Incidents 4

In Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs chapters 33 through 38, individuals use a great amount of effort to help Dr. Flint in his efforts to get Brent back.  Brent writes a letter to both Dr. Flint and his daughter asking for the ability to buy her own freedom.  Dr. Flint writes back telling her that she has to return. When Brent gets a letter from Dr. Flint’s son, Jacobs writes, “I knew, by the style that it was not written by a mere person of his age, the hand of Dr. Flint” (Jacobs 177).  I find it interesting that even after 7 years of not seeing Brent that Dr. Flint would go through all the trouble of faking a letter from his son.  His faking the letter shows his determination to get Brent back. 

Dr. Flint is not the only one to go through a lot of trouble to try to get Brent to return.  Mr. Thorne, an aquantince of Dr. Flint, writes, “I have seen your slave, Linda, and conversed with her. She can be taken very easily, if you manage prudently” (184).   Slave owners helped other slave owners locate fugitive slaves.  With this vast network of slave owners helping each other, it was very difficult for slaves to escape and also to live as fugitives without worrying about being sent back.   Mr. Thorne’s letter probably encouraged Dr. Flint’s determination to start looking for her again.

Incidents 3

                In Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs’s chapters 29 through 33, life in the North is not completely free of racism.  This is very troublesome for Linda Brent as she expected that African-Americans would be treated equally in the North.  Jacobs writes, “They don’t allow colored people to go in the first-class cars” (Jacobs 168).  This experience showed Brent that some people in the North still treated African Americans as second class citizens.  Even though she had the money to have a more luxuriant trip, she was limited to riding in a filthy box with windows where you had to stand up to see outside. In the South, she could have the same quality ride but she would not have had to pay for the ride.  Within her first few days on free soil she still felt that she was being treated inferior to whites. 

Jacobs writes, “In order to protect my children it was necessary that I should own myself… I wrote a civil letter to Dr. Flint asking him to state the lowest terms on which he would sell me” (172).    The law at the time stated that the children followed the condition of the mother.  In order for Brent’s children to be free, Brent herself needed to be free.   Despite the seven year passage of time, Brent is worried that Dr. Flint has not gotten over his feelings for her and might not be willing to sell her.  She also sends a letter to Dr. Flint’s daughter asking for her freedom.  Since Dr. Flint’s daughter has no recollection of Brent, she might be more willing to sell her.