Dr. Flint Quotes

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In the slave narrative Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs is trying to show how society has an effect on privileged white people from the perspectives of Dr. Flint and Mr. Sands. Both characters are interesting due to the fact that Dr. Flint is the master of Linda and Mr. Sands is the husband of Linda. Dr. Flint is perceived as a nice person because he does not use violence against Linda and loves her. However, society has made Dr. Flint a villainous character where he is obsessed with Linda because he wants to receive power from her. In connection with Dr. Flint, Mr. Sands is not a slave owner, therefore, he acts really nice and he has the ability to buy the freedom of Linda. However, he is an ineffective and a disappointing …show more content…
Flint is an evil person toward Linda and in general, however, there is a good side too which suggest that he would have been a very different person if he is not a slave master. Dr. Flint is nice because he does not resort to “corporal punishment” towards Linda, therefore, Linda describes him as non-violent and loving towards her (19). Another way Dr. Flint is nice is that he will give Linda many chances when she would disobey him and most of the time he will not hit her. Linda is surprised by the lack of punishment she receives and she questions, “why he [does] not strike [her]” (29). Dr. Flint then states that “he ha[s] never punished [her] himself, and he would not allow anybody else to punish [her]” (30). If Dr. Flint is mean to her, then he will lose her. Dr. Flint does not want to be violent toward her because he states that “[he] never wronged her, or wished to wrong her” (30). Dr. Flint is not like those slave masters who whip their slaves on the daily basis for the fun of it, instead, he shows that he has emotions towards his slaves and tries to protect them. He even builds a home for Linda where she can sleep and keep care of her babies. Moreover, Dr. Flint always forgives Linda because he knows she will leave and he has to show his kindness to her by not being violent and begin caring for her. However he changes due to the influence of society that he lives in, otherwise, he would have been different from all other slave