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Harriet Jacobs takes a great risk writing about her trials as a house servant in the south and a fugitive in the north. The writings of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl vividly portrays a true account of the brutality slavery held for women. A perspective that was relatively secretive during Jacobs" time. Jacobs" narrative focuses on subjugation due to race but it also portrays many women in strong and often open roles. Women in these roles were minimal and often suffered for their outspoken roles. .
Harriet Jacobs" narrative is a powerful statement unveiling the impossibility and undesirability of achieving the ideal put forth by men and maintained by women. Jacobs directs her account of the afflictions a woman is subjected to in the chain of slavery to women of the north to gain sympathy for their sisters that were enslaved in the south. In showing this, Jacobs reveals the danger of such self disapprobation women maintained by accepting the idealized role that men have set a goal for which to strive. She suggests that slave women be judged by different standards than those applied to other women. Jacobs develops a moral code that appraises the specific social and historical position of captive black women. Jacobs" will power and strength shown in her narrative are characteristics of womanly behavior being developed by the emerging feminist movement. .
In struggling against the brutal dynamics of a system that simultaneously set before her ideals of a true woman, but refused to acknowledge her as a human being, Jacobs emerges scarred but victorious. Her rational powers and will to action facilitate her efforts to find strategies for dealing with sexual harassment from her master, for maintaining family unity, and in establishing a moral code in harmony with her beliefs and situation. In Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Jacobs" primary ordeal is the persistent sexual harassment and obsessive pursuit by Dr.