Dismantling "The Master's House": Critical Literacy in Harriet Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

Abstract

In 1861, Harriet Jacobs published Incidents in Life of a Slave Girl, a pseudonymous account of her life in slavery. Although Jacobs states in her preface that she earnestly desire[s] to arouse women of North to a realizing sense of condition of two millions of women at South, still in bondage, she also remarks, would have been more pleasant to me to have been silent about my own history (1). What accounts for Jacobs' desire for silence, despite her ardent political purpose? Jacobs' desire for silence reflects an understanding of problematic nature of speaking in a language which denies her subjectivity, as well as her understanding of uses and abuses of white, phallocratic discourse. Throughout her twenty-one years in slavery, Jacobs is typified, abused, sexually harassed, and attacked by racist and sexist discourses. Language is also wielded by her owner, Dr. Flint (James Norcom), in a way which is directly phallocratic: he seeks to induce her to become his mistress through a form of sexual abuse which uses language as its mechanism for power.' The problem Jacobs faces in her narrative, then, is how to use language as a way of achieving liberation, when language itself is a large part of her oppression. How can Jacobs use her literacy in a way which liberates her from dominant discursive practices of her society? To speak in language is to remain trapped within a system of discourse which denies her subjectivity. Audre Lorde has said that the master's tools will never dismantle master's house (99). One cannot overcome oppression by using master's tools, and if language is an instrument of oppression, simply taking hold of it will not lead to liberation, nor will it lead to a