Between the Rock and the Hard Place

Mediating Spaces in Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

Bibliographic Data

ID4546728
AuthorsGloria T Randle (corresponding author)
Year1999
Volume33
Issue1
Pages43
Publication date1999-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueAfrican American Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1062-4783 • E-ISSN: 1945-6182
PublisherPenn State Press (Project Muse) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/2901300
OpenAlexW14109535
LanguageEN
Citations received8
References cited7

fncidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is an extraordinary docu. ment-not, as some skeptics have charged, in the sense of the incredible (read 'unbelievable') nature of its storyline. While Jean Fagan Yellin's conclusive findings have largely tabled questions of authorship and authenticity (xv), what I find especially remarkable about Harriet Jacobs's story is the unfolding of her ability creatively to construct sites of temporary refuge where none exist; to discover space where there is no space; to identify, over and again, the narrowest wedge between the rock and the hard place. Jacobs's text, presented under her pseudonym, Linda Brent, reflects an unwavering ability to locate, as crisis approaches, viable mediating spaces between the tensions that threaten her well-being. While these spaces are inevitably flawed and often grossly inadequate, they serve the immediate purpose of providing critical nurturing, of protecting Brent and her children from present danger, of allowing her to function in relative mental health while imprisoned in a culture that constantly threatens her sanity. With some reference to her psychological state in each case, this essay considers three examples of Linda Brent's creative constructions. The first concerns her continuing ability to retain a mother figure after the death of her biological mother; the second, the negotiation of her own sexual prerogatives-her compromise between enforced immorality and a personal code of virtue; and, finally, her mediation between other distinct poles of being and not being-especially between slavery and freedom-as manifested by her circumstances and her actions during the seven-year interval in her grandmother's garret. This final episode, signifying a painful yet healing period, finally allows her to carve out a space larger than that taut, narrow chasm into which she was born-a realm that contains possibility

Art · Art history · Girl · Sociology · Contemporary Literature and Criticism · Posthumanist Ethics and Activism · Psychology · Theatre and Performance Studies

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