Metzcher-Smith, Marilyn K.

Although the relationship between Harriet Jacobs and her grandmother in Jacobs's slave narrative seems at first a simple case of maternal and filial love, closer examination reveals a complex and carefully crafted interaction between author, persona, and character. Jacobs's manumitted grandmother attempts to gain autonomy by emulating white models for behavior in a dominant white culture that nevertheless continues to exclude her. Although strongly influenced by her grandmother, Jacobs's persona, Linda Brent, learns to negotiate the power struggles of slavery by defining herself. The price Jacobs/Brent pays for gaining a voice is the disintegration of her and her grandmother's supportive relationship. Jacobs controls the narrative development of this relationship in order to represent her northern middle-class white women readers in her text. She represents her readers so as to both accommodate and criticize the social differences between women of different races and social standings.