LITR 5731: Seminar in American Multicultural Literature
Sample Student Midterm, Spring 2006

Sara Moreau

A Right to Choose

Many African American women lived their lives without the ability to make any personal choices and without a voice to express themselves. Many of these women died without ever having a chance to express their suffering; however, a few beat the odds and found their voice. Those women found something in their lives which gave them power to speak, and power to take control of their lives. This kind of story is evident in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Song of Solomon, and Push. The women in these novels went through many trials and sufferings with no choice in how their lives were lived, but each of them ended up finding some strength or some person that enabled them to gain a voice and change their life for the better.

Harriet Jacobs is an example of one of the many women who were voiceless and choiceless. Jacobs was born a slave and, therefore, lived a life of suffering. In Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs lead the life of a typical slave, in that, she had no choice in her own life decisions. When Jacobs was young, her father died, but she was not allowed to go to him. After she was notified by her grandmother that her father had passed away she said, “I returned to my master’s. I thought I should be allowed to go to my father’s house the next morning; but I was ordered to go for flowers, that my mistress’s house might be decorated for an evening party. I spent the day gathering flowers and weaving them into festoons, while the dead body of my father was lying within a mile of me”(451). As a slave, Jacobs did not have the power to choose whether or not she would go see her father’s body to say goodbye; she had to get permission from her master. She was not allowed to make choices for herself, nor could she voice her pain because slaves did not speak of their troubles. As Linda Harvey states, “they knew that to speak out would further surrender them helpless to the consequences decided upon by the masters; consequences of which they had no choice. Needless to say, the truth to the matter is that slaves had no voices to reveal the actual crimes against humanity.” (Harvey 2001).

Since she was a slave, Jacobs was not considered a valuable person. Instead, she was thought of as her master’s property, not as an individual human being with real thoughts and emotions. Her thoughts and opinions did not matter. Mr. Flint, her master, told Jacobs, “[she] was made for his use, made to obey his command in every thing; that [she] was nothing but a slave, whose will must and should surrender to his”(459). When Jacobs was a teenager, Mr. Flint began to “whisper foul words in [her] ear… and people [her] mind with unclean images, such as only a vile monster could think of”(470). Even though Jacobs was a young girl she was subjected to the awful sexual advances from her master. She could not tell anyone about what was happening to her because Mr. Flint threatened to kill her if she told anyone. Even if she did tell someone, there were no laws to protect slaves against horrible things like this. If anyone found out it would only infuriate him, and awful things would be done to her. Even though she had no control over what happened, she would feel ashamed if her family found out. Although it was hard, Jacobs had no choice but to keep silent throughout her young life.

As Jacobs got older the harassment she encountered from her master grew more frequent and she knew pretty soon Mr. Flint would find a way around his wife, and force Jacobs to sleep with him. Desperate to keep herself from the shameful fate of bearing children for her master, Jacobs took a dangerous risk and slept with a friendly, kind white man that was willing to help her. In her eyes, even though she knew her master would be furious, being impregnated by a man she knew would fight to have his children freed was much more tolerable than having her master’s children. She knew this violated her morals and would disappoint her family, but it would keep her children from being fathered by Mr. Flint.

After bearing her second child, Jacobs was sent back to her master’s plantation to continue her work as a slave, while her children were left with her grandmother to be cared for until they were older. One afternoon while on the plantation, Jacobs got word that her master was bringing her children to the plantation to be made slaves and used as leverage against her so she would not get any ideas to escape. That night, Jacobs decided that she had had enough; she would not let them use her children against her. She decided to take the ultimate risk and run away. The love she had for her children and her refusal to let them live as slaves is what gave Jacobs the voice she needed to stand up and be able to make choices for herself. She knew that her children would be safe with her gone because her master would not want the hindrance of having to take care of them if she were not there. She spent several years hiding in different people’s houses and then in a cramped space in the roof of a storage shed at her grandmother’s house so she and her children could be free of slavery. All of the pain and suffering she endured paid off in the end when she and her children were finally free.

In a similar situation to that of Harriet Jacobs, First Corinthians, in Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, also leads a life in which she is voiceless and choiceless. Corinthians, along with her sister, had lived in her parents’ home her whole life making velvet roses for a living. She led a very mundane existence because, although she attended college, there were not many career choices available for African American women. Her mother was depressed and abused by her father, and her father, Macon, seemed to wish his family did not exist. Macon Dead felt contempt for his whole family and it affected his daughters in a great way. Morrison states, “The disappointment he felt in his daughters sifted down on them like ash, dulling their buttery complexions and choking the lilt out of what should have been girlish voices. Under the frozen heat of his glance they tripped over doorsills and dropped the salt cellar into the yolks of their poached eggs. The way he mangled their grace, wit, and self-esteem was the single excitement of their days”(10-11). With no moral support from her family, Corinthians lived under horrible circumstances. The only thing she had to look forward to each day was the mean looks of disappointment from her father. This went on throughout her entire childhood and adult life. Corinthians had no love in her home and nothing to look forward to except finding a husband so she might escape from this life she was trapped in. She even went to college in hopes of finding a husband there, but “long after [she] had reached thirty-five … [she] had to accept a more complete truth: that [she] probably was not going to marry anybody.”(189)

After accepting the fact that she was not going to marry, and after living in this horrible situation for so long, something had to be done. When Corinthians “woke up one day to find herself a forty-two-year-old maker of rose petals, she suffered a severe depression which lasted until she made up her mind to get out of the house.”(189) Corinthians decided she needed to fight for a better life. The only way she was going to get out of her parent’s house is if she got a job and made her own money. The search for a job was hard because Corinthians found that even though she had gone to college, not only was she not trained for anything, but the training she did have was outdated. Since she had been to college and her family was well respected, Corinthians wanted to find a respectable job, but she found that “colored girls, regardless of their background were in demand for one and only one kind of work”(189). She was forced to work as a maid in the city. Corinthians worked extremely hard to hide the fact that she was a maid from her family. To her, even though the job was humiliating and not respectable, she was making something of herself despite the awful home life she had. That “unrespectable” job was, at least, her choice, and it was better than relying on her parents for the rest of her life.

In the novel Push, by Sapphire, Precious Jones is another example of someone who had no ability to choose, or a voice to choose with. Precious was sexually abused by her mother and father, physically and verbally abused by her mother, she could not read or write, and she found out at age seventeen that her father had given her HIV. Through all of these horrible events, Precious had no voice and no choice to change her circumstances.

Precious was raped by her father repeatedly from the time she was in first grade until the time she was sixteen. Precious learned things in first grade that most people do not learn or experience until they are adults. She had her first baby by her father when she was twelve. She never said anything to him so “the fucking [wouldn’t] turn into a beating.” (24). Precious had no voice to stand up to her father because she was afraid he would hit her and she would have to do what he wanted anyway. Precious was also abused by her mother in several different ways. When Precious came home from the hospital after having her first child, her mother “picked up the cast iron skillet…and she hit [her] so hard on the back [she fell] on the floor.” Then her mother said to her, “Thank you Miz Claireece Precious Jones for fucking my husband you nasty little slut!” These things went on in their home every day. Her mother verbally abused Precious, blaming Precious for her husbands violent acts, and then physically abused her as well. Her mother did not care that Precious only twelve being abused by her father, she only saw that her husband was sleeping with another “woman” and that was her daughter so she was angry. Precious was an innocent victim that did not know what to do. What could she do? She was twelve and they were her parents.

In addition to having to live with her mother and deal with being abused by her parents, Precious later found out that her father had infected her with HIV. This is the ultimate level of choicelessness. Not only did she have to deal with the abuse, but now she could never get away from it. It would be with her for the rest of her life and eventually kill her. The HIV virus is a disease that carries a lot of shame with it because the person infected with it usually made bad choices in their personal life to get it, but Precious did not get to make that choice. It was made for her by her father, but she is the one that would have to live with it.

When Precious was sixteen, pregnant, and still in junior high school, her principal suspended her and suggested that she go to an alternative school. At first, Precious was not happy about this, but in the end it turned out to be the best thing that could have ever happened to her. The teacher at the alternative school, Ms. Rain, taught Precious to read and write, and that her thoughts were her own. These things gave Precious the courage, strength, and skills to stand up for herself and turn her life around. She got out of her mother’s house, continued her education while caring for her son, and made some friends. Precious even attended an incest survivors group that helped her see she was not alone and she could make something of herself. These things did not instantly solve Precious’ problems, but they did give her a voice and taught her that she could choose for herself and live her life by her own terms.

All three of these women started their lives in the same situation: they had no ability to make choices for themselves and no voice to express their feelings. However, each woman found something deep inside herself which helped her to eventually break her chains of oppression and take charge of her own life. All three of these women’s lives went from sadness and despair to success.