omen. Other narrators had touched on this issue to be sure, but none had explored it with the depth and passion of Jacobs. In this regard, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl was a political effort designed specifically to help ameliorate the condition of black women in slavery. To achieve this end, Jacobs had to break deliberately with the genteel Victorian literary and social conventions that ruled certain subjects, particularly sex and sexuality, out of bounds. Jacobs knew that, judged by the standards of the cult of true womanhood, her sexual history could leave her open to charges of immorality. She chose to confront these issues head-on and, in doing so, pushed her narrative well beyond the conventions of mainstream literary discourse. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl not only moved the slave narrative in a new and striking direction; it also marked the emergence of a bold and determined voice in women's writing on the eve of the Civil War. ...
