Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Pathos 2 key examples

Jacobs juxtaposes her very human memory of her childhood with the idea that she could be a "piece of merchandise." By describing a time in her life before she was conscious of her own legal status as an enslaved person, Jacobs cultivates the sympathy of Northern (especially white Northern) readers. The idea of childhood as a sacred time of innocence became very popular in the 19th century. In many memoirs by enslaved and formerly enslaved people, depictions of childhood innocence served to appeal to white readers' sympathy. They created a sense of commonality between white and Black Americans by emphasizing that everyone starts life as an innocent child. The idea that Linda could have loving, protective parents who nonetheless could not protect her also appeals to white readers' horror at the idea of not being able to protect their own children.

It may seem unnecessary to today's readers for Jacobs to carve out a place for herself in humanit —of course she is a human. But when Jacobs published her memoir, getting white readers to recognize her humanity was an important step in getting them to oppose slavery. In the pre-Civil War United States, there were many legal debates about the extent to which an enslaved person should be considered a person at all. Most famously, delegates from Northern and Southern states agreed at the 1787 Constitutional Convention that for purposes of representation in Congress, an enslaved person counted a three-fifths of a person. Abolitionist writing and images from this era often involved pleas for white people to see Black people as full humans who could not be reduced to "merchandise." Earning white readers' sympathy through pathos was a necessary step for Jacobs to mount her argument against the institution of slavery. She goes on later in this chapter to argue that it is a logical contradiction to consider a human a piece of property. The pathos she cultivates earlier in the chapter lays the groundwork for readers to take her argument seriously because they have already bought into the idea that she, a formerly enslaved person, is fully human.

This same sense of pathos comes up frequently to keep the reader's horror fresh: for instance, in Chapter 3, Linda describes a time when seven children from the same family are all sold at once, taken from their family. In each instance, the horror serves a purpose beyond simply making the reader uncomfortable. It helps the reader who is unfamiliar with the institution of slavery to understand how logically incompatible the institution is with any code of morality or ethics.

Jacobs imagines each of the girls' futures, starting with the white child and the happy life that awaits her. She writes that this child will grow "fairer" as she grows up. Jacobs means this literally and figuratively. As the white child gets older, she will stop playing outside. Rather than working in the fields, as many Black children and adults must do, she will get married and retreat into the protection of the house, where her skin won't become tan from the sun. In a figurative sense, this girl will grow up in a world bathed in light and full of flowers that she does not have to work to cultivate. Her sister, who is legally her "property," will do all the work it takes to facilitate this comfortable life.

By contrast, Jacobs describes how the Black child will lead a life of enslavement characterized by "sin, shame, and misery":

How had those years dealt with her slave sister, the little playmate of her childhood? She, also, was very beautiful; but the flowers and sunshine of love were not for her. She drank the cup of sin, and shame, and misery, whereof her persecuted race are compelled to drink.

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Jacobs is explicit that the stunning differences between these two futures are all down to race and the fact that "flowers and sunshine of love" are reserved for white women. The white child is the wealthy, free daughter of two white enslavers, whereas the Black child is the enslaved child of the same father and an enslaved Black woman. Although these two girls are sisters with equal beauty, and although they clearly have a natural bond and an affinity for one another, they have yet to realize that racism marks them out for entirely opposite fates. The institution of slavery, which is based on race in the United States, will rob them of everything they once shared by setting unequal terms for their relationship as they age. The Black girl will suffer more, but the white girl too will lose her sister and "playmate" and believe she is better off for it. The sense of unfairness leads Jacobs to her rhetorical demand at the end of the chapter: why don't Northerners living at a remove from slavery speak out more against the institution? This moment is a reminder that one of the book's central aims is to agitate readers into political action.