The Mask vs. The Self: A Binary Opposition in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

 Edwin Deshields Jr

Professor Harris

English 205

November 28 2025

The Mask vs. The Self: A Binary Opposition in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

For those enslaved, the ultimate measure of survival wasn’t just to escape but to give a performance to the public designed for deflecting violence and concealing one’s authentic self. Harriet Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl documents the psychological pressures and pain that an African-American woman faced during slavery along with the extreme demands that followed. The narrative is structured around the central binary opposition between The Mask: the enforced, being seen as a commodity and The Self: authentic, moral agency that Jacobs fights to assert. Jacobs ultimately argues that masking is not a sign of domination but a tactic that is employed through rhetoric, spatial confinement, and moral decay, to enable self-creation and final liberation of one's Self.

The Mask’s first appearance in the Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is in the narrative’s language. Jacobs adopts a rhetoric of sentimentality and apologeticness. This performance was not meant to be seen as a sign of submission, but rather a strategic move that disguised and made a double voice that would defend and safeguard the credibility that enables staying true to her authentic self. We witness this act in Chapter V: The Trial of Girlhood, when Jacobs (who goes by Linda Brent in this biography) recounts to Dr. Flint her master, whispering foul words in her ear, how “He tried his utmost to corrupt the pure principles” (Jacobs 54) that were taught to her by her grandmother.  She counters these advances and safeguards her narrative’s survival. Jacob puts on a rhetorical mask to appeal to her northern readers: “Pity me, and pardon me, O virtuous reader! You never knew what it is to be a slave…” (Jacobs 107). Though this language is submissive, it served as a rhetorical mark. R. W. Smith analyzes this double performance and said that the audience proved ready for the hard truth and that “The cues of her "double voice” and the reality of her sexual past, she loomed even larger as the embodiment of resourcefulness, intelligence, and rhetorical guile.” (Smith 74). Smith’s analysis proves the mask served its tactical purpose by rewarding those who recognized the true self. Sean Gerrity further confirmed his analysis of “Alternative Freedoms.” This strategic concession was integral to securing the self-defined freedom of public witness and authorship.

Now that the literary aspect has been established as a means of narrative survival, Jacobs demonstrates that physical struggle is similarly transformed into a tactical mechanism for self-creation. The spatial mask is the garret that Jacobs hid away in for quite some time. She often refers to this garret as a “loophole of retreat.” The garret functions as a paradox, being a tomb of physical imprisonment that secures self morals and maternal freedom. In Chapter XXI, she describes the garret as being very small and rodent infested. Though she faced moments of torment from hearing her children but not being able to see and witness them while they were out, she was fine with making that sacrifice. And although this physical constraint wouldn’t last forever, it aimed to secure the one thing that Dr. Flint couldn’t obtain of hers. That would be her self-possession. Michelle Burnham argues that the garret’s structural purpose is precisely to allow Jacobs to assert agency, reframing the space not as a hiding spot but a “loophole of resistance.” By removing her person from Dr. Flint’s control, Jacob rejects his sense of control of her chattel status. Miranda Green-Barteet further analyzes this strategy by viewing the garret as more of an “interstitial space.” It serves as a private retreat while being a moral battlefield at the same time. The physical confinement was not a sign of surrender but rather it’s a strategy that paved the way for Jacobs' assertion and maintaining her freedom and self by protecting her children and denying her master’s grasp for seven years.

The final application of masking done by Jacobs is her destabilization in the era’s sexual morality. Having to deal with the issues she had, she accepted the compromises that came in order to gain power while denying the evils Dr. Flint was trying to instill by harming and tainting her maternal and psychological agency. This led her to choose seeking a relationship with Mr. Sands which was a plan she had because she knew it would give her and her children a chance at freedom. Jacobs justified this conflict by appealing to her direct audience: “O ye, happy women, whose purity has been sheltered from childhood, who have been free to choose the objects of your affection, whose homes are protected by law, do not judge the poor desolate slave girl too severely!” (Jacobs 105). Stephanie Li’s analysis in her Motherhood as Resistance, ties in and explains what she meant and what her stakes were in this trade-off decision: “Slavery produces an environment in which it is often impossible for enslaved women to provide any type of care for their children, much less uphold values conventionally associated with femininity.” (Li 17). Her moral compromise helped her to deny Flint the power to rule over her sense of self and was the final piece to her plan to secure a proper future for her kin. Sean Gerrity added the moral destabilization secured an “alternative freedom,” the self-determined status of motherhood. The sacrifice of her purity guaranteed the psychological agency of the self and made her a fighting mother.

Working on Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents In The Life of a Slave Girl made me realize this was more than just a biography but a gateway leading into the life of African-American women during the era of slavery. Not only did they have to mask themselves to appease their oppressors, they also had to retain a balance to keep authentic. Jacobs made many selfless sacrifices for the sake of her and her children. Even having a special affair to protect them This biography also showed an in-depth look into the abuse put up by these women such as sexual assault.

Works cited

Burnham, Michelle. "Loopholes of Resistance: Harriet Jacobs' Slave Narrative and the Critique of Agency in Foucault." Arizona Quarterly: A Journal of American Literature, Culture, and Theory, vol. 49, no. 2, Summer 1993, pp. 53-73.

Gerrity, Sean. "Harriet Jacobs, Marronage, and Alternative Freedoms in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl." Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers, vol. 38 no. 1, 2021, p. 67-89. Project MUSE, https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/leg.2021.0002.

Green-Barteet, M. A. (2013). “The Loophole of Retreat”: Interstitial Spaces in Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. South Central Review: The Journal of the South Central Modern Language Association, 30(2), 53–72. https://doi-org.desu.idm.oclc.org/10.1353/scr.2013.0016

Brent, LindaChild, L.Maria. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Seven Years Concealed. The Floating Press, 2008. EBSCOhost, research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=17c92f65-020b-35d4-93f8-053fd4d06331.

Li, Stephanie. "Motherhood as Resistance in Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl." Legacy, vol. 23 no. 1, 2006, p. 14-29. Project MUSE, https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/leg.2006.0009.

Whitsitt, Novian. “Reading between the Lines.” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, vol. 31, no. 1, Mar. 2010, pp. 73–88. EBSCOhost, https://doi-org.desu.idm.oclc.org/10.5250/fronjwomestud.31.1.73.