Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl · Chapter
VI: The Jealous Mistress explained
Linda describes the relentless persecution she faces from both Dr.
What happens
Linda describes the relentless persecution she faces from both Dr. Flint and his jealous wife, Mrs. Flint. She recounts Dr. Flint's manipulative advances, her desperate attempts to avoid him, and Mrs. Flint's nightly surveillance and psychological torment. Linda reflects on the hypocrisy of slaveholding marriages and the complicity of Northerners in upholding slavery.
Themes in this chapter
Sexual Exploitation and Agency
Dr. Flint's predatory behavior and Linda's resistance highlight the systemic sexual exploitation of enslaved women.
Hypocrisy of Religion and Morality
Dr. Flint's self-righteous claims of kindness contrast with his immoral actions, and Northerners' hypocrisy is condemned.
Gender and Racial Injustice
Mrs. Flint's jealousy is misdirected at Linda rather than her husband, illustrating how white women's powerlessness is displaced onto enslaved women.
Characters to notice
- Linda Brent
Narrates her sixteenth year, enduring Dr. Flint's harassment and Mrs. Flint's jealousy, while maintaining hope for escape.
- Dr. Flint
Continues his sexual advances, uses manipulation and threats, and claims he cannot sell Linda because she is his daughter's property.
- Mrs. Flint
Jealous mistress who watches Linda obsessively, accuses her of falsehoods, and torments her with nightly vigils.
- Grandmother
Suspicious of Linda's situation, tries to buy her but is refused by Dr. Flint.
Key passages
“I would ten thousand times rather that my children should be the half-starved paupers of Ireland than to be the most pampered among the slaves of America.”
Linda would prefer her children to be impoverished Irish paupers than to be well-treated slaves, because slavery destroys virtue and freedom.
Linda contrasts the relative freedom of poverty with the moral degradation of slavery.
“Mrs. Flint possessed the key to her husband's character before I was born. She might have used this knowledge to counsel and to screen the young and the innocent among her slaves; but for them she had no sympathy.”
Mrs. Flint understood her husband's predatory nature but chose not to protect the enslaved women, instead treating them with suspicion and cruelty.
Linda criticizes Mrs. Flint for failing to use her knowledge to help others.
“The secrets of slavery are concealed like those of the Inquisition.”
The hidden abuses of slavery are kept secret just as the tortures of the Inquisition were.
Linda compares the concealment of slavery's horrors to the secrecy of the Inquisition.