“The Loophole of Retreat”: Interstitial Spaces in Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

Through an analysis of architectural terms and theory, this essay argues that the garret Harriet Jacobs inhabited for seven years while trying to secure her freedom can be seen as interstitial. That is, an ambiguous architectural location that exists between other clearly defined spaces and is undetectable to those who are unaware of its existence. In the garret, Jacobs’s life itself comes to be interstitial as she is neither one thing nor another; Jacobs is, however, more in control of her body and her life while in the garret than she has been at any other time of her life. In fact, Jacobs identifies the garret as empowering and uses the power of its interstitiality to her advantage. Within the garret’s relative safety, Jacobs actively manipulates her master into freeing her children, and she eventually uses it as her gateway to permanent freedom. In addition to recognizing the garret as interstitial, Jacobs also seems to envision her narrative as such.

This essay examines interstitial spaces in Jacobs’s narrative, arguing that she conceived of such spaces as literal and metaphoric. Having already learned about the power of interstitial spaces while in the garret, Jacobs casts her narrative as interstitial to argue against slavery and challenge the nineteenth-century domestic ideologies that did not account for enslaved women. Thus, from her interstitial position, Jacobs negotiates the boundaries between the public and private spheres while arguing that all women, regardless of race, class, or ethnicity, should be guaranteed the same protections that domestic ideology mandate for white, middle- and upper-class women, while also questioning the double standards that marginalized women face.