Linda’s aunt and Grandmother’s daughter. Strong and perseverant like her sister, Aunt Nancy’s opinion is respected by the entire family. Yet, unlike her sister, she spends her entire life enslaved by the Flints, who don’t even give her a day off for her wedding and force her to work so hard that each time she becomes pregnant she miscarries the child. When Linda first moves to the Flints’ house, she sleeps next to Aunt Nancy, and the older woman is able to protect her somewhat from Dr. Flint’s advances. After Linda’s escape, she relays information from the Flint household to Grandmother. At her deathbed, the Flints patronizingly praise her as a loyal servant, while Linda privately observes that she’s a quiet but deeply subversive woman.
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Aunt Nancy Character Timeline in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
The timeline below shows where the character Aunt Nancy appears in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter Six: The Jealous Mistress
...and force Linda to sleep there as well (prior to this Linda had slept near Aunt Nancy , gaining some protection by the woman’s presence). When Mrs. Flint finds out about this,...
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Chapter Eighteen: Months of Peril
...her children soon, but he seems to want revenge more than money. He throws William, Aunt Nancy , Benny, and Ellen into the city jail and tells Grandmother that she will never...
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Chapter Nineteen: The Children Sold
...trader pretends to take them out of the state. William is put in chains and Aunt Nancy and Grandmother say goodbye to the children as if they’ll never see them again; seeing...
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Chapter Twenty-Three: Still in Prison
...ill herself and Linda is unable to take care of her. Mrs. Flint won’t let Aunt Nancy leave her house to take care of Grandmother, but to avoid seeming lacking in “Christian...
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Chapter Twenty-Five: Competition in Cunning
...has done, thinking it will backfire on them in some way. Linda also confides in Aunt Nancy so that she can report the Flints’ reactions; her aunt hopes the trick will work,...
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Chapter Twenty-Eight: Aunt Nancy
Linda breaks away from her own narrative to relate the story of Aunt Nancy ’s life. At the age of twenty, she got married to another slave, but her...
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Mrs. Flint and Aunt Nancy become pregnant at roughly the same time, but Aunt Nancy still has to sleep on...
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Aunt Nancy is in charge of the Flint house. Although she behaves meekly, she always encourages Linda...
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Six years after Linda starts living in the shed, Aunt Nancy becomes deathly ill and Grandmother returns to the Flint house to nurse her last daughter....
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Linda is devastated to hear of Aunt Nancy ’s death, although Uncle Phillip assures her she died happy. Linda reflects bitterly that Mrs....
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The family buries Aunt Nancy in a plain but dignified funeral, which even the Flints attend. Linda says that the...
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Chapter Thirty-Four: The Old Enemy Again
...“reinstated in our affections” and greeted with “tears of joy.” Moreover, he apprises her of Aunt Nancy ’s death (not realizing that Linda was there when it happened), saying that she showed...
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