On the contrary, she was relatively well-treated. She had the opportunity of learning to read and write with her first mistress, which was extremely rare among slaves, work inside the house of her second master, Dr. Flint –in contrast of other workers outside at diverse plantations.
Though, as a woman, she had been subject to the doctor’s harassments. As she could not bear the abuse and to escape its cruelty, she revenged by becoming the lover of a neighbor, Mr. Sand, with whom she gave birth to two children. In this way, as soon as the slave’s children were born, her master could sell her. At last, it failed: her master still did not want to. Soon, to protect her children from the continuous threat of being a slave in the future, she had to run away. As her uncles and her brother William did, she is more willing than anything to get rid of her master and gain their freedom, their only protection.
Since the doctor planned a trap by building a cottage especially for her and her children, she took the opportunity to escape during a preparation of a marriage nearby. From then on, she began to hide from the slave hunters, including her mad master, anywhere she could: her grand-mother’s friends’ house, at the neighbors’ and even in her own grand-mother’s house’s tiny garret, in where she hid the longest time –seven years, with a limitation of movements but hoping to have a glimpse of her children through the cracks of the walls. It was not uncommon to see slave children raised by a family member other than their parents. Later, she finally had the chance to move to the northern places, passing by Chesapeake Bay and Philadelphia, keep on moving from New York to Rhode Island and England and back again to New York, in the same and only purpose to avoid being caught by her master. Fortunately, throughout this expedition, she had good connections and met nice people, which made her evasion easier and finally reach her goal without major difficulties.
Meanwhile, Jacobs also related certain customs such as the Slaves’ New Year’s Day, when slaves are put on the market, compared to the festivities enjoyed by the whites; the lies made to the slaves about the North –the free states, in order to discourage them to run away and avoid the tortues, stated above, they could receive in the case of a capture; and the passage of Nat Turner’s rebellion, which relatively succeeded by about fifty white men, women and children killed in a day even if he was arrested soon after the begun his resistance to oppression. The reader is also told about different movements, small but important, such as the Anti-Slavery Society, who helped her and her friend to get to New York safely, supporters of women’s rights, help of the blacks from both the North and the South, and without forgetting the opponents of slavery in England.
“Slavery is terrible for men; but it is far more terrible for women.” (p. 119) On a slave trade, men were worth their performance at work. For the women, their value is not only based on their work but also on their ability to serve the household. Always speaking through the narrator Linda Brent, Jacobs exposes the cruelties towards slave women: submission to her master, motherhood without the right to marry the father, and dispersal of the family members.
Besides this issue, she also raised the constant threat of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 in the North, which permitted the return of slaves who escaped from one to another state but could not longer guarantee freedom or safety, hence the several back and forth during her journey in the North. Even if this law had the purpose to scare the fugitives and to catch them as soon as they were out of their hiding-place, like a mouse attempting to take the cheese on the trap, it has not weakened the young woman. Her grandmother, a free woman, implored her to go back and ask for forgiveness, but it had even more strengthened her determination to refuse to capitulate to her master. She had to be stronger to his power and his laws.
Jacobs has tried to express similarities between her own story and facts that the reader could be familiar with. By using this technique of identification, she wanted to reach the feelings and transmit what she had felt, seen, heard, read, and questioned (p.31). She has detailed enough to make us live as if we were by her side. But sometimes, in my point of view, I have wondered whether it was a miracle or luck, so much of it seemed unrealistic. All the way through her trip, there were allusions of threats of being recaptured, but she always succeeded her flight. The paths from her house to the harbor among trees and bushes, from a harbor to another and in the city when she was shopping or carrying her children: neither of them was subject to an arrest. But as she said:
“No pen can give an adequate description of the all-pervading corruption produced by slavery.” (p.79) “If you want to be fully convinced of the of slavery, go on a southern plantation, and call yourself a negro trader. Then there will be no concealment; and you will see and hear things that will seem to you impossible among human beings with immortal souls.” (p.81)
However, at the same time, she successfully made reboundings mainly during her months in retreat. Every discussion with members of her family or close friends in secret at night are retransmitted, which make the reader aware of her fears, her worries, her thoughts, her joys sometimes in this little garret, and get even closer to her. The author has even tried to reproduce the English spoken by uneducated slaves: “Something has stirred you up mightily. When you is done cryin, I'll talk wid you. De chillem is well, and mighty happy. I seed 'em myself. Does dat satisfy you? Dar, chile, be still! Somebody vill hear you.”(p. 165)
Jacobs has written a remarkable testimony of her courage and attacking upon the rude institution of slavery and its brutality at the same time. She offers a perspective on American slavery through a woman’s view. It is not common to read an autobiography in which the author does not portray herself entirely as a hero but describes the steps she took to run away from her miserable conditions. The related facts seemed so impossible but she succeeded in keeping the reader’s attention until the end. An interesting thing is that this book can be read from different points of view. I have read it on focusing the several paths she took to escape, but going further, on one hand we can find an expression of the strong relationship between Linda and her grandmother, who enrolled as a mother and a confident. She had to fight for freedom, and as a mother, this responsibility is even more emphasized. She was torn between freedom and staying by her grandmother’s side and finally chose to her responsibilities. On the other hand, there is also a representation of the strong support between women: at first, with her first mistress, then her grandmother. It is particularly apparent with Mrs. Bruce, an old woman who hired her as a maid in New York, and did not hesitate to entrust Linda her child for the several escapes, a strategy that could allow her to come back if she would have been caught. The whole content deeply touched me. I thought that bondage consisted only in serving the master and being punished and tortured each time the slave has mistaken. There is more besides this. I have learnt a lot more and from now, I imagine the slavery conditions quite differently.
