Why does Linda hide in the garret?

Linda hides in her grandmother’s garret — the “loophole of retreat” — because open flight would endanger her children and Flint still hunts her. Seven years in a crawl space let her evade cottage imprisonment, watch Ellen and Benny through a peephole, and wait for a safer escape route while grandmother and allies misdirect Flint.

The hiding is resistance-and-escape at extreme cost: bodily harm, near madness, constant fear of discovery. Garret chapters make slavery’s psychological violence visible. Teach students to weigh this against male fugitive narratives emphasizing linear runaway plots; Linda’s agency includes stillness as survival tactic.