Similarities Between Frankenstein And Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl

For Mary Shelley and Harriet Jacobs, author of Frankenstein and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, the dilemma of male power and its relations with authorships as an act of masculinity alters the writers’ identity as both hide their real names through anonymity or pseudonym. Both Jacob and Shelley, however, use a strong authoring through their central characters that are forced to discover/recover their sense of self in a male patriarchal society. In the physically restricted space of their hiding space, Linda and the monster come to redefine themselves and gain an authority of self and voice.

Connection between the early slave narrative and the Romantic literature exposes the thread of patriarchal tyranny. These power shifts between Frankenstein

and the monster mirrors the world of slavery in Linda’s time in which master and father are often one and the same and in which the master position himself in the role of the father being the provider and decision maker and the slave as a child in that they are dependent and powerless. The patriarchal tyranny becomes clear during the transgressive sexuality in which the slave master forces the female slaves into unwanted sexual relations. This is first exhibit within the second chapter of Incident in the Life of a Slave Girl, when Dr. Flint received his meal but was unpleased by the meal and ordered the cook, “to be whipped, or compel[led] her to eat every mouthful of it in his presence” (Jacob 15). From the beginning, it is apparent that Dr. Flint is a manipulative and fearful man among his slaves. It is clear from the relationship between Dr. Flint and his slaves that he gains control by dehumanizing the slaves outside of the father-child structure except in the case of Linda. Dr. Flint tries to force Linda to surrender to him mentally and emotionally by “pollut[ing] her mind with foul images and to destroy the pure principles inculcated by my grandmother” (Jacob 60). Although she does not suffer to the extent of his other slaves, she is belittled in that she is constantly threatened with violence and broken down spiritually.
The link between slave-owner and Frankenstein is also one of parent and child. Victor unnatural creation of another life suggests a feminist appeal on the scientific world usage of the natural world as a mean of condemnation of masculine ridicule of feminine power. Thus, Victor’s relationship with his creation can be seen as a perversion of a mother figure in his unnatural birthing of his creation that he calls a monster or like a father figure who cannot see himself in his son. Victor is more than a mother but also a person tempted by knowledge outside the human realm. Victor states,
“Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow” (Shelley 41).
In compare to most mothers who take joy in the birth of the arrival of their child after laborious labor, Frankenstein is sickened by his creation and leave. Afterward, Victor sleeps and dreams a dream that equate feminine beauty with death. He kisses his fiancé, who ends up dying and her body turns into his dead mother: “I thought that I held the corpse of my dead mother in my arms; a shroud enveloped her form, and saw the grave-worms crawling in the folds on the flannel” (Shelley 45). From this dream of the dead maternal figure Victor waken to meet the gaze of his creation: “I beheld…the miserable monster whom I had created” (Shelley 45). However, Victor response does not resemble those of maternity, and thus he is seen as the struggling father figure.
There lies a connection between the slave and the creature as Shelley’s depiction of her monster reflects the attitude towards non-white and the characteristic of the monster reveals description commonly associated with African-American male of the West Indies and of West African exploration. The creature “yellow skin” and “lustrous black” represent the “mulatto” and the Asian of the yellow risk (Shelley 45). Shelley thus creates not an African –American monster but a threatening “other” that displays racial overtones. This connection between slave and the creature is more evident when the monster reminds Victor “thou hast made me more powerful than thyself” (Shelley 78) which shows that despite being bound to his creator he could easily rebel against his authority. The monster can then be seen as a figure for the rebellious slave colony.
For Jacob, identity arises from the separation of oneself from the condition of the body rather than it and dependence on that condition. Whites enslaved African-Americans and degrade them into a position of otherness of monstrous similarly as Victor rejects his creations. In both case, the body is compare to the accustomed European standard that both Linda and the creature find themselves excluded from. The creature and Jacob do not fit these standards as one is crafted from the remains of the dead and born into a world in which he does not belong while Linda is born into slavery. The creature finds wholeness only by owning his body and actions and gaining intelligence and self-expression. Linda too tries to seek wholeness, in her case legal ownership of self and her children and the right to control her body. The creature’s ownership is possession of the self-whereas Linda is having her own identity. Throughout the narrative, Linda account the diverse account of the abuse of slave reflecting, “And as for the colored race, it needs an abler pen than mine to describe the extremity of their sufferings, the depth of their degradation” (Jacobs 58). Jacobs spends several chapter addressing the brutality of the slave masters and Linda’s own personal fear of being rape by Dr. Flint to reflect whites’ ill treatment of slave’s bodies through beating and raping, which shows white’s perception about identity as being through the flesh.
Both the monster and Linda seek refuge in a confide crawl space. It is from their isolation that they rediscover themselves. The creature is given the opportunity to create a familiar bond that was denied to him by his maker. In watching the interaction between Mr. DeLacey and Agatha, the creature becomes full of “sensation of a peculiar and overpowering nature; they were mixture of pain and pleasure, such as I had never before experience” (Shelley 85). Through their interaction, the creature learns to identify emotions and even comes to have his own feelings in perspective. Yet however, because the DeLacey are unaware that the creature lives in the hovel, there is no sense of identity for the creature but only the longing of his humanity. The creature retreats in the hovel because he is rejected, so does Linda, who is by forced her slave master into retreat. The creature describes the hovel as “[his] place of refuge… constructed of wood, but so low that I could with difficulty sit upright in it” (Shelley 84). Similar to Linda’s hiding spot, it was cramp and “offered no light or air” (Jacob 147).
For both the creature and Linda, the compact space offers little comfort beyond the safety from those who abuse them.

This metaphoric womb allows them to birth themselves as new, reflect, and reformulate plans. Linda’s retreatment in the garret is the beginning of her journey to freedom. However, her freedom from Dr. Flint is hindered by the reality that she is physically trapped in the crawl space. Linda has found an outlet but she is not completely free but rather it is a beginning to establish herself. Even after escaping to the North and being free from the crawl space and Dr. Flint, she still has not found freedom until she is not legally free. By hiding in the crawl space, Linda feels free, half-humane, just as the creature finds himself alive yet lacking human form because he’s an outsider due to lack of human skills. The crawl space becomes Linda refugee from oppression and harassment and the creature, the hovel allows him to hide his body from those who do not understand

him.
Like the creature, Linda takes comfort in the presence of family.

Despite being uncomfortable in the crawl space, she suffers, she recalls, “But I was not comfortless. I heard the voices of my children” (Jacobs 135).Longing to be closer to them, she makes holes in the wall in order to see her children. Through these holes she “could watch the children, and when they were near enough, I could hear their talk” (Jacob 135). Like the creature, Linda takes comfort in what she can see and overhear, though she is denied the chance to interact. Both pose a risk in coming out of their seclusion and must love from a distance. For the creature, he hides in the hovel after realizing his hideousness and out of fear of being rejected and cast out again. For Linda, to reveal herself to anyone outside her family would mean putting herself back in the hands of Dr. Flint. The hovel and the crawl space becomes a place of restriction and silence for both the creature and Linda who are unable to interact with

society.
Narration in establishing the truth of their story becomes a significant aspect in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and Frankenstein. More specifically letters becomes an outlet to the truth of their life. In Frankenstein, the creature offered Victors, “copies of letter… [as proof of] the truth of my tale” (Shelley 97). The belief is that within the letter is truth. Similarly, in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, before Jacobs begins her narrative, she attests to the truth of the narrative and states, “this narrative is no fiction.” Throughout her narrative, Jacob continuously uses letters to authenticate her story as seen by the letters sent and received. Linda does not respond to any of this letter however, except during her hiding to the false letter Dr. Flint has substituted for her own. Through her rewriting his words, which were rewriting hers, she asserts her authority over his. Both the creature and Linda comes to own their self through their action of telling and is moved to open the eyes of the audience to their suffering. In Frankenstein, the creature make clear his lonely life due to his master’s rejection and his story particularly in its central location within the narrative frame, gives meaning to the novel as a whole. For Linda, authority is a literary form and this is seen in Jacob’s chapter, “Loopholes of Retreat”, where she exercise her authority over the limitation of male narrative and her overcoming the limitation of the sentimental novel, proving that in her eyes, authority is not to be restricted based on class, race or gender.
In both Mary Shelley and Harriet Jacob, Frankenstein and Incident in the Life of a Slave Girl, both protagonists Linda Bennet and the creature shares a remarkable similarity in their attempt to humanize themselves and find their identity, but ultimately they are unable to do so. Both attempt to become a part of society, but because of their physical appearance, they are met with constant and violent rejection. Both Shelley and Jacob present the problems of white man masculinity and the limited mentality that beauty consists of a white complexion. By the end, Linda and the creature are physically free from their oppressors but because of society standard of beauty, both are still mentality enslaved.