Sexual Violence and the Transition to Freedom in Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

Abstract Harriet Jacobs’s autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, is a valuable resource for republican theorists. She brings both a feminist’s and a slave’s perspective, thereby challenging some of the masculine and elitist assumptions that formed part of republican theoretical history. One theme that Jacobs displaces is that of the transition from slavery to freedom. She rejects the idea that the mental quality of freedom comes through an act of physical individual heroism in confronting and prevailing over one’s oppressor. Instead, Jacobs emphasizes the role played by family ties, particularly to one’s children, in making the decision to flee slavery, and of support networks and mutual aid once executing one’s plan. Jacobs also articulates the ubiquitous prospect of sexual abuse faced by girls and women in slavery. By its very nature, this is not the kind of threat that can be confronted through a decisive physical showdown. The author illustrates these points, and the distinctive nature of Jacobs’s republican model, by contrasting her narrative with the famous story of Frederick Douglass’s fight with the slavebreaker Covey.