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| The book’s protagonist and a pseudonym for the author. She begins life innocently, unaware of her enslaved state. In the face of betrayal and harassment at the hands of her white masters, she soon develops the knowledge, skills, and determination that she needs to defend herself. He eventually spends much of his family's money to try and track down Linda. |
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| Linda’s master, enemy, and would-be lover. Although he has the legal right to “use” Linda in any way he chooses, he seeks to seduce her by means of threats and trickery rather than outright force. Linda’s rebelliousness enrages him, and he becomes obsessed with the idea of breaking her will. Throughout the long battle over Linda’s right to own herself, he never shows any sign of remorse or understanding that she is a person with rights and feelings. |
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| Linda’s maternal grandmother and chief ally. She is pious and patient, suffering silently as she watches her children and grandchildren sold off and abused by their masters. For her, family ties must be preserved at all costs, even if it means a life spent in slavery. |
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| Linda’s mistress and Dr. Flint’s jealous wife. She is characterized mainly by her hypocrisy. She is a church woman who supposedly suffers from weak nerves, but she treats her slaves with callousness and brutality. She demonstrates how the slave system has distorted the character of southern women. |
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| Linda’s white lover and the father of her children. He has a kindlier nature than Dr. Flint, but he feels no real love or responsibility for his mixed-race children. He repeatedly breaks his promises to Linda that he will free them. |
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| Linda’s beloved uncle, a slave who defies and beats his master and then runs away. His successful escape inspires Linda, but also shows her that to run away means to give up all family and community ties. |
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| Linda’s children with Mr. Sands. Linda loves them passionately, and her feelings about them drive the book’s action. They are dutiful children but otherwise are not characterized in great detail. |
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| Linda’s other uncle, instrumental in her escape. He is reliable and moderate, remaining in the South with his family long after his mother, Aunt Martha, buys his freedom. |
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| Linda’s brother, to whom she is close. His escape from Mr. Sands, his relatively “kind” master, shows that even a privileged slave desires freedom above all else. |
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| Linda’s maternal aunt and Mrs. Flint’s slave. A martyr figure, she is slowly killed by Mrs. Flint’s abuse. |
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| A family friend who helps Linda escape. He urges Linda to risk the escape he has planned rather than to remain in her attic hideaway. |
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| An upper-class white friend of Aunt Martha’s who hides Linda for a while. She is not named even with a pseudonym and is one of the few genuinely sympathetic slave owners in the book. |
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| A slave in the household of the white benefactress. She is uneducated but an intelligent, loyal, and resourceful slave who provides material assistance and encouragement to Linda. |
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| A family friend who lives with Aunt Martha and helps Linda escape into hiding. |
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| An old slave woman who tells Aunt Martha to rejoice that William has run away. |
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| Dr. Flint’s daughter and Linda’s legal “owner.” She serves mainly as Dr. Flint’s puppet, sometimes writing Linda letters in her name, trying to trick her into returning to Dr. Flint. |
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| Emily Flint’s husband, who seeks to recapture Linda after Dr. Flint dies. Although he is northern by birth, entering southern society has made him feel as floundering and desensitized as any native-born slave holder. |
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| Dr. Flint’s son. He is essentially a carbon copy of his father, with the same lecherous tendencies toward his female slaves that Dr. Flint has. |
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| Nicholas Flint's bride. Seemingly kind at first, she provides further evidence of the cruelty of slaveholding women when she orders an elderly slave to eat grass. |
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| Mr. Sands’s New York cousin, to whom he “gives” Ellen. She is a little slice of the Old South in Brooklyn, selfishly treating Ellen as property and highlighting the continued danger for escaped slaves even after they reach the Free States. |
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| A southerner visiting Brooklyn who betrays Linda’s whereabouts to Dr. Flint. Like Mrs. Hobbs, he signals that a fugitive slave can never feel safe again. |
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| Linda’s first employer in New York City. She is a kindly Englishwoman who helps Linda hide from the Flints. She dies and her husband soon remarries. |
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| Linda's employer in New York City who takes Linda on a trip to England to take care of his daughter. |
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| Linda's first employer's second wife. She is an abolitionist American who protects Linda at great risk to herself and ultimately buys her freedom from Mr. Dodge. Linda claims to be very grateful to her but is also very upset at being purchased by her. |
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| Abolitionist antislavery friends of Linda’s in Rochester. They appear in the book under their real names. They show Linda that it is possible for white people to treat her as an equal. |
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| Free blacks, and the first people Linda meets in Philadelphia. They are legally married and live morally upstanding lives. They remind Linda that slavery has robbed her of the chance to have a normal existence. |
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| A slave friend of Linda’s with whom she escapes by boat to the North. She had the devastating experience of watching all of her children be sold to slave traders. |
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| An elderly woman and the sister of Aunt Martha’s mistress. She buys and frees Aunt Martha when Dr. Sands puts her on the auction block. |
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| An acquaintance of Linda’s from home whom she meets on the street in New York. He has escaped by stealing money from his dead master, and Linda uses him as an example of how slaves cannot be judged by the same moral standards as free citizens. |
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| Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself |
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| An unspecified Southern town; New York City; Boston; and, for a short time, England |
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| Sentimental Fiction- Novels that rely on symbolism to evoke a pathos response. |
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9x7x3 feet
7 years spent, first ventured out after 5.5 years |
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| The Cult of True Womanhood |
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1. Piety
2. Chastity
3. Domesticity
4. Submissiveness |
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1. Mulatto 1/2 black, 1/2 white
2. Griffe 1/2 black, 1/2 mulatto
3. Quadroon 1/4 black, 3/4 white
4. Octaroon 1/8 black, 7/8 white |
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| Known as the Hottentot Venus, born on the Eastern Cape of South Africa. |
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| Purchased Sarah Bartman and exploited her in London and throughout England |
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| Purchased Bartman from Dunlop. Was a French animal trainer. Exploited Bartman throughout France. |
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| Scientist who examined Bartman with a team of zoologists. Dissected her body after death to "prove" Africans were related to monkeys. |
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| Museum that housed parts of Bartman's body until 2000. Still displays one plaster cast of her body. |
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