Throughout the autobiography Incidents in the Life of Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs, under the pseudonym Linda Brent, Jacobs describes her experiences with the “poisonous fangs” of slavery from her conscious awaral of enslavement at age six, stripping her from the comforts of childhood, to the sexual abuses she was a continuous victim of, all the way to her ultimate freedom at age 29.
Although the majority of the text is composed of the cruelties that engulfed the life of a slave, there were several small moments of black joy persisting. The psychological strength of Jacobs, among many others, persevered in never letting black joy be completely shut out. Even when Jacobs was physically shut out of the world in a dirty, tiny, and dark imprisonment for seven full years, she found moments where experiences of joy shined through. Jacob writes of her experience in the garret saying “but I was not comfortless. I heard the voices of my children. There was joy and there was sadness in the sound” (Jacobs, 1861, p. 92). While seemingly a small comfort compared with the overall discomfort of her physical state, she was able to utilize this moment of joy to combat the rigorous efforts of her abuser and the system to control her mind and body.
Another instance of experienced joy can be seen in at the Methodist class meeting in the support for the mother who had lost all her children. After the unanimous congregational hymn Jacob writes, “precious are moments to the poor slaves. If you were to hear them at such times, you might think they were happy” (Jacobs, 1861,p. 60). While physical comfort and safety were often out of question for the enslaved, many found pockets of it in instances such as these that enabled them to continue to hope for freedom.
Those pockets of comfort were short lived and the overall lifestyle in slavery was oppressive and dehumanizing. Instances such as when Aunt Nancy and Mrs. Flint, two women pregnant at the same time, virtually in the same condition, reflects the violation of human nature in the lens of motherhood. The relationship of mother and child is commonly an area of comfort and safety, but not for the slave mother. For her, she is a means of production and utility to the white mother. For example, Aunt Nancy was expected to wait hand in foot for Mrs. Flint, sleeping on the floor outside her door in the night in case she needed anything, resulting in her baby being born premature. Once Mrs. Flint’s baby was born, it was expected that Aunt Nancy feed from her own breast before that of her own child. Her child now, prematurely born into an oppressive world, had lived not one second and had already been stripped of both physical and mental comforts that a mother’s care provides.
Moments of joy are not equivalent to happiness. Happiness is rooted in freedom and thus it could never be sprouted in the rotten soil of slavery. Jacob writes after the moment of joy in the Methodist church, “but can that hour of singing and shouting sustain them through the dreary week, toiling without wages, under constant dread of the lash (Jacobs, 1861, p. 60). Slavery naturalized of world without freedom, and thus black happiness. But just as black joy persisted, so too would black freedom be restored. Jacob writes, “lives that flash in sunshine and lives that are born in tears, receive their hue from circumstances (Jacobs, 1861, p. 51). All slaves were born in tears, but a lucky few such as Jacobs would eventually flash in the sunshine of freedom.
Questions:
- Do you think joy and happiness, although synonyms, are innately different in their essence? If so, do you think it is possible to have only ever experienced moments of joy but never happiness?
- Although antonyms do you think one can simultaneously experience joyfulness and sorrow?