Harriet Jacobs story "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" is a true story about her life and her struggles growing up and being a female slave, Jacobs wrote her story during the 1850's and published it in 1861, the same year the civil war began. In this narrative Jacobs was not only able to recall and describe the physical pains slaves go through, but also made it easier to understand what slaves went through mentally. Slave owners even affected the slave's sexual lives from continuous sexual abuse. Sexual abuse from slave owners caused a serious problem for slaves and caused women to feel father apart from men. The tradition of treating women as property in the south made it difficult for people to see the immediate effects of the abuse, but over time it became clear that slave women and men were treated very differently. The fact that men had power over their female slave's sexuality affected not only women slaves but also negatively affected many relationships between families, genders, and race.
Sexual abuse aimed at slave women caused the slave owners wives to feel jealous and enraged that there husband would pick a slave over them. This caused problems for slave women because now not only was their master sexually abusing them, but they also lose their relationship with the wives which can be especially bad in some cases. One line from Jacobs narrative that shows this is "The mistress, who ought to protect the helpless victim, has no other feelings towards her but those of jealousy and rage. The degradation, the wrongs, the vices, that grow out of slavery, are more than I can describe. They are greater than you would willingly believe. Surely, if you credited one half the truths that are told you concerning the helpless millions suffering in this cruel bondage, you at the north would not help to tighten the yoke." (Jacobs 26). In this quote Jacobs explains what she thinks Mrs.