explain what Jacobs’s editorial apparatus asks a reader to concede before the narrative begins, and cite the exact sentences that do that work.
Instruction
Most books begin with the author. This one begins with two other people telling you the author is real.
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl opens with a preface signed “Linda Brent” — a pseudonym — and then an introduction by Lydia Maria Child, a well-known white abolitionist writer, stating that she has revised the manuscript and that its author is a real person known to her. Behind that sits a letter from Amy Post, another white abolitionist, confirming the same thing.
Before you have read a sentence of the story, three things have happened. The author has concealed her name. A second writer has certified that the first one exists. And a third has certified the second. That is the situation this book was written into, and it is the subject of this lesson.
Why the apparatus is there. In 1861, a first-person account of enslavement written by a woman who had escaped it was disbelieved by default. Readers assumed such books were ghost-written by abolitionists, exaggerated for political effect, or invented outright. Frederick Douglass’s Narrative (1845) carries the same machinery for the same reason — two prefaces by white men vouching that Douglass wrote it. The doubt was not incidental; it was the reading condition.
So the apparatus is not decoration and it is not merely historical context. It is part of the argument, and it cuts two ways at once. It grants the book a hearing. It also concedes, in advance, that the author’s word alone was not enough — which is precisely what the book goes on to dispute.
What Child actually claims, and what she is careful not to claim. Read her introduction closely. She says she has “revised the manuscript” but adds that she has added nothing, and that the author wrote it herself. She says she has arranged the material “for the purpose of condensation and orderly arrangement.” She takes responsibility for asking readers to face material she calls delicate. Every one of those sentences is doing a job, and the jobs are in tension: establish the author, establish the editor’s restraint, and prepare a squeamish audience for what is coming.
Now Jacobs’s own preface, which does something different and harder. She writes that she has concealed names and places, that she is not writing to attract attention to herself, and that she would have preferred silence. Then she states her purpose directly: to make the women of the North understand the condition of enslaved women in the South. The move is worth naming, because you will meet it all semester — she disclaims the motive a hostile reader would assume, and then names the motive she actually has.
The analytical question for this unit. Not “is this true?” — the scholarship settled that question in 1987, when Jean Fagan Yellin’s archival work confirmed Jacobs’s authorship and the accuracy of her account. The question is: what does a writer have to do when the audience’s belief cannot be assumed, and what does doing it cost the writing?
Keep a running chart as you read the apparatus. Every sentence in it is either granting authority, limiting a claim, or managing the reader.
Reading: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl — the author’s preface and the editor’s introduction
Harriet Jacobs, writing as Linda Brent; introduction by Lydia Maria Child (Boston, 1861) · Public domain
Read both twice. The second time, mark every sentence that grants authority, limits a claim, or manages the reader — and notice how often one sentence does two of the three.
Preface by the Author. Reader, be assured this narrative is no fiction. I am aware that some of my adventures may seem incredible; but they are, nevertheless, strictly true. I have not exaggerated the wrongs inflicted by Slavery; on the contrary, my descriptions fall far short of the facts. I have concealed the names of places, and given persons fictitious names. I had no motive for secrecy on my own account, but I deemed it kind and considerate towards others to pursue this course.
… I do earnestly desire to arouse the women of the North to a realizing sense of the condition of two millions of women at the South, still in bondage, suffering what I suffered, and most of them far worse. I want to add my testimony to that of abler pens to convince the people of the Free States what Slavery really is.
Introduction by the Editor. The author of the following autobiography is personally known to me, and her conversation and manners inspire me with confidence. … I have not added any thing to the incidents, or changed the import of her very pertinent remarks. With trifling exceptions, both the ideas and the language are her own. I pruned excrescences a little, but otherwise I have not changed her lively and dramatic way of telling her own story.
… I am well aware that many will accuse me of indecorum for presenting these pages to the public; for the experiences of this intelligent and much-injured woman belong to a class which some call delicate subjects, and others indelicate. This peculiar phase of Slavery has generally been kept veiled; but the public ought to be made acquainted with its monstrous features, and I willingly take the responsibility of presenting them with the veil withdrawn.
Formative check
Work through these before moving on. They are not graded — they tell you, and your teacher, whether the standard below has landed yet.
Jacobs’s book opens with a white editor certifying that its author is real. Before reading the explanation — what does that apparatus do to the book’s argument?
Jacobs writes: “I had no motive for secrecy on my own account, but I deemed it kind and considerate toward others.” What is this sentence doing?
Child’s statement that she “pruned excrescences a little” strengthens the book’s authority without costing it anything.
The prefaces and letters surrounding a text, which shape how it will be read before it begins, are its ; a false name adopted by an author is a .
Quote three sentences from the apparatus — at least one from Jacobs and one from Child. For each, say in one sentence whether it grants authority, limits a claim, or manages the reader, and which of the other two it also does. Then answer: which single sentence gives the book the most, and what does that sentence cost?
How confident are you that you can explain what a piece of a text’s apparatus is doing, using the exact sentence rather than the general situation?