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Reading and Redemption in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2010

By
Sandra Gunning
Edited by
Deborah M. Garfield  and
Rafia Zafar
Deborah M. Garfield
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles
Rafia Zafar
Affiliation:
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
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Summary

The post–Civil War version of Olive Gilbert's Narrative of Sojourner Truth included a curious letter by Indiana abolitionist William Hayward describing an 1858 confrontation between Truth and proslavery forces: During a rural antislavery meeting, a Dr. T. W. Strain declared “that a doubt existed in the minds of many persons present respecting the sex of the speaker”; according to Strain, Truth should “submit her breast to the inspection of some of the ladies present, that the doubt may be removed by their testimony.” When Truth inquired about the basis for his opinion, Strain continued: “‘Your voice is not the voice of a woman, it is the voice of a man, and we believe you to be a man’” [Narrative, 138).

Facing an unruly crowd, the indefatigable Truth replied

that her breasts had suckled many a white babe, to the exclusion of her own offspring; that some of those white babies had grown to man's estate; that although they had sucked her colored breasts, they were … far more manly than they (her persecutors) appeared to be; and she quietly asked them, as she disrobed her bosom, if they too, wished to suck!

Truth thus uncovers herself before the crowd, “not to her shame … but to their shame” [Narrative, 139). With Truth's sex verified, Hayward gloats that Strain loses a forty-dollar bet on her masculinity.

Type
Chapter
Information
Harriet Jacobs and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
New Critical Essays
 , pp. 131 - 155
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1996

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