It was a summer night in Edenton, a small, prosperous town in North Carolina. surrounded by tobacco plantations. There, the breeze barely mitigated the heat spread through the village and the fields.
Molly Horniblow, affectionately known as Aunt Martha, an old black woman who had bought her freedom working as a baker and lived in a house with an attic.
Nobody noticed what was happening in that attic, a space no more than three meters by two and only ninety centimeters high. There, a woman was waiting, silent, hidden. He had drilled holes in the wood to create tiny windows. from which he could spy on his children while they played in the garden. The physical distance between them was small, but the separation was abysmal.
The problem was that if she left, she would be captured and her children would be sold. In this way, it began the voluntary confinement of Harriet Jacobs at his grandmother’s house: an act of desperate resistance that would last seven years.
Flesh and blood toy
Harriet was born in 1813 in Edenton. Her mother, Delilah, was a slave who had learned to survive under a system that saw her as a commodity that could be the property of the white man. His father, Elijah Knox, was a carpenter recognized for his skill, but whose position of privilege within the slave order did not allow him to protect his family.
Harriet had a relatively less harsh childhood than other slaves: He lived with a young mistress who taught him to read and writean illegal act that would make a difference in his life.
Her mother died when she was six years old and Harriet became the property of the daughter of her mother’s owner. The education she received was not a gift: it was the tool Harriet would use to understand the world around her and to dream of something better. But that relative stability ended abruptly when her mistress died in 1825. Harriet, aged 12, was bequeathed as a slave to a 3-year-old girl, Mary Matilda Norcom. The father was Dr. James Norcom.
Harassed by the master
The doctor soon showed his true intentions. From the beginning, he harassed Harriet, using his position of power to intimidate her. He was an influential man in Edenton, respected by the white community, but privately, represented terror for Harriet. For years, he attempted to sexually subdue her, threatening to sell her family or send her to a plantation, a fate Harriet feared more than anything else.
In an effort to escape harassment, Harriet began a relationship with Samuel Sawyer, a white lawyer who promised to help her gain her freedom. The relationship was not only a survival tacticbut also a challenge. Harriet had two children with Sawyer: Joseph, born in 1829, and Louisa Matilda, born in 1832. But this relationship did not free her from Norcom’s control. Instead of giving up, Harriet devised a daring plan to escape.
Hidden from Dr. Norcom
In 1835, Harriet decided to disappear, but not in the way Norcom would have expected. He didn’t flee north like many runaway slaves; Instead, he hid in the least expected place: the attic of his grandmother’s house.
The space was a tiny structuremore a hole than a room, where Harriet could barely move. For the first few days, the heat and claustrophobia were unbearable.
The food came to him through a small access, and his grandmother Molly was his accomplice and protector. Harriet took advantage of the time to read and sew, but above all, to plan.
From his hiding place, wrote letters to Norcom pretending to be in the northan act of deception that confused his captor for years.
The time in the attic passed slowly. Harriet suffered chronic pain due to immobility and lack of light. However, he never lost hope. Watching his children play from the holes he had drilled in the wall was a mixture of comfort and torture. She knew that Norcom could sell them at any time, and that constant fear was what kept her firm in her decision not to leave.
Like all confinement, hers was not only physical; It was an act of mental and emotional resistance. Harriet understood that His sacrifice was necessary to guarantee a better future for his children.. Harriet transformed from a persecuted young woman to a brilliant strategist and writer.
The final escape
In 1842, after seven years, Harriet escaped with the help of local abolitionists. He arrived in Philadelphia and then in New York, where started a new life. There she found work as a nanny in the house of writer Nathaniel Parker Willis. Although Harriet had reached the north, her freedom was not guaranteed. The Fugitive Slave Law, enacted in 1850, allowed slaveholders to capture slaves even in a state of freedom.
Locked in the attic, Harriet suffered chronic pain due to immobility and lack of light. He spied on his children from holes made in the wall.
The threat of discovery was constant, but Harriet was not deterred. Finally, His employer, Cornelia Willis, bought his freedom for $300.. Although this action ensured her legal protection, Harriet accepted it with mixed feelings. She was free, but the idea of being bought like a commodity even in the north left a bitter taste in her.
Harriet decided to share her experience to give a voice to the thousands of enslaved women who had suffered in silence. With the support of Amy Post, an abolitionist activist, he started writing his autobiographywhich was called Incidents in the life of a slave.
Published in 1861 under the pseudonym Linda Brent, the book revealed the horrors of slavery from the perspective of a violated woman. Harriet not only described physical and emotional abuse, but also the moral dilemma of enslaved women, who often had to choose between submitting or risking everything for their children.
Fighter
The book was revolutionary. Harriet She broke taboos by speaking openly about sexual harassment and motherhood under the sign of slavery. It was a powerful testimony that helped strengthen the abolitionist movement and laid the foundation for modern feminisms.
During the Civil War, which pitted the slave states of the South against the abolitionists of the North, Harriet Jacobs and her daughter Louisa They worked tirelessly to help freed slaves.
They established schools and distributed clothing, food, books. In Savannah and Alexandria, Harriet became a community leaderorganizing efforts to educate and empower freedmen.
Fighter. Harriet Jacobs wrote a key book about the horror of slavery. Above, the cover of one of the Spanish editions, from the Swiss Army Knife label.However, the years after the war were not easy. The country remained divided, and racial violence increased. Harriet faced financial difficulties and the loss of loved ones, including her son Joseph, who disappeared in Australia.
In 1897 Harriet died. From the attic where she lived locked up for seven years to the pages of her writings, she made it clear that even in suffocating environmentsthe will can open new horizons.
Hoy, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (published in Spanish under two titles: Adventures in the life of a young slave y Episodes in the life of a slave) is considered an essential piece of American literature and a key source for understanding the cruelty of captivitybut also the strength of those who refuse to give in, even in the worst conditions.
