar situations.  This is especially notable because most of the other slave tracts are put forth as an effort to beseech the white man, and prove how educated a slave might become.  However, in an effort to get through to northern white women, Harriet Jacobs’s writing exposes the gut wrenching and explicit horror that comes with being a female slave. Her goal in writing the autobiography had nothing to do with her own personal glorification of her situation, more like despite her personal situation.  Unlike other slave tracts, Harriet was still terrified while the book was being published and chose not to use her real name.  Yet the awfulness in this book is able to affect its audience in a different way than other comparable works—whether it is another slave tract or piece of gothic literature—because Jacobs is so unabashedly descriptive in writing about true events.  While it is true that the overarching antagonist of the novel is the slave system, the character that incites the most loathing and terror is Dr. Flint, a man historically confirmed to have been quite as cruel and evil as Harriet Jacobs’s real-life master.  One of Linda’s earliest memories is hearing Dr. Flint brutally whip one of his plantation slaves.  On page 13 she recalls how “I shall never forget that night.  Never before, in my life, had I heard hundreds of blows fall, in succession, on a human being…I went into the work house next morning, and saw the cowhide still wet with blood, and the boards all covered with gore.” This man is an abominable creature, one that is a supposed Christian, yet is cruel, morally corrupt, conniving, and a hypocrite that never experiences one moment of remorse throughout the entirety of the novel.  Soon after Linda changed hands into the Flint household, Dr. Flint unleashed a seemingly tireless predatory sexual pursuit on her. However, the audience quickly comes to understand that the situation boiling between Linda and Dr. Flint is not simply that of a slave holder subjecting one of his female slaves to sexual abuse—it is much more psychological and complicated than that. The characterization and way in which the relationship of Linda and Dr. Flint unfolds adheres to elements of Gothic fiction. In this genre, there is always a hero or protagonist that is usually isolated whether it be voluntarily or involuntarily, then there is also the villain, a person that is absolutely evil as a result of his own past discrepancies or by some implied malevolence. Dr. Flint wants control and submission from Linda; it is clearly not nearly so much about having sex with her, than it is about Linda willingly relinquishing control over her person, otherwise, he would have initially just raped her. In Jacobs’s work, the game of cat-and-mouse begins “when he[Dr. Flint] told me[Linda] that I was made for his use, made to obey his command in every thing; that I was nothing but a slave, whose will must and should surrender to his, never before had my puny arm felt half so strong.” (p 18) Linda comes to the conclusion that even though Dr. Flint has complete legal authority over her, she would do whatever it took to thwart his wishes. The early stages in this conflict-of-wills becomes integral to shaping her as an individual, and not simply just cattle. However, her resilience only further intensifies Dr. Flint’s desperate need to bring her to heel, and what unfolds is a dangerous battle of wills. No matter how tense and tumultuous their interactions become, Linda knows that Dr. Flint wants submission from her, not to rape her, something that only strengthens her resolve in denying his advances. The layout of most Gothic fiction evolves from the intense relationship between the protagonist and antagonist, and it catalogues the protagonist’s inevitable fall from grace as she succumbs to temptation from the villain. While it is true that Linda never relinquishes control over her own body to Dr. Flint, it quickly becomes clear that there is a part of Linda that very much enjoys and receives satisfaction from outmaneuvering him; in her attempt to further enrage him, In her portrayal of Dr. Flint, there are a number of allusions to the uselessness of Christianity to a slave.  Dr. Flint is capable of such evil while maintaining the façade of a good Christian.  She devotes an entire chapter to “The Church and Slavery,” giving many examples of how ludicrous the relationship is.  The lack of direction with religion or faith in one’s life and death remains one of the elements of gothic fiction that we see present throughout the novel.  In experiencing so much horror in one’s life there is quite a large absence of spirituality.  She deals with the blows she has been dealt throughout her life with a constant fear of the unknown, believing that what is to come is only going to be worse than what came before it. One would think that being brutalized physically, sexually, and emotionally by other people would be the worst kind of torture, yet perhaps the most haunting moment within her story has to be her existence within the garret.  Linda is cramped in a tiny space that sounds like a coffin—extraordinarily reminiscent of Poe, and she is not quite alive, yet not quite dead, and is literally haunting Flint and his children while occupying a space that is not one hundred percent definable.  Even after she escapes this loathsome place and goes north, she, again, differs from other slave narratives and leans more towards the gothic fiction in that she explains that going north does not solve anything—she is still haunted by her past and there is most definitely no happy ending in sight for her. Harriet Jacobs ends her story with no resolution and the reader is left with an unmistakable sense of horror and unease.  Much of the work is permeated with dark undertones that most definitely can be attributed to the intensely disturbing subject matter of slavery, yet, there is such a large difference between what Harriet Jacobs does with the slave narrative than other authors of the same genre that she is able to be included in the genre of gothic fiction.