How we cite our quotes: Chapter.Paragraph
Quote #1
Even if he could have obtained permission to marry me while I was a slave, the marriage would give him no power to protect me from my master. […] And then, if we had children, I knew they must "follow the condition of the mother." (7.18)
You wouldn't think Jacobs would have to point this out, but here she's teaching the reader that, in contrast to what they may have heard about slavery—that slaveholders were kind, for instance, or that slaves were happy—an elaborate legal system keeps slaves oppressed.
Quote #2
But, O, ye happy women, whose purity has been sheltered from childhood, who have been free to choose the objects of your affection, whose homes are protected by law, do not judge the poor desolate slave girl too severely! If slavery had been abolished, I, also […] could have had a home shielded by laws; and I should have been spared the painful task of confessing what I am now about to relate. (10.3)
This is sneaky. Here, Jacobs suggests that white women are no purer than slave women. Rather, the purity of white women “has been sheltered” and their homes “are protected by law.” So, a white woman’s alleged purity is really just legal and social protection.
Quote #3
Pity me, and pardon me, O virtuous reader! You never knew what it is to be a slave; to be entirely unprotected by law or custom; to have the laws reduce you to the condition of a chattel, entirely subject to the will of another. (10.6)
Jacobs engages the reader by highlighting the differences between Linda and her audience. As a narrator, Linda is so endearing that the reader wants her to succeed—but, just when we want her to succeed, she tells us that she can't.
Quote #4
It was a grand opportunity for the low whites, who had no negroes of their own to scourge. They exulted in such a chance to exercise a little brief authority, and show their subservience to the slaveholders; not reflecting that the power which trampled on the colored people also kept themselves in poverty, ignorance, and moral degradation. (12.4)
Although many poor whites did not own slaves, wealthy slaveholders often recruited them to do the dirty work of maintaining order. An elaborate system of racial prejudice keeps poor whites from recognizing that they have more in common with slaves than they realize—just like white women and black women.
Quote #5
When my baby was about to be christened, the former mistress of my father stepped up to me, and proposed to give it her Christian name. To this I added the surname of my father, who had himself no legal right to it; for my grandfather on the paternal side was a white gentleman. What tangled skeins are the genealogies of slavery! I loved my father; but it mortified me to be obliged to bestow his name on my children. (14.11)
Laws even deprived slaves of their family heritage. Jacobs wants her readers to understand that the things they take for granted—their names, for instance—do not even exist as a possibility for a legally subjugated people.
Quote #6
I knew the law would decide that I was his [Dr. Flint] property, and would probably still give his daughter a claim to my children; but I regarded such laws as the regulations of robbers, who had no rights that I was bound to respect. (38.3)
Linda doesn't recognize the laws of slavery. She considers them illegal, because they're created by lawbreakers—"robbers."
Quote #7
The slave Hamlin, the first fugitive that came under the new law, was given up by the bloodhounds of the north to the bloodhounds of the south. It was the beginning of a reign of terror to the colored population. (40.3)
The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 had a profound impact on runaway slaves. It mandated that law enforcement officials had to return runaway slaves to their masters. The law also stated that anyone who was found helping a slave was subject to six months in jail and/or a fine of $1,000. This law literally brought slavery to the North, since it made northerners responsible for returning slaves to their masters.
Quote #8
I dreaded the approach of summer, when snakes and slaveholders make their appearance. I was, in fact, a slave in New York, as subject to slave laws as I had been in a Slave State. Strange incongruity in a State called free! (40.10)
While Linda spent much of her life thinking that life in the Free States would be easier, she realizes that slavery has followed her North.
Quote #9
“The bill of sale!” Those words struck me like a blow. So I was sold at last! A human being sold in the free city of New York! The bill of sale is on record, and future generations will learn from it that women were articles of traffic in New York, late in the nineteenth century of the Christian religion. (41.19)
Ouch. Jacobs rewrites the title of her chapter, “Free at Last,” to Sold at Last, because the bitter irony is that her path to freedom involves being treated as property.