Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

A physician and prosperous plantation owner, Dr. Flint for all practical purposes owns Jacobs. She portrays him as cowardly, sadistic, jealously possessive, sexually assaultive, and determined to have her submit to him physically and psychologically.

Dr. Flint began whispering sexually suggestive comments to Jacobs when she was in her early teens. Jacobs’s refusal to sleep with her master and to submit to his power drove him to find various ways to torment her. Often, he would offer freedom for Jacobs’s compliance—always a ruse—or threaten the safety of her children. Like many slaveholders, he was indifferent to his wife’s feelings. A serial rapist of the enslaved women he owned, Dr. Flint had fathered at least 11 children with them that also became enslaved.

One of the only ways Jacobs and her grandmother had to combat Dr. Flint was his fear that his true nature would be exposed to his White peers. In his later years, Dr. Flint joined the Episcopal Church to aid his reputation. Shortly before the second Mrs. Bruce secured Jacobs’s freedom, Dr. Flint died.

Mrs. Flint was the second wife of Dr. Flint, mother of his three children, and the mistress of his household and plantation. Grandmother Martha, whom Mrs. Flint’s family owned before Martha bought her freedom, nursed Mrs. Flint during infancy. Jacobs’s aunt, Nancy, was raised alongside Mrs. Flint and served her as a house slave throughout Nancy’s life.

Mrs. Flint, who was many years her husband’s junior, regarded herself as a decent Christian woman and took pains to present herself as such to her community. However, she was hateful toward Black people, favored the system of slaveholding, and had pointed contempt toward for Jacobs due to her husband’s desire for the enslaved young woman. Jacobs described her as “totally deficient in energy,” leaving her with no ability to attend to any household affairs (27). However, Mrs. Flint did have the energy to watch an enslaved woman receive a whipping. Like her husband, she was sadistic and pettily vicious. For example, if the slaves ever served dinner late, she would spit into the leftovers so that the slaves could not use them to supplement their meager meals.

Mrs. Flint is emblematic of many Southern slaveholding women who turned their resentment about their husbands’ sexual predations on the enslaved women. White patriarchy discouraged wives from criticizing their husbands’ behavior out of fear of losing their economic privileges and social standing.

Jacobs’s maternal grandmother Martha was her closest companion and the person whom she trusted most and whose counsel she sought out.

Martha was born into slavery in South Carolina, but her White slaveholder father freed her after his death and left her a small sum of money. Martha and her family moved to St. Augustine, Florida, but during the Revolutionary War, they were kidnapped and sold back into slavery. Martha was sold to a hotelkeeper, where she made herself indispensable by working as a cook, seamstress, and wet nurse.

Martha bore five children. She was the mother of Jacobs’s uncles, Benjamin and Phillip, grandmother, too, to William, and great-grandmother to Jacobs’s children, Benny and Ellen.

Martha became known for her savory crackers, which she sold for profit before and after the sister of her former mistress granted her freedom. The income allowed her to buy her own home and finance her needs and those of her grandchildren. Martha’s gifts as a cook gave her an inordinate amount of safety and comfort. Martha used her esteem and reputable baking talent to stand up to cruel members of the White community and to curry favor with them. She had a social savvy that was demonstrated by some elder members of the free and enslaved Black community, who proved themselves too valuable to the white community to be mistreated or dispensed with. She had enough social clout to confront Dr. Flint—though was extremely dangerous, as she was once almost re-sold into slavery at auction.

Martha was a devout and cautious woman who discouraged her children and grandchildren’s attempts to seek freedom, fearing the trouble they could bring upon themselves and their community. She also dissuaded them from going North because she feared loneliness and wished to keep all of her family close. Still, Jacobs hid for seven years in Martha’s home in an effort to escape slavery; eventually, Martha made peace with Jacobs’s decision to flee. Martha died shortly after Jacobs secured her freedom.

Nancy was Jacobs’s maternal aunt who served Dr. Flint’s family as a house slave, working as a housekeeper and waiting maid. Nancy was the twin sister of Jacobs’s late mother. Nancy gave birth to nine children prematurely, all of whom died in infancy. Mrs. Flint forced Nancy to sleep in the entryway of her bedroom, even after Nancy had been permitted to marry a sailor. Mrs. Flint worked Nancy to death, then expected that she be buried beside her. Because they had grown up together, Mrs. Flint had convinced herself that Nancy was a surrogate sister. Despite this wish to have Nancy in the Flint family’s cemetery, Grandmother Martha insisted that her daughter would be buried with her own family.

By telling Nancy’s story, Jacobs underscores the point that the lives of house slaves were not preferable to those of field slaves. Nancy’s life story reveals the extent to which White masters and mistresses believed that they had no call to acknowledge and respect slaves’ inner lives, feelings, or thoughts. Even in death, Mrs. Flint believed that Nancy should serve as her companion, lying beside her in the grave as she had in her mistress’s bedroom.

Jacobs’s Uncle Benjamin was Martha’s youngest, beloved son. Jacobs uses Benjamin’s name as a pseudonym for her son Joseph. Uncle Benjamin was strong and independent. He escaped from slavery several times, despite being brutalized after each capture.

Jacobs’s brother William was two years younger than Jacobs. When Mr. Sands bought Benny and Ellen, his own children with Jacobs, he also bought William. While accompanying his owner on a trip to the Northeast, William decided to remain and claim his freedom. Jacobs and William reunited when she escaped to New York City. William was successful enough in the North to send Ellen to boarding school. Later, he looked after Benny in California. Considering the timing—the Fugitive Slave Act was passed in 1850, two years after the California gold rush—it is possible that William and his nephew became prospectors.

Mr. Sands, an educated and eloquent White man and neighbor to the Flints, took an interest in Jacobs, and wished to buy her freedom and marry her. He was foiled by Dr. Flint, who refused to sell her. Jacobs slept with Mr. Sands anyway; he was the father of Benny (Joseph Jacobs) and Ellen (Louisa Matilda Jacobs). Though Jacobs felt shame about having sex out of wedlock, she figured that Mr. Sands might be her only chance at obtaining freedom. Jacobs’s relationship with Mr. Sands was her first consensual sexual relationship. He represented both her attempt to establish sexual agency within a system that did not grant enslaved Black women any rights to their own bodies, and an attempt to use that sexual agency to secure freedom, primarily for her children.

Though Jacobs describes him as a “kind” slaveholder, Mr. Sands embraced slavery without moral qualms. This fact, coupled with his marriage to a White woman during Jacobs’s confinement, made Jacobs worry that he could renege on his promise to free Benny and Ellen. Jacobs’s fears proved true. When Ellen lived with Mr. Sands in Washington, DC, he barely acknowledged her and showed affection only to his White daughter, Fanny. Mr. Sands then pawned Ellen off on his cousin Mrs. Hobbs, ostensibly to be raised as his daughter, but really to be a maidservant.

Through Mr. Sands, Jacobs exposes the lie that there was such a thing as benevolent slave ownership. Owning another human being, she demonstrates, necessarily meant seeing them as less than human.