LITR 5535: American Romanticism

Sample Student Research Project 2006

 

Tish Wallace

November 24, 2006

Transcendence: A Journey to Capitalism from the eyes of a Narcissist

“American is a country formed from the dreams and desires of conquerors, explorers and immigrants, and regardless of their reason(s) for coming here, ultimately, they come here out of the desire for a better life, one free from the burdens of the past, and filled with bright prospects for the future.  It is a universal human desire to start life over again and return to a state of pure grace.”

-Danny Corrigan (2005)

           

When I first began this project my intent was to write an essay analyzing desire and transcendence as it is developed in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.  However, through research I came across some interesting ideas and decided to share what I have learned from my readings.

            According to dictionary.com, desire is a longing or craving for something that brings satisfaction or enjoyment.  Gina Pendola (2005) defines transcendentalist idea as “the concept of questioning pre-existing ideals, to move past the set American standards to form new ones; to look inside oneself, rather than outside of oneself for answers to the universe.”

            Desire and transcendence go hand in hand within the text Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.  Jacobs longs to move past set American standards in the south to the freedom she believes she will enjoy in the north.  Jacobs constantly questions her circumstances feeling she has a right to do as those of the white race.  After all, she was treated as one “with a heart as free from care as that of any free-born white child” (Baym 815).

            My research exposed me to ideas that seemed absurd at first because of the associations I have with the theories presented.  For instance, how could a reading of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl be viewed from a Freudian perspective?  Jacobs could not be narcissistic.  Her responses and actions were typical of any slave during those times.  She doesn’t even sound vain. She wouldn’t use her beauty to her advantage to get out of undesirable circumstances/social restrictions. Or would she?  The more I thought about this question, I began to agree with Geneva Moore’s Freudian interpretation.  After all, isn’t this what some women do today? Use their womanly wiles to get out of tickets (crying, batting of the eyes, “dumb blonde” ideal)?  To get their husbands to commit to feats defending her honor and domestic duties to encourage equal opportunity?

Narcissism and Transcendence

Jacobs, as narrator, experiences transcendence psychologically consciously separating her self from past traumatic experiences as if these experiences were someone else’s.  This movement allows her to rise above the situation and look down on it from a safer perspective.  Geneva Cobb Moore believes that Jacobs’ creates a fictitious character, Linda Brent, to describe her experiences as a slave to readers so that she can distance herself from the incidents as she unfolds them.  Jacobs chose this avenue for writing in order to enable her self to tell the story.  “As ‘Linda’ she had empowered her self to write about a life that as ‘Harriet,’ she could neither speak nor write” (Moore 5).   Therefore, Jacobs is the narrator and Brent is the one who experiences the physical and emotional trauma.  

What evolves is a story about slavery told from a young girl who is narcissistic. 

“Freud describes a compensatory relationship between women’s beauty and their developing self-preservative narcissism.  He remarks, women, especially if they grow up with good looks, develop a certain self-contentment which compensates them for the social restrictions that are imposed upon them in their choice of object” (Moore 9). 

Jacobs expresses her desire to seek revenge and distance her self from Dr. Flint.  Dr. Flint sees Jacobs as a marketing and sexual object: one that can be sold to the highest bidder and/or used for sexual gratification.  This is unfortunate for Jacobs since she believes herself to be above this station (object – not human) in life.  Jacobs was a mulatto.  Considering these times, Jacobs could have used this to her advantage, for she could pass as a white.  Jacobs is described as one who “keeps her hair styled nicely and dressing fashionably.”  The question that remains then is does Jacobs use her skin color as a means to obtain her desires? It is reasonable to assume that Jacobs used her beauty to pursue a relationship with a man who was not a part of her social stature to obtain freedom for herself and to have her children well supported.  Jacobs knew that this man was interested in her because he stopped her in the streets to speak with her, wrote her letters, and expressed concern for her present situation. 

Jacobs pushes the envelope when she taunts her master with wishes to marry a free black man.  “I supposed you thought more of yourself; that you felt above the insults of such puppies” (Baym 817).  She continues to push her master to the limit by talking back “you have no right to do as you like with me” (Baym 818).  Jacobs is aware that she is a favorite of Dr. Flint; this could be because of her skin color.  She often does things that any other slave during that time would not.  She knows that Dr. Flint will not follow through with his threats of murder or imprisonment because he wants her for himself.  “I don’t know what it is that keeps me from killing you” (  ).  The problem is that Jacobs does not regard her self as a piece of property; she is greater than the social status the slave community has bestowed on her.   It is these incidents that lead Moore to believe that Jacobs is narcissistic: self contentment due to knowledge of beauty and its affects on others and how this self contentment is used as far as objectification goes to gain leverage in situations that enforce social restrictions. 

How is this related to desire/transcendence?  Because Jacobs thinks highly of her self, she desires to be in a situation that is more befitting of her.  So, Jacobs plans a way to get out of her present circumstances.  “I knew what I did, and I did it with deliberate calculation” (Baym 821).    She looks inside herself for the answer and devised a plan that she believed would allow her to transcend her current life circumstances: a relationship with a white man who fathered her children.  “Tate finds that Jacobs depicted freedom not simply as escape from the political condition of slavery, but as the gaining of access to the social institutions of motherhood, family, and home” (Moore 11).  Jacobs knew that children often followed in the footsteps of their mothers.  She wanted her children to be taken care of financially and to be free, so she depended on the generosity of her pursuer to achieve these goals.  This ultimately leads to a physical transcendence, move from present circumstances to desirable circumstances: in this case, from the south to the north where freedom and living as a family could be obtained. 

Capitalism and Transcendence

            This leads me to my next discovery.  I, like Jacob, assumed that this movement would allow her to realize her dream.  However, this was not the case.  The North seen as a unification of free-labor states with equal opportunity in the economic market was a misconception.  “In the North, Jacobs is a woman freed, but not free” (Cope 6).  Although Jacobs had escaped the brutality of slavery, she was still exposed to racism, sexism, and the harshness of living conditions because of her fugitive status.  In essence, Jacobs transcended from one level of objectification to another:  no rights to minimal rights.    

Background (Cope)

The slave market in the south was the primary source of income for its citizens.  Slave trade was one way to keep the economy prospering.  Children were thus essential to the slave market because it allowed for the continuation of this market.  The more slaves you owned the higher your net worth.  When slaves escaped, monetary rewards were offered and put up to assume the chase.  Thus, slaves were considered a valuable commodity to slave owners.  This explains why Dr. Flint was adamant about Jacobs wanting to marry a free black man.  He realized the emancipatory potential this move would have on his current financial status and his rights as master over Jacobs.  In fact, her value increases when she escapes because she was bequeathed to Dr. Flint’s family.  They had more money than he did, so they were able to put forth more effort in searching for Jacobs. 

Could this journey be considered transcendence? Dr. Flint’s family crosses physical boundaries in order to obtain what is theirs by “right”.   Their father’s “dream” was to find and reassume ownership of Jacobs.  This would have allowed him to gain back what he lost financially by Jacobs escape.  Whatever the circumstances, this situation reinforces the idea that slaves were considered objects, property to be sold at will for financial gains.

According to Cope, Jacobs’s awareness of her current physical state is what caused her to long for an economy where she wouldn’t be considered property but rather where she could own property, work, and marry.  Under contract principles “wage and marriage agreements were imagined as mutually reinforcing contracts that would create economic and moral order and instill ideas of support and by the postbellum period, the promise of a home unscathed by the market distinguished the rewards of free contract and chattel slavery” (Cope 10). 

So when Jacobs’ Aunt Marthy reveals that slave children should settle for obedience and not strive for happiness, Jacobs reacts disillusioned by the historical changes of the time.  Jacobs walks into a world where she has to pay for the right to sit at the back, will not be served at a diner because of her color, is ignored politically because she’s a woman, and has to hide in a garret for seven years to keep from being caught and returned to her master.  This was not what she had envisioned, a world where she remained separate from her children only able to gaze upon them through a hole in the garret, where insects bit at her flesh, and sunlight became a privilege living in fear.

Working for minimal wages and on jobs that were menial, Jacobs realizes that she moved from one degrading capitalist economy to another.  Jacobs’s race, gender, and fugitive status prevented her from leading the life she dreamed.  It was these things that determined your status in the north. 

Conclusion

 “Achievement of freedom is predicated on the protagonist’s ability to reverse his initial situation” (Wesley).  Jacobs might have been able to escape her master’s tyranny, but she was unable to achieve true freedom.  She alludes to the irony of her situation towards the end of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl; her “freedom was purchased in a free land”. 

Jacobs transcended physically to the north in hopes of attaining freedom.  Instead, she found out that the only difference between the north and the south was physical ownership of blacks.  Though blacks were not considered as slaves in the north, they were still subjected to conditions that were inhumane and expected to live in a land where they had minimal rights (which was determined by the whites). 

Danny Corrigan states, “It is a universal human desire to start life over again and return to a state of pure grace.”  As an American, I connected with this statement.  As a Christian, I believe that this can be done.  However, I think some people are disillusioned about the entire process of starting life over again and returning to a state of grace.  Obstacles will spring up and try to block your path; tests of faith will be administered.  Purifying includes freeing from guilt or evil.  If we allow this baggage to travel with us on our journey then our struggle is that much more difficult. 

Forgive me; I’m not meaning to sound preachy.  It’s just that in relation to Jacobs this is what happened.  Her disillusionment caused her to think that she would not face trials once she reached her destination.  Instead, what she found is that she could not use her beauty to receive the same privileges she afforded her self in the south in the north. Her ignorance of the capitalist situation in the north heightened her travel as a fugitive.

Though I agree with Moore, Cope, and Wesley, they do fail to mention that Jacobs does deal with her misconceptions, whether sane or insane, and eventually attains some type of freedom.  In the end, she gets to be with her children and is freed from slavery, thus freeing her from Dr. Flint and his family.  Her narcissism gets her out of her present circumstances causing her to move within space and place while her will and determination allows her to deal with a capitalist economy that was not her ideal of freedom.   

Works Cited

Baym, Nina, Ed.  “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs”.  The Norton

Anthology of American Literature. Shorter 6th ed.  (2003): 813-834.

Cope, Virginia.  “I Verily Believed Myself to be a Free Woman: Harriet Jacobs’s Journey

into Capitalism.”  African American Review.  38(1).  (2005): 5-20.

Corrigan, Danny.  “American Romanticism and the Desire to Return to the Garden.” 

Index to Student Midterm Submissions.  (2005): LITR 5535: American Romanticism http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/LITR/5535/models/2005/midterms/mt05corrigan.htm

Moore, Geneva Cobb.  “A Freudian Reading of Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a

Slave Girl.” Southern Literary Journal. 38(1).  (2005): 3-20.

Pendola, Gina L.  “Is Transcendentalism still alive?: A Comparison of ‘Nature,’ by Ralph

Waldo Emerson and ‘The Science of Minds,’ Ernest Holmes”.  Index to Student Research Projects.  (2005):  LITR 5535: American Romanticism http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/LITR/5535/models/2005/projects/rp05pendola.htm

Wesley, Marilyn C.  “A woman’s place: The politics of space in Harriet Jacob’s Incidents

in the Life of a Slave Girl.”  Women’s Studies.  26(1).  (1997): 59