Harriet Jacobs Dual Consciousness Analysis

Harriet Jacobs appeals to the idea of “dual consciousness” for the enslaved woman by illustrating the disconnect between the protection that God gives and the chains of slavery, as well as this inability to be measured by the white ideals of womanhood. She acknowledges the idea of dual consciousness in the first part of the quotation and lets the reader know that slavery colors every part of her life by referring to its genealogy as a “tangled skein”. Jacob’s use of the words “love” and “mortify” serve to point out to white women (her primary readers) the disconnect between accepting her father as a figure of protection, as white women would, and accepting slavery’s predicament onto her own children. Jacobs needs the word “loved” to establish herself, and enslaved women in general, as human to establish the rest of her argument.The word “obliged” also speaks to Jacob’s …show more content…
The soul also lets Jacobs bring a sense of kinship to her argument by focusing on the similarities between her and her readers. Defining dual consciousness as wishing for protection but also freedom, even though both of these seem impossible, her language of praying shows a form of submissiveness to God, while also fighting this submissiveness by rejecting the chain imagery for her daughter. Indicative of the larger paradox of a virtuous enslaved woman, Jacob’s use of both fighting and feeding into a form of submissiveness allows her to paint the image of a slave woman as one who wishes to be thought of as womanly, being appeal to reach the ideas of the cult of domesticity, but also fighting for her freedom at the same time. Jacob’s “mortification” at an “obligation” demonstrates this paradox. The “dual consciousness” of a slave woman also refers to the treatment of children: Jacobs establishes her motherly instincts and grounds herself in the family by praying for her