Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

Slave narratives are written in the first-person, allowing the formerly enslaved, who were typically forbidden access to reading and writing by law, the authority of telling their own stories. This narrative voice also let them address White readers directly, in a plea for sympathy and understanding.

Though Jacobs addresses the reader directly, she demonstrates her erudition and command of the literary genres of the day through her use of form and structure in her narrative. For example, knowing the value placed on sexual modesty at the time, Jacobs wants to illustrate that she follows the rules of Victorian propriety. To wit, she withholds details like what specifically Dr. Flint whispered in her ear when he began to proposition her for sex. She also refrains from recalling the insults that he hurled at her when he found out about her pregnancy, explaining them away as “too low, too revolting” for any pen to describe (121), allows readers to imagine these words themselves.

Jacobs’s emphasis on modesty and her focus on Dr. Flint’s sexual obsession strongly suggest that Jacobs was directing her text at White women readers, particularly those who would have supported women’s rights causes like suffrage. Moreover, by positioning herself as an innocent woman in danger from a sexual predator, Jacobs moves her narrative from the genre of slave account to that of the sensation novel, the very popular thrillers of the day.