“Harriet Jacobs, Lydia R. Diamond’s play telling the harrowing true story about the life of a slave in the years leading to the Civil War, will be peformed at Perishable Theatre in Providence, RI March 10 - 13.”
The play, described above, is based on the book Incidents in the Life of Slave Girl: Written by Herself by Harriet A. Jacobs. Reading this performance advertisement brought the book forcefully back to mind.
Jacob's narrative, often published in tandem with Douglass’s equally revelatory Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, is one of the books I recommend to anyone remotely interested in learning more about, or gaining an emotional sense of the social complexity of pre-Civil War America.
Both autobiographical texts are written in such straightforward, modern prose that the reader feels literally dropped into the writer’s shoes. The old adage, ‘don’t judge a man until you’ve walked a mile in his moccasins’ comes to mind.
My favorite Douglass story involves his recognition that, in certain cases, resistence is not futile, even for a slave. A city boy, he is sent to do a job with a team of horses, and feels he has done quite well, only to be hysterically berated by his new owner upon his return. This man, who has a reputation for “breaking” slaves, chases him around the barn, attempting to give him a beating. Douglass, no fool, keeps running, and, being a lithe lad, soon has the farmer bent over, gasping in defeat. Whereupon said farmer, rasps out “let that be a lesson to you!” and leaves Frederick essentially alone from that time forward.
Of course when there is draconian law against you, and brutality literally licensed by it, these small triumphs are very few and far between. More common in both slave narratives is the appearance of kindness or respite that can never be counted upon to endure. Promises of liberation after a “kindly” owner’s death often reneged upon, “romance” turned to the most pernicious of practices, selling one’s own children as slaves.
Douglass’s story was familiar in general to me before I read hisbook, but his voice was a revelation - brilliant and strong, discerning as a bright light catching all of the nuance and terrible disappointment of being a free man, a free intellect, held in bondage.
Harriet’s memoir, similarly, is the anguished cry of a trapped spirit, with the added complications of being a woman in bondage, with no good choices to make about marriage and children. Her children held hostage in the South by their owner, kept in the care of her freed Grandmother, she returns from the North where she has escaped to gaze longingly on their lives from a small space in the eaves of the house where they live. There she remains, secret from all but her grandmother, watching her son and daughter through a hole drilled in the wood. Hers is an absolutely astonishing story, with richly drawn characters; high adventure and bravery, front and center.
Don’t miss either book - but be sure and do yourself the favor of discovering the life of Harriet Jacobs via memoir, play or both. You won’t be sorry you did.
Reference Librarian - Lauri Burke
