A motif throughout the book is the idea that under the conditions of slavery, death is an everyday part of life and is never very far away. Linda notices this in Chapter 2, when her Grandmother pulls her away from her friend's funeral to let her know that her father, too, has died:
Dead! How could I believe it? He had died so suddenly I had not even heard that he was sick. I went home with my grandmother. My heart rebelled against God, who had taken from me mother, father, mistress, and friend. The good grandmother tried to comfort me. “Who knows the ways of God?” said she. “Perhaps they have been kindly taken from the evil days to come.”
It is striking that Linda finds out about her father's death at a friend's funeral. Death seems to be relentless and ever closer for Linda. The memoir holds both white enslavers and God responsible for all these deaths. Hypocritical white Christians habitually preached to each other and to enslaved Black Americans that slavery and all its cruelties, including high death rates, were God's will. Many enslaved people (especially those who could read the Bible for themselves) understood that Christianity had been weaponized against them. Linda is no exception, recalling how her "heart rebelled against God." If it is God's will for Linda, her family, and her friends to live in these conditions, she is angry at God. Grandmother's point of view represents the complex relationship many enslaved people had with Christianity, even when they knew it was used against them in this way. Grandmother has been alive longer than Linda and has seen some of "the evil days to come" for those Black Americans who live a long time in the South. She imagines that death's relentlessness in Black communities might be God's way of protecting people from the terrible world He has created in tandem with white enslavers. Linda remains determined throughout her life that the living world can be better, and that humans have the power to make it so. Still, the memoir has many moments where characters question whether death or life as an enslaved person is a greater gift from God.
This question had major historical ramifications that the memoir explores in Chapter 12. In this chapter, racial tension is even more heightened than usual because of Nat Turner's rebellion. This rebellion was led by an enslaved religious visionary who (like many people in 19th-century America) ascribed to the belief that he existed in a period of hell on earth that would be followed by 1,000 years of heaven on earth. In Nat Turner's view, slavery was a hellish war, and 19th-century Americans were already living in a violent afterlife. He led an extremely violent rebellion knowing that he would die because he believed he was already in hell and had nothing to lose.
In Chapter 23, Linda worries that she will die in the garret before she ever sees the light of day again. Nat Turner's rebellion terrified white people because he and his followers were not afraid of death and violence. By expressing her fear of death rather than accepting that its horrors are already upon her, Linda seeks to appeal to rather than terrify white Americans. Even when death seems ever present, she is relentlessly hopeful and faithful that death and violence do not have to be such a regular part of Black Americans' lives.
Although much of the book depicts the extreme cruelties of slavery, a motif throughout is also the figure of the enslaver who considers themself "benevolent," or acting in the best interest of the people they enslave. In one example from Chapter 9, a woman who is about to get married asks the family she enslaves for input on their fate:
She offered to manumit her slaves—telling them that her marriage might make unexpected changes in their destiny, and she wished to insure their happiness. They refused to take their freedom, saying that she had always been their best friend, and they could not be so happy any where as with her. [...] They had never felt slavery; and, when it was too late, they were convinced of its reality.
The family declines manumission (legal freedom) in part because they like this woman. She has always treated them well, almost as if she does not see them as property. Jacobs writes that "they had never felt slavery," suggesting both that they have led a relatively comfortable life and that they did not quite know what they were declining. The enslaver suggests to the family that their "destiny" might be on the line because her new husband may not treat them as she does. Still, the family is also convinced that they may not be able to afford as comfortable a living situation were they legally freed. After all, they have never had the chance to work for money. They choose to retain the "protection" of their well-intentioned enslaver instead of opting for legal protection from the institution of slavery.
The enslaver's good intentions disguise the fact that as long as someone is caught in the institution of slavery, disaster can befall them at any time. Versions of this same situation happen frequently in the book. For instance, Linda is first enslaved by a woman who is relatively kind. However, when this woman dies, she wills her to her niece instead of freeing her. Technically, Linda's new enslaver is Emily Flint, who is just a child. In effect, Linda falls into the hands of Dr. and Mrs. Flint, vicious enslavers. Mr. Sands is another example. He is relatively kind, but he nonetheless abuses his power as a white man and has undue control over Linda and her children's lives. The memoir demonstrates over and over that "kind" or "benevolent" enslavers may think they are helping enslaved people by protecting them from worse treatment or from poverty, but they are actually prolonging the suffering of people who ought to be free to run their own lives.
Jacobs uses the motif of chains and confinement throughout the book to describe the experience of enslavement and her long attempt to break out of it. For instance, in Chapter 14, she describes how her father's former enslaver gifts Linda's new baby a gold chain:
When we left the church, my father’s old mistress invited me to go home with her. She clasped a gold chain round my baby’s neck. I thanked her for this kindness; but I did not like the emblem. I wanted no chain to be fastened on my daughter, not even if its links were of gold. How earnestly I prayed that she might never feel the weight of slavery’s chain, whose iron entereth into the soul!
The chain seems to be a genuine offer of "kindness," but Linda sees it also as a symbol of the new baby's confinement, both in the institution of slavery and in the ever-more-complicated family tree that her family and their enslavers are all a part of. The gold chain recalls the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau's famous statement that "Man is born free but everywhere is in chains." Rousseau was writing about the theory of the social contract, or the idea that humans in society are bound by obligations to one another. Linda sees her daughter as a person who is free because she does not yet know what it means to be enslaved. The gold chain is not meant to literally confine the child, but to Linda it represents the social contract of the pre-Civil War South: white enslavers control all the wealth, and they use it to bind Black people to them from birth. If this white woman's kindness turned against Ellen, she could just as easily use the chain to strangle the child.
To Linda, her children themselves confine her to the treacherous social world she inhabits. The chapters in which she describes her children's births are entitled "A Link to Life" and "Another Link to Life." This language, like Rousseau's language, has two edges. Benny and Ellen give Linda something to live for, but they are also more links in the chain that wraps around her and keeps her on the plantation. Without them, she might find it easier to leave. It is ambiguous whether "leaving" for her would entail running away or dying, but dying no longer feels like an option to her once the children are born. A woman in metaphorical chains, she is obligated to live for them.
One of the most salient examples of confinement is Linda's seven-year stay in Grandmother's garret before she can run away from Dr. Flint in earnest. In Chapter 18, before Grandmother's space is ready for her, she hides under a neighbor's floorboards to avoid being detected by Dr. Flint:
In my shallow bed I had but just room enough to bring my hands to my face to keep the dust out of my eyes; for Betty walked over me twenty times in an hour, passing from the dresser to the fireplace.
Jacobs's memoir is important in part because it disabuses Northerners of the idea that there is a binary between enslavement and freedom. Confinement is an integral and horrifying part of Linda's journey to freedom. Her description of the claustrophobic atmosphere under the floorboards is literal, but it is also representative of just how completely trapped Linda is by her circumstances. To be enslaved, the memoir argues, is to be confined.
Jacobs uses the motif of chains and confinement throughout the book to describe the experience of enslavement and her long attempt to break out of it. For instance, in Chapter 14, she describes how her father's former enslaver gifts Linda's new baby a gold chain:
When we left the church, my father’s old mistress invited me to go home with her. She clasped a gold chain round my baby’s neck. I thanked her for this kindness; but I did not like the emblem. I wanted no chain to be fastened on my daughter, not even if its links were of gold. How earnestly I prayed that she might never feel the weight of slavery’s chain, whose iron entereth into the soul!
The chain seems to be a genuine offer of "kindness," but Linda sees it also as a symbol of the new baby's confinement, both in the institution of slavery and in the ever-more-complicated family tree that her family and their enslavers are all a part of. The gold chain recalls the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau's famous statement that "Man is born free but everywhere is in chains." Rousseau was writing about the theory of the social contract, or the idea that humans in society are bound by obligations to one another. Linda sees her daughter as a person who is free because she does not yet know what it means to be enslaved. The gold chain is not meant to literally confine the child, but to Linda it represents the social contract of the pre-Civil War South: white enslavers control all the wealth, and they use it to bind Black people to them from birth. If this white woman's kindness turned against Ellen, she could just as easily use the chain to strangle the child.
To Linda, her children themselves confine her to the treacherous social world she inhabits. The chapters in which she describes her children's births are entitled "A Link to Life" and "Another Link to Life." This language, like Rousseau's language, has two edges. Benny and Ellen give Linda something to live for, but they are also more links in the chain that wraps around her and keeps her on the plantation. Without them, she might find it easier to leave. It is ambiguous whether "leaving" for her would entail running away or dying, but dying no longer feels like an option to her once the children are born. A woman in metaphorical chains, she is obligated to live for them.
One of the most salient examples of confinement is Linda's seven-year stay in Grandmother's garret before she can run away from Dr. Flint in earnest. In Chapter 18, before Grandmother's space is ready for her, she hides under a neighbor's floorboards to avoid being detected by Dr. Flint:
In my shallow bed I had but just room enough to bring my hands to my face to keep the dust out of my eyes; for Betty walked over me twenty times in an hour, passing from the dresser to the fireplace.
Jacobs's memoir is important in part because it disabuses Northerners of the idea that there is a binary between enslavement and freedom. Confinement is an integral and horrifying part of Linda's journey to freedom. Her description of the claustrophobic atmosphere under the floorboards is literal, but it is also representative of just how completely trapped Linda is by her circumstances. To be enslaved, the memoir argues, is to be confined.
