Resisting Sympathy, Reclaiming Authority: The Politics of Representation in Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

Abstract

This paper aims to analyze the politics of Harriet Jacobs's representation in her slave narrative, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. While Jacobs adopts the rhetoric of sympathy, popular in early nineteenth-century American sentimental and domestic novels, it is important to note that there is a tendency in Jacobs's narrative to resist sympathy, which tends to obliterate the difference of the suffering other, to expose the suffering other under the public gaze, and to deprive the other of privacy and agency. In a word, in the operation of sympathy, the suffering other has neither authority nor subjectivity to determine his/her life. My analysis of Jacobs's representation of her experience of being abused under slavery seeks to demonstrate how Jacobs reclaims her difference, puts emphasis on the authority of her experience, and proposes a different view on sympathy that would allow the suffering other a certain degree of privacy and agency. More specifically, rather than constructing imaginary identification between the sympathizer and the suffering other, Jacobs highlights the difference of her experience, so as to claim her authority; also, by delineating the moments of silence, adopting the language of motherhood, and deploying the trope of veiling, Jacobs shows a strong desire not to be present, heard, and seen, which revolts against the logic of sympathy, that is, to have the suffering other displayed in the scene of sufferings.