Sexuality in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

Something that I found truly eye opening about this novel, in comparison with other memoirs I have read on the subject like The Life of Olaudah Equiano, is the focus on sexuality, sexual harassment, and the role of feminity in slave culture. In Equiano, Equiano tells his life story--abduction, being sold into slavery, traveling through the slave trade, being bought, living as a slaver, etc--and in the process of telling his story he reveals truths about the world's economy, globalism, and so much more. This is not to say that Equiano does not focus on sentimentality, the book was after all written to give those who had never been exposed to slavery a taste of the cruelties and a look into the tortured life of a slave. Equiano also touches upon the hardships of female slaves several times in his novel; he describes the middle passage where slaves were beaten and starved regardless of age of gender for example. Equiano, however, does not have a story like Harriet Jacobs because Equiano simply was never a woman.

Through the narrative behind Jacob's autobiographical sexual history readers are given a glimpse into the hardships of females in slavery and an honest recount on the role that sexuality and femininity played during enslavement. She writes, "If God has bestowed beauty upon her, it will prove her greatest curse." In more ways than one Jacob’s revolutionized the way that readers understood sexual discourse and publicized the role the power has within sexuality—and how sexuality can be manipulated for oppression.

In my first Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl post I talked about Walt Whitman. As I finished reading Jacob’s book I was able to realize yet another connection that could be formed with the poet. Waltman, who’s Leaves of Grass was published just six years before Jacob’s book, also revolutionized the way that readers understood sexuality. He spoke of masturbation, homoeroticism, and sexual experimentation—but also urged his readers to consider a world where sexuality was separate from the self.

“Urge and urge and urge,/ Always the procreant urge of the world./ Out of the dimness opposite equals advance, always substance and increase, always sex,/ Always a knit of identity, always distinction, always a breed of life” (Leaves of Grass, 84).

These writers framed the contrasting understandings of sexuality in the 19^th Century.

Anyways, I have really enjoyed exploring the connections between Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and Walt Whitman and think it might be worth looking into during class since both authors embodied such important voices for the 19^th Century.