Essay On Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl

In Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, there is no doubt that Linda Brent is a hero. In Janice Daniel’s literary criticism, “A New Kind of Hero: Harriet Jacob’s,” she presents the different types of hero Linda is. She says, “she’s simultaneously a heroic slave who strives against all odds to obtain freedom, a desperate mother who is engulfed in the struggle for the survival of her children, and a woman who openly acknowledges and endures the sexual tribulations of being bother a slave and a female” (Daniel). However, Daniel is adding to that list in her analysis. She suggests that not only is Linda a hero of all those things, but she is also presented as a female version of a romance hero. This new type of hero is spun off of the past male heroes in the romance genre. Daniel
In her hunt to reach the free states, Linda will encounter dangerous obstacles and will face many trying road blocks. The literary criticism notes, “that the romance hero’s passage must move him into a dangerous pattern, into a place where he is isolated, immobile and almost mechanical in behavior” (Daniel). Daniel makes this parallel in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, to when Linda was living and hiding in the crawl space for seven years. Jacobs writing, “My limbs were benumbed by inaction, and the cold filled them with cramp. I had painful sensations of coldness in my head; and I lost the power of speech,” (122) furthers Daniel’s point and reassures the audience that Linda is indeed a romance hero. Daniel continues on this theme of a new kind of hero, by pointing out more incidents that twin experiences of a romantic hero. For example, “the oracle of the romance, the voice of a god-like figure behind the action who expresses his wil and speaks of the ultimate outcome” (Daniel). For Linda, her oracle is her grandmother whom guides her throughout her life to be the best she can be. Her grandmother is her mother figure, grandmother figure, god-like figure, and best friend all in