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Spiritual Purity and Sexual Shame: Religious Themes in the Writings of Harriet Jacobs

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Ann Taves
Ann Taves
Affiliation:
Assistant professor of church history in the Claremont School of Theology, Claremont, California.
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Extract

In a review published in 1849, Ephraim Peabody observed that “America has the mournful honor of adding a new department to the literature of civilization,—the autobiographies of escaped slaves.” As Peabody went on to point out, “these narratives show how it [slavery] looks as seen from the side of the slave. They contain the victim's account of the workings of this great institution.” As such, they have proved an invaluable resource for examining the religious life of Afro-Americans under slavery. Yet despite the fact that Peabody and others recognized “the peculiar hardships to which the female slave [was] subjected” during the nineteenth century, few recent studies of slavery have paid attention to differences in gender and none, to my knowledge, have explored the impact to gender differences on the religious life of slaves.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 56 , Issue 1 , March 1987 , pp. 59 - 72
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1987

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References

I would like to thank David W. Wills, Albert Raboteau, and the members of the Summer 1986 NEH Institute on Afro-American Religion for their help both direct and indirect, in revising this paper.

1. Peabody, Ephraim, “Narratives of Fugitive Slaves,” Christian Examiner 47 (1849): 61–93,Google Scholar quoted in Davis, Charles T. and Gates, Henry Louis JrThe Slave's Narrative (Oxford, 1985), p. 19.Google Scholar

2. Ibid., p. 20.

3. Ibid., p. 22; Child, Lydia Maria, An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans (New York, 1836; reprint ed., New York, 1968), p. 23;Google ScholarWhite, Deborah Gray, Ar'n't l a Woman?: Female Slaves in the Plantation South (New York, 1985),Google Scholar is one of the few works to focus on the experience of women under slavery.

4. Davis, and Gates, , The Slave's Narrative, pp. 319–330;Google Scholar see, for example, Lee, Jarena, The Life and Religious Experiences of Jarena Lee, A Coloured Lady, Giving an Account of Her Call to Preach the Gospel. (Philadelphia, 1836);Google ScholarStewart, Maria W., Productions of Mrs. Maria Stewart (Boston, 1835);Google ScholarWilson, Harriet E. Adams, Our Nig; or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black, in a Two-Story White House, North (Boston, 1859);Google Scholar and Elaw, Zipha, Memoirs of the Life, Religious Experiences, Ministerial Travels and Labours (London, 1846).Google Scholar The autobiographies of Lee, , Elaw, , and Foote, Julia are reprinted in Sisters of the Spirit: Three Black Women's Autobiographies of the Nineteenth Century, ed. Andrews, William L. (Bloomington, Ind., 1986).Google Scholar

5. See, for example, Greene, Frances Whipple, Memoirs of Eleanor Eldridge (Providence, 1838);Google ScholarWilliams, Sally, Aunt Sally; or The Cross the Way to Freedom (Cincinnati, 1858);Google ScholarBrown, Jane, Narrative of the Life of Jane Brown (Hartford, 1860);Google Scholar and Craft, William, Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom; or, the Escape of William and Ellen Craft from Slavery (London, 1860).Google Scholar

6. Brent, Linda [Jacobs, Harriet], Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, ed. Child, L. Maria (Boston, 1861; New York, 1973).Google Scholar

7. Ibid., pp. 69–70.

8. Ibid., pp. 71–73.

9. This situation was not unusual. According to Newton, James E. and Lewis, Ronald L., “bondage in the United States actually took a variety of forms. [Because] American slavery is usually associated with the plantation regime, … we tend to forget that by 1860 a large percentage of the slave population lived in southern towns and cities laboring at a multitude of non-agricultural pursuits”; The Other Slaves: Mechanics, Artisans and Craftsmen (Boston, 1978), pp. xi–xii.Google Scholar

10. Most slaves who learned to read were, like Jacobs, taught by their owners Out of religious motives. See Cornelius, Janet, “‘We Slipped and Learned to Read’: Slave Accounts of the Literacy Process, 1830–1865,” Phylon 44 (1983): 171–186.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11. Valerie Smith, “‘Loopholes of Retreat’: Architecture and Ideology in Harriet Jacob's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl,” Paper given at the biennial meeting of the American Studies Association, San Diego, Calif., November 1985.

12. Jean Fagin Yellin, “Text and Contexts of Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Written by Herself,” in Davis, and Gates, , The Slave's Narrative, pp. 262–282.Google Scholar Excerpts from the letters are contained in Yellin's article. Child's letters to Jacobs, are published in Lydia Maria Child, Selected Letters, 1817–1880, ed. Meltzer, Milton and Holland, Patricia G. (Amherst, 1982), pp. 357–359;Google Scholar two other letters also refer to Jacobs, pp. 374–375, 378–379. The original copies of the letters by and to Jacobs are in the Isaac and Amy Post Family Papers at the University of Rochester.

13. Lynd, Helen Merrill, On Shame and the Search for Identity (New York, 1958), pp. 23–24.Google Scholar

14. Ibid., pp. 206–210. Where feelings of shame presuppose a sense of relatedness, feelings of autonomy presuppose a sense of independence. In their most extreme form, feelings of shame suggest a need to conform oneself entirely to the expectations of others in order to avoid rejection by them. Feelings of autonomy, when carried to an extreme, suggest a need to reject others entirely in order to avoid being overwhelmed by their needs and expectations. A balance between the two requires a stable sense of self, such that the individual can experience the needs and expectations of others without necessarily meeting them and withstand the risk of rejection, should that occur.

15. A number of feminist scholars, following Nancy Choderow and Dorothy Dinnerstein, have argued that assymetries in parenting responsibilities lead to differences in the ways that male and female children typically balance autonomy and relatedness. The traditional identification of masculinity with autonomy and femininity with relatedness suggests that feelings of shame may be more problematic for women, making it more difficult for women than men to transgress cultural norms.

16. Wurmser, Leon, The Mask of Shame (Baltimore, 1981), pp. 56, 82–83.Google Scholar

17. Brent, , Incidents, pp. 194–195.Google Scholar

18. Ibid., p. 194; Yellin, , “Texts and Contexts,” p. 264.Google Scholar

19. Hewitt, Nancy A., “Amy Kirby Post: ‘Of whom it was said, ‘being dead, yet speaketh,’” The University of Rochester Library Bulletin 37 (1984): 5–22;Google ScholarBraude, Ann D., “Spirits Defend the Rights of Women: Spiritualism and Changing Sex Roles in Nineteenth-Century America,” in Women, Religion, and Social Change, ed. Haddad, Yvonne Y. (Albany, 1985), pp. 419–431.Google Scholar Jacobs was introduced to spiritualism by the Posts and made several references to the spirits in her letters. In addition to several humorous references Jacobs to Post, no. 91: “Ask him [Isaac Post] if he sends the spirits to look for me. I am afraid they would give a bad report”; Jacobs to Post, no. 80 [Written around the margin of the letter]: “What you can't read the spirits will. Heart full of love to all of you.”), one of her letters suggests that she had asked the spirits to help her get in touch with her brother and son. In a letter written after they had left for California, she has “felt so anxious about son and brother not hearing anything from them. It makes me feel that she [Louisa] is all that is left tome in this world.” (Jacobs to Post, no. 82, 27 Dec. 18–) In another undated letter, she provides an update, stating: “I will tell you some good news. I have had a letter from my brother and son just as the spirits told me it would be. Even the very language was in the letter.” (Jacobs to Post, 7 Aug. 18–, no. 81.) This suggests that Jacobs attended a seance and asked the spirits for help in contacting her living relatives. Jacobs's request of the spirits was an unusual one; most spiritualists tried to contact dead people. Again, however, it indicates how important Jacobs family ties were to her and her willingness to enlist the aid of the spiritual world in maintaining those relationships.

20. The date is based on notes made by Jean Fagan Yellin for the University of Rochester Archives. Quotation is from Jacobs to Post, n.d., no. 84.

21. Ibid., p. 166.

22. Jacobs to Post, n.d., no. 84.

23. Jacobs to Post, 21 June [1857], no. 90; dated by Yellin.

24. Brent, , Incidents, p. 28.Google Scholar

25. Ibid., p. 27.

26. Ibid., p. 34.

27. Ibid., p. 28.

28. Ibid., pp. 54–55.

29. See Ibid., pp. 10, 15, 6.

30. Ibid., p. 50.

31. This young woman's piety is similar to that of Anne Meade Page, an Episcopal woman whom Donald G. Mathews uses to illustrate evangelically oriented white southern religion at its best. According to Mathews, , “she made her efforts for slaves the measure of her Christian commitment, as did many other southern women. She sternly condemned the sexual exploitation of black women and tried to prevent it whenever she could. She schooled her slave in order to erase their terrible ignorance, provided religious exercises to convert them from ‘heathenish darkness,’ and tried to persuade them to prepare for freedom in Africa.” Religion in the Old South (Chicago, 1977), p. 117.Google Scholar

32. Brent, , Incidents, p. 77.Google Scholar

33. Ibid., pp. 54–55.

34. Ibid., p. 56.

35. Ibid., p. 57.

36. Ibid., p. 58.

37. Ibid.

38. Ibid., p. 58.

39. Ibid., p. 59.

40. Ibid., p. 80.

41. Ibid.

42. Ibid., p. 92.

43. Ibid., pp. 92–93.

44. Ibid.

45. Raboteau, Albert J., Slave Religion: The “Invisible Institution” in the Antebellum South (New York, 1978).Google Scholar

46. Brent, , Incidents, p. 69.Google Scholar

47. Fenn, Elizabeth A., “Honoring the Ancestors: Kongo-American Graves in the American South,” Southern Exposure 13 (09.-10. 1985): 43.Google Scholar

48. Thompson, Robert Farris, Flash of the Spirit: African and Afro-American Art and Philosophy (New York, 1984), pp. 138–139.Google Scholar

49. Brent, , Incidents, p. 93.Google Scholar

50. Thompson, , Flash of the Spirit, p. 138.Google Scholar

51. Brent, , Incidents, p. 126.Google Scholar

52. Jacobs to Post, March [1857?], no. 86; dated by Yellin.

53. Jacobs to Post, n.d., no. 84.