The Tender of Memory: Restructuring Value in Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

Summary

Surely there must be some justice in the man …

Incidents (emphasis added)

In declaring that the “war of [her] life had begun,” Harriet Jacobs, speaking as Linda Brent, describes this war as, in part, a consequence of her ripening ability to “read the characters” and so “question the motives” (ILSG, 19) of those around her – particularly those who call themselves her owners. Brent's first mistress, her mother's “whiter foster sister,” had taught Linda how to “read and spell” (ILSG, 7–8). As Brent notes, these were rare skills for a slave, skills upon which Frederick Douglass's 1845 Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, American Slave, As Written by Himselfplaces an extremely high value. However, this boon of early literacy, and Linda Brent's later, self-taught ability to write, does not grant her access to freedom in North Carolina. Nor does her literacy motivate her as much as that which she designates as another form of lived understanding. “I had not lived fourteen years in slavery for nothing” (ILSG, 19), she says, by way of explaining how she came to her war. Indeed, it is only through combining the powers of her literacy, her lived knowledge, and her retention of what she describes as the unruly “sparks of [her] brother's God-given nature” that Brent formulates heroism: “I resolved never to be conquered” (ILSG, 19).

Still, this militant vocalization evokes an immediate, sentimental lament of unspecified woe: “Alas for me!” (ILSG, 19), she says. Brent's foreshadowing, formulaic cry of “alas” indicates the manifold, inevitable losses she will face. Yet she does not dwell on sorrow.