Relations Among People in a Slave Culture
Drawing solely upon Harriet JacobÆs narrative, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, this brief report will consider the codes, explicit and implicit, that governed relationships between people in a slave culture. Two sets of key relationships can be identified in such a culture. First, a slave culture creates specific relationships between slave and owner in which the former is oppressed and controlled by the latter, who cannot therefore trust his slaves. Second, slaves establish relationships with one another that are also dependent upon the willingness of the slave owner to tolerate such relationships.
Harriet Jacobs (1) states that ôI was born a slave; but I never knew it till six years of happy childhood had passed away.ö At about age six, Jacobs (1) began to realize that she was ôa piece of merchandiseö who could be bought and sold at the whim of her master or mistress. This realization forms the basis of the formal and informal ôcodeö that shaped all of the relationships that a slave such as Jacobs was likely to experience, even those with her own family members.
Nevertheless, love for an owner was not uncommon. For example, Jacobs (1) says that ôwhen I was nearly twelve years old, my kind mistress sickened and died. As I saw the cheek grow paler, and the eye more glassy, how earnestly I prayed in my heart that she might live! I loved her; for she had been almost like a mother to me.ö This phraseology exemplifies the tension of JacobsÆ narrative. Having established that slavery was a terrible institution, Jacobs now attributes ôkindnessö to her first owner and claims that this woman had fulfilled many of the functions of a mother, leading Jacobs to ôloveö her.
Jacobs eventually realizes that ôthe memory of a faithful slave does not avail much to save her children from the auction block" (Chapter 2, 1). At the age of seven, Jacobs (1, Chapter 2)...