The primary purpose of the slave narrative was to arouse sympathy from its white, Christian audience in order to aid abolitionist efforts. In the case of Harriet Jacobs, she more specifically targets white women in the North. Her femininity exacerbates her experiences, as she becomes the target of sexual exploitation yet has to carefully tread around defined gender roles in order to appeal effectively to her readership while ascertaining her freedom.
A challenge Jacobs faces in framing her narrative lies with placing her lower social status along traditional lines. As a slave, she confronts more challenges than free women in that she undergoes abuse, labor, and the belief that she cannot advance herself in a white society through marriage. She notes that “slavery is terrible for men, but it is far more terrible for women,” but rather than challenge the disparity directly, she still abides by gender norms. (488) For instance, she yearns to remain chaste until marriage to follow her mother’s footsteps. Likewise, she shows deference to her grandmother, who acts as the head of the household and the “mother of her orphan grandchildren” (425). She exemplifies feminine fortitude when she patiently waits in hiding for seven years. Moreover, she stresses her femininity during this period by knitting and reading, both of which are activities viewed as appropriate for a woman in this time period (although education for a slave was still a debated topic). In line with the ideology that women are the weaker sex and therefore reliant on men, she receives assistance from friends in getting to the North. As such, this does not disturb the established roles of men and women, and it does not stray from the archetype of the female slave escaping to freedom. Collectively, Jacobs’s targeted readership is more inclined to follow along and lend support wherever possible and not just in escapist literature.
Though Jacobs does not want to alienate her audience, she makes the decision to inform readers of the compromise she makes with her chastity. She directly addresses them, writing, “And now, reader, I come to a period in my unhappy life, which I would gladly forget if I could. The remembrance fills me with sorrow and shame. It pains me to tell you of it; but I have promised to tell you the truth, and I will do it honestly” (463). Her audience, as white, erudite women would have been largely sheltered from the harsh realities of slavery, including rape. To them, an extramarital relationship would have been deemed immoral. As such, Jacobs emphasizes her powerlessness in Dr. Flint’s sexual advances. She depicts him as “restless, craving, vicious… seeking whom to devour” (426). By painting him as a vehement predator, she offers a world where she has no other option to assert her self-determination but to sacrifice the very thing he wants. While the women reading this text would likely be unfamiliar with sexual assault, they were likely to identify with powerlessness in their own rights, including through societal constraints in choosing their own husbands and certain obligations within the household. Jacobs has to balance her exceptionalism with her feminine virtue – which is not solely linked with virginity—, and she makes sure to let her audience know it aggrieves her conscience; this is to elicit sympathy from her readers but also perhaps a way to come to terms with her trauma. Thus, in order to protect herself and maintain the right to her own body, Jacobs breaks her moral code – and her grandmother’s heart – by engaging in a relationship with Mr. Sands, a white man.
Jacobs, however, refuses to impose further on her freedom by tethering herself in marriage. She concedes that “there is something akin to freedom in having a lover who has no control over you” (465). While her station in life would have prevented her from being married legally in the South, she never marries once she arrives in the North. At the end of the narrative, she writes, “Reader, my story ends with freedom, not in the usual way, with marriage” (614). Her experiences shape her view of relationships, and she likely sees marriage as another way for a man to exert control over her. Moreover, even without the title of marriage, Mr. Sands is still able to influence her, for the fate of her children largely rests with him as she hides in her grandmother’s house. This, too, reduces her self-respect. She seeks freedom, yet she has to rely on him to do the grunt work, and even when he fails to follow through, she cannot take the reins due to her position as a runaway slave and a woman. Consequently, the values of white society offer her no protection, but she has to try and emulate the cult of true womanhood to attain her freedom. Once she arrives in the North, she cannot actively abet anti-slavery efforts but rather has to settle for work appropriate for a woman, such as being Mrs. Bruce’s nursemaid. For Jacobs, liberty is not linked with actually choosing one’s own husband but rather literal freedom from bondage, as she concludes her narrative with, “I and my children are now free!” (614).
Jacobs’s maternal instincts also work to make sentimentalist appeals with her audience. Although she initially “wished that he [her firstborn Benny] might die in infancy,” she quickly retracts this sentiment as one of dire circumstances and not motherly neglect (472). Soon thereafter, she gives birth to her daughter Ellen. Her children become her jewels and help to ease the burden of Jacobs’s persecution by Dr. Flint. While he longs for power, and she longs to usurp his authority, she nevertheless puts her children above her own desires. She resolves that she has a “mother’s pride, and a mother’s love for my children… out of the darkness of this hour a brighter dawn should rise for them” (496). Even though it looks like she abandons her children in her escape attempt, everything she does is for Benny and Ellen. With her under his wing, her children’s lives were always going to be at risk; with his attention focused elsewhere (i.e. finding Jacobs in the North), it allows for her allies, primarily Mr. Sands, to make ploys in securing their freedom. As far as Jacobs’s own freedom goes, she considers herself free as long as she is out of Dr. Flint’s clutches, even when she is biding her time in that attic. Her children, not even knowing that they are doing so, continue to move and motivate her, for she hears the “voices of [her] children. There was joy and there was sadness in the sound” (526). Being away from her children brings her heartache – a motherly instinct that would resonate with Jacobs’s readers. Nonetheless, she has to cling to a hope for the family’s salvation, one especially limited by her sex.
When Jacobs reaches the North, she finds that freedom has different implications than she initially dreamt. Living in a white engendered society as a woman places limitations on the pursuits she can make, even during a time striving for women’s rights. Not to mention, much of the North still possessed implicit racial biases despite advocating abolitionism. As such, Jacobs has to employ the skills she learned during her tenure as a slave in order to keep surviving. The North does not make life easier, and adopting traditional values, even in a retrospective text, eases her transition, for too radical a change could have warranted additional backlash contrary to the notion of freedom she fought so long for.