“MY UNCLE PHILLIP, WHO WAS A CARPENTER, HAD VERY SKILLFULLY MADE A CONCEALED TRAP-DOOR. TO THIS HOLE I WAS CONVEYED AS SOON AS I ENTERED THE HOUSE. THE AIR WAS STIFLING. THE DARKNESS TOTAL. I COULD SLEEP QUITE COMFORTABLY ON ONE SIDE BYT THE SLOPE WAS SO SUDDEN THAT I COULD NOT TURN WITHOUT HITTING THE ROOF. RATS AND MICE RAN OVER MY BED. BUT I WAS WEARY AND I SLEPT SUCH SLEEP AS THE WRETCHED MAY.”
Harriet Jacobs was born in North Carolina in 1813. “I was born and reared in slavery,” she said, “and I remained in a slave state twenty seven years.”
Harriet came under the control of the town doctor, a lecherous man who was always scheming to force Harriet to perform s*xual acts. He made her life miserable.
“He told me that I was made for his use,” she railed, “made to obey his command in everything, that I was nothing but a slave whose will must surrender to his. My master met me at every turn, reminding me that I belonged to him and swearing by heaven and earth that he would compel me to submit to him.”
Harriet swore she would resist him with all her might. She was determined to fight for her dignity. “The war of my life had begun.”
Harriet had to come up with a strategy for survival. She found a protector. Harriet was sixteen when she began an intimate relationship with a young, single white attorney from a prominent family in town whose social standing was higher than her master’s.
Over the next four years, she bore two children with him.
Harriet did everything she could to influence the situation and protect her children. She hit upon a very strange tactic—she thought that if she ran away, her master would not want to be bothered searching for her or paying to raise her children. She thought he would be willing to sell her and her children to their father.
“My mind was made up,” Harriet wrote. “I was resolved that I would foil my master and save my children or I would perish in the attempt. I had a woman’s pride and a mother’s love for my children. My master had power and law on his side. I had a determined will. There is might in each.”
So Harriet ran.
“At half past twelve I stole softly down the stairs. I stopped on the second floor, thinking I heard a noise. I felt my way down into the parlor and looked out of the window. The night was so intensely dark that I could see nothing. I raised the window very softly and jumped ou,” she wrote.
But she didn’t go far.
She hid in a secret attic in her grandmother’s house, directly across the street from her master’s office.
Harriet described her hiding place. “A small shed had been added to my grandmother’s house years ago. Some boards were laid across the joists at the top and between these boards and the roof was a very small garret (an attic room), never occupied by anything but rats and mice.
“The garret was only nine feet long and seven wide. The highest part was three feet high and sloped down abruptly to the loose board floor. There was no admission for either light or air.
“My Uncle Phillip, who was a carpenter, had very skillfully made a concealed trap-door, which communicated with the storeroom. To this hole I was conveyed as soon as I entered the house. The air was stifling. The darkness total. A bed had been spread on the floor. I could sleep quite comfortably on one side, but the slope was so sudden that I could not turn without hitting the roof. The rats and mice ran over my bed. But I was weary and I slept such sleep as the wretched may.”
Harriet wrote in great detail of life in her cramped attic home, and how she hungered for contact with her family and the outside world.
“My food was passed up to me through the trap-door my uncle had contrived and my grandmother, my uncle Phillip and aunt Nancy would seize such opportunities as they could to mount up there and chat with me at the opening. But of course, this was not safe in the daytime. It must all be done in darkness.
“One day I hit my head against something and found it was a gimlet (a T-shaped tool with a sharp edge). My uncle had left it sticking there when he made the trap-door. It put a lucky thought into my head. I said to myself, ‘Now I will have some light. Now I will see my children.’
“I did not dare to begin my work during the daytime, for fear of attracting attention. But I groped around and having found the side next to the street, where I could frequently see my children, I stuck the gimlet in and waited for evening.
“I bored three rows of holes, one above another. I thus succeeded in making one hole about an inch long and an inch broad. I sat by it till late into the night, to enjoy the little whiff of air that floated in.
“In the morning, I watched for my children. Several familiar faces passed by. At last I heard the merry laugh of children and presently two sweet little faces were looking up at me, as though they knew I was there and were conscious of the joy they imparted. How I longed to tell them I was there!”
Harriet remained hidden in the attic crawl space from August 1835 to June 1842.
Harriet wrote, “I hardly expect that the reader will credit me, when I affirm that I lived in that little dismal hole, almost deprived of light and air and with no space to move my limbs, for nearly seven years.”
Posted By: Richard Kigel
Wednesday, January 27th 2010 at 1:57PM
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