"Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" is the first full-length narrative written by a former female slave in America. It sets itself apart from other narratives by appealing directly to women and focusing on the particular struggles that girls faced during slavery.
A main theme is family. Slavery is a family affair in almost every sense of the word. Slavery ruins families either by physically separating them, in the case of the slave families, or corrupting them, in the case of the white families. Jacobs depicts slave families as being kind and loyal, while the white slave-holding families as greedy and cruel.
Incidents direct appeals to white readers is one way that Jacobs attempts to convince readers that black and white women are fundamentally the same.
Women like Harriet Jacobs and the abolitionist who took her in were crucial forces in ending slavery.
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