Is there any bond stronger than the one between a mother and her child? In Frederick Douglass's narrative and "The Incidents of a Slave Girl," by Harriet Jacobs, this question is put to the test through the horrors of slavery. Linda Brent has a strong relationship with her grandmother who instills the morals that Linda lived by before she sacrificed in hopes that she would be freed. .
Oppositely to Brent, Douglass did not have a relationship with his mother and her absence shaped him into the man he would later become. Although these motherly figures are not always present in the protagonist's life, they were still able to influence their children a great deal despite how far slavery pushed them. The authors included these relationships in the ways that they did to show the cruelness and inhumane side of slavery. This is seen through the morals Linda's grandmother instills in her and the effects his mothers absence has on Douglass. .
Because Linda's mother died when she was young, her motherly figure growing up was her grandmother of whom she was very close too. Her grandmother was a free woman but chose to stay near Linda because of the role she played in her life and the strong bond they had. She was a well-respected elder because of strict morals that she instilled upon herself as well her granddaughter. Linda "had resolved that [she] would be virtuous, though [she] was a slave." She had morals and vowed to keep them to the best of her ability. Her grandmother influenced her to take on and follow these morals. We can see that they were a significant part of her life when Linda felt "humiliated" after what she had done but ultimately it was slavery that forced her to make the choices she did. She went to the extreme for the sole reason of her freedom.
Linda knew it was wrong and when she told her grandmother that, "[her] lips moved to make confession, but the words stuck in [her] throat," the hesitation further shows that she knew it was against the morals that her grandmother had instilled in her.
