Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1861

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-5

Chapters 6-10

Chapters 11-15

Chapters 16-20

Chapters 21-25

Chapters 26-30

Chapters 31-35

Chapters 36-41

Key Figures

Themes

Literary Devices

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Chapters 16-20Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 16 Summary: “Scenes at the Plantation”

Harriet overheard the younger Mr. Flint say to a neighbor that he was determined to “take the town notions out of [Harriet’s] head,” and that his father had done a poor job of breaking her in (133). Harriet was soon working incessantly on Mr. Flint’s plantation. She dreaded the idea of her daughter Ellen being beaten as she had seen Mr. Flint beat other children on the plantation. When Ellen broke down from emotional distress, Mr. Flint, in an unusual act of kindness, provided Ellen with a biscuit and milk to help her sleep. Assuming this meant Flint was grooming Ellen for sexual assault, Harriet sent Ellen to her grandmother without Flint’s permission, pleading Ellen’s illness. He let Harriet’s action pass unpunished.

After three weeks, Harriet snuck away with a guide to visit her grandmother. Her children were quietly asleep when she arrived. Halfway back to the plantation, Harriet and her guide hid behind a tree, narrowly avoiding four slave patrollers.

Mr. Flint’s great aunt, Miss Fanny—the same woman who had paid $50 to get Grandmother Martha off the auction block—had tea with Martha and spoke of old times. In the past, Mrs. Flint had also taken tea with Martha, but after Harriet became the object of Dr. Flint’s desires, Mrs. Flint would not even speak to Martha in the street. Martha, however, refused to have any ill will toward the woman whom she had once nursed.

While Mr. Flint left home to collect his new bride, Harriet began to plan her and Ellen’s escape from slavery. She made arrangements to hide in a friend’s home for a few weeks until the search ended. Harriet assumed that Dr. Flint would grow discouraged and, in fear of losing her value and that of her children, would finally agree to sell them.

When learned of Jacob’s plans, Grandmother Martha worried that, due to age, she would not be able to care for Harriet’s children. Harriet hoped Mr. Sands might secure their freedom, though Martha warned her against trusting Mr. Sands too much and advised her to remain with her children. She feared that Harriet would be caught, dragged back, and made to suffer for running away.

Mr. Flint’s slaves hoped that they would receive better treatment under a woman’s rule. When the new Mrs. Flint arrived, these hopes seemed justified at first. However, she quickly revealed her character when she refused to allow an old slave his food allowance, claiming that, now that he was too old to work, he could subsist on grass. For enslaved people, weekly food allowance consisted of “[t]hree pounds of meat, a peck of corn, and perhaps a dozen herring” for men, while women “received a pound of and a half of meat, a peck of corn, and the same number of herring” (143). Children got half of what the women got.

After visits from the elder Mrs. Flint and Dr. Flint, Harriet heard that her children would soon be brought to Mr. Flint’s plantation. The news steeled her to act immediately for their safety.

Chapter 17 Summary: “The Flight”

Mr. Flint had Harriet sleep in the house instead of in the slaves’ quarters. After locking up the house at night on the night of her intended escape, Harriet went up to the third floor and waited. Half past midnight, she fled to her grandmother’s. There, she convinced a friend named Sally to take all of Harriet’s clothes out of her trunk, and pack them into Sally’s as a ruse to foil Dr. Flint and the town constable when they went to search her room. Harriet then went to see her children, who were asleep in their beds.

Harriet next fled to the house of a friend who was going to hide her. The next morning, when Mr. Flint asked Grandmother Martha where Harriet was, Martha told him that she hadn’t seen her granddaughter. The news of Harriet’s escape infuriated Dr. Flint. He arranged for Martha’s house to be searched. That night, every vessel sailing North was also searched, and a notice was posted, offering $300 to the citizen who would find and return Harriet.

Chapter 18 Summary: “Months of Peril”

A week after her escape, a patrol came so close to Harriet’s hiding place that she left the house and hid “in a thicket of bushes” (152) where a snake bit her. She treated the bite with folk remedies: “a poultice of warm ashes and vinegar” (152), followed by twelve coppers soaked in vinegar overnight.

Harriet’s relatives, who had been threatened since her disappearance, implored her to return to her plantation. Harriet refused. A White woman whom Grandmother Martha had known as a child offered to hide Harriet in a storage room in her home, despite the fact that her husband owned, purchased, and sold many slaves. No one but her trustworthy cook, Harriet’s friend Betty, was to be aware of the scheme.

Mr. Flint put William, Harriet’s aunt, and her children in jail to coerce the family into giving up information about Harriet. Her aunt was released, as Mrs. Flint grew tired of keeping her own house, but the children remained imprisoned until Ellen had a bout of measles and became slightly blind as a result. Dr. Flint brought her to his home to care for her, but Ellen cried to be taken back to prison. Ellen’s White-passing face made Mrs. Flint feel like either spoiling the child or killing her.

Soon thereafter, the woman who was hiding Harriet told her that Dr. Flint had come to believe that Harriet was in New York. He borrowed $500 and said he’d depart for New York that night.

Chapter 19 Summary: “The Children Sold”

After Dr. Flint returned from New York, predictably, empty-handed, Mr. Sands “sent a speculator” who offered Dr. Flint $900 for William and $800 for Ellen and Benny (161). Dr. Flint needed the money, so he countered the trader’s offer with $1900. The trader agreed. One of Harriet’s uncles hired a wagon to carry William and the children to Grandmother Martha’s house. Martha was ecstatic, but Dr. Flint reminded Martha that he had no intention of ever selling Harriet and that, even when he was dead, she would remain a slave within his family.

Chapter 20 Summary: “New Perils”

Dr. Flint next tried to arrest Harriet’s Uncle Phillip for having aided her escape, though Phillip swore that he knew nothing about Harriet’s plan. Harriet worried that her uncle would “lose control of himself” as a result of Dr. Flint’s taunts and would end up guilty of some punishable offense (169). If arrested, his word would mean nothing against that of a White man.

Harriet realized that she could not remain where she was. Her friends tried to make arrangements for her escape, but her pursuers made it impossible for those plans to come to fruition. After a house servant named Jenny almost found Harriet, the mistress hiding her arranged for a friend named Peter to ferry Harriet to a vessel going North. Harriet left in disguise. Once she was aboard Peter’s boat, those on the vessel told Harriet that they would hide her in Snaky Swamp until Phillip found a hiding place.

Early the next morning, Peter took Harriet into the swamp and “carried [her] to a seat made among the bamboos” (172). Mosquitoes swarmed her flesh and large snakes crawled around her. She and Peter beat them back with sticks.

Chapters 16-20 Analysis

Mr. Flint’s decision to “break” Jacobs refers to the dehumanizing practice of violently coercing slave compliance with excessive work, beatings, and other psychologically disabling tactics. For comparison, see Frederick Douglass’s description of being taken to the slave breaker Edward Covey.

Jacobs’s description of the plantation’s slave food allowance, determined by age and gender, coincides with slaveholding practices throughout the New World. These practices date back to the 16th century. In his book, The Black Jacobins, historian C.L.R. James describes Louis XIV’s Black Codes—a food allowance of specific portions of fish and cassava for slaves in the French Caribbean. However, traders and plantation owners often ignored this rule, since no one faced any consequences for refusing to feed slaves. The same was true on American plantations, which saw Black people only as sources of labor: For example, the new Mrs. Flint refused to feed an elderly slave, claiming that he didn’t deserve food if he could no longer work.

Traditional medicine was prevalent among the enslaved. The cure for Jacobs’s snake bite may have been passed down among slaves from West African healing practices and likely coupled with some indigenous recipes of the American South.

Jacobs’s appropriation of Patrick Henry’s words—”Give me liberty or give me death”—to defend her fight for freedom is one of many literary flourishes in the text. Her citation of the line demonstrates several things. First, it marks her as an educated and well-read writer. Second, it underscores the country’s hypocrisy in flagrantly defying its own democratic principles: Patrick Henry (1736-1799) was a Founding Father and a postcolonial governor of Virginia whose wealthy plantations, privilege, and elevated social status depended on the degradation of Jacobs and other Black people. Finally, it gives ethical and moral justification for Jacobs’s escape.