Race & Culture

Regarding race and culture, the characters in “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl,” by Harriet Jacobs, and “The Quadroons,” by Lydia Maria Child both face a lifetime of despair and misery trying to fight against how society thought they should be treated. It’s hard for us to believe there was ever a time where all people weren’t treated equal with rights to freedom, but it was very much a reality for many lost souls of earlier times in history.

Along with the enslavement and trading of African Americans in earlier times, there were also very strict laws against what blacks were allowed to do and how they were supposed to conduct their social lives. One major look down from society was interracial marriages. It was simply unheard of an unaccepted. Both main characters from the readings face turmoil in their fight for freedom and happiness, but the one that struck me the most was Rosalie from “The Quadroons.” There were many evident examples in this text of how colored people were treated back in the day and frowned upon for living their lives outside of the norm that was accepted by society.

Child writes that “The tenderness of Rosalie’s conscience required an outward form of marriage; though she well knew that a union with her proscribed race was unrecognized by law, and therefore the ceremony gave her no legal hold of Edward’s constancy” (Child 117). This brought deep sorrow to my heart. I can’t imagine being in love with someone and not even being able to celebrate it due to the fact that it was unheard of in the world around you. Due to this fact, Rosalie’s love, Edward, was socially obligated to marry a woman of his race to be socially accepted, although deep down he knew he really wanted to be with Rosalie. “It was a marriage sanctioned by Heaven, though unrecognized on earth” (Child 118).

Of a slight contrast, in “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl,” Harriet Jacobs, known in the story as Linda, never really experienced the feeling of true love with a man like Rosalie did. Her life consisted of a constant struggle to maintain her kids under her watch and she was in constant agony over trying to keep them in her life and out of harms way. This is another unthinkable idea to people of our time, because we couldn’t imagine a life of a woman that didn’t have rights to her children, and was seen more as property than a free human being.