Raping the Jezebel Hypocrisy, Stereotyping, and Sexual Identity in Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

Abstract

The following paper examines the origins of African-American female sexual scripts, particularly the image of the Jezebel, and their consequences as represented in Harriet Jacobs’s autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Through an analysis of Jacobs’s work, this paper explores the relationships between female slaves and their masters (and mistresses) in the Antebellum American South, locates the historical and cultural sources of negative sexual stereotypes about black women, and ultimately, concludes that these scripts and stereotypes, originating in American slavery, still play a large role in media representation and the formation of a positive sexual identity for African-American women in the United States. Jacobs’s narrative, a monumental self-written memoir, sought to appeal to the white women in the American North whose participation in the abolitionist movement held the power to ameliorate circumstances for female slaves in the South. Her tale of sexually aggressive masters, harried choices, and the sacrifices of a loving mother illuminate the moral and spiritual degradation caused by the “peculiar institution of slavery.” This paper places such considerations in both racial and sociopolitical contexts to examine the psychology of fear, abuse, and miscegenation suffered by American female slaves and perpetrated by southern plantation owners.