old enough to be her grandfather. But, as Jacobs
points out at the end of her narrative, the story
does not end in the traditional manner of the sen-
timental story with marriage, “but with freedom.”
Jacobs takes control of the narrative form in a way
that she was never fully allowed to take control of
her own life because of her race and gender. At the
same time, she critiques the extant “cult of true
womanhood” that condemned the morality of a
slave girl caught in the situation in which she had
found herself.
Orphaned at an early age, “Linda Brent” grows
up under the watchful eye of her grandmother,
but she soon draws the interest of Dr. Flint and
the ire of his wife. Mrs. Flint, driven by jealousy,
is a notorious abuser of slaves, especially young,
pretty women. Linda finally decides to become
involved with another man, Mr. Sands, hoping
that Dr. Flint will lose interest. Instead, Flint, who
responds with jealousy, threatens Linda’s fam-
ily. After she gives birth to children fathered by
Sands, Linda becomes more vulnerable to Flint’s
demands. Threatened by Dr. Flint, who prom-
ises to sell her children if she does not give in to
him, Linda flees to the North. In reality, how-
ever, she takes residence in the crawlspace of her
grandmother’s shed, and for the next seven years
watches, in a prone position that leaves her crip-
pled, her children through a knothole.
Harriet Jacobs’s contributions to the develop-
ment of the slave narrative and to the female tra-
dition in the African-American novel is outlined
in Joanne Braxton’s work on these genres. Jacobs’s
focus on both women’s rights and the abolition
of slavery foreshadows the intersection of the
politics of race and gender in the works by con-
temporary writers such as TONI MORRISON, PAULE
MARSHALL, and ALICE WALKER. The emphasis on
black women’s sexuality and its commodifica-
tion by American culture, the special problems of
African-American mothers, and the antagonism
between white and black women—all themes and
topics addressed in Jacobs’s narrative—continue
to be relevant in African-American women’s nov-
els today. Jacobs’s strength, her dedication to her
children, and her sense of self helped define a
well-known type of heroic figure in the women’s
literary tradition. Unlike many of the narratives
of slave men, Jacobs’s story reminds readers how
slavery destroys the most natural of human com-
munities, the family. Today, writers still echo Ja-
cobs’s sentiment when they illustrate the impact
of racism on children, mothers, and the contem-
porary African-American household.BIBLIOGRAPHY
Braxton, Joanne. “Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the
Life of a Slave Girl: The Re-definition of the Slave
Narrative Genre.” Massachusetts Review 27, no. 2
(1986): 379–387.
Foreman, P. Gabrielle. “The Spoken and the Silenced
Narrative in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.”
Callaloo 13, no. 2 (1990): 313–324.
Stover, Johnnie M. “Nineteenth-Century African-
American Woman’s Discourse: The Example
of Harriet Ann Jacobs.” College English 66, no. 2
(2003): 133–154.
Yellin, Jean Fagan, ed. Incidents in the Life of a Slave
Girl. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987.
Tracie Church GuzzioInvisible Life E. Lynn Harris (1994)
E. LYNN HARRIS’s Invisible Life chronicles the early
adult life of Raymond Winston Tyler, Jr., and his
struggle to discern his sexual identity in the midst
of concurrent heterosexual and homosexual rela-
tionships. Ray, a college senior who is in love with
his high school sweetheart, Sela, develops a pre-
viously unfelt homosexual desire for Kelvin Ellis,
a new man on campus. Ray is attracted to Kelvin
at first glance at a frat party; he becomes aroused
again when the two meet in the university locker
room. Leaving the gym, they purchase beer and re-
turn to Ray’s apartment, where Kelvin, somewhat
assertively, seduces Ray, providing him with his
first homosexual experience. Although he is at first
disturbed that he thoroughly enjoyed this new ex-
perience, Ray continues to date both Sela and Kel-
vin until he graduates and moves to New York City
to attend law school at Columbia University.
The novel begins six years after Ray has left
Alabama and moved to New York, where he is ableInvisible Life 267