Harriet Jacobs was one of the first former slave women to write an autobiography of her own life. Jacobs started writing her book, called Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, when she was still enslaved. Portions of the book were included in the New York Tribune, but the serial was stopped before the too-controversial for newspaper accounts of sexual abuse were printed.

The most shocking part of the book is that Jacobs spent seven years hiding in a tiny space in her grandmother’s barn after she escaped from slavery. She spent many years after that freeing her children from slavery. She changed the names of all parties involved, but Jacobs’ owner and abuser, dubbed Dr. Flint in the narrator, was revealed to be Dr. James Norcom.

Jacobs’ representation of herself employs different methods of subverting expectations of white middle class femininity. Her narrative seemed to provide room for white women to envy her position, at least in regards to relations with men, in that Jacobs used the tools of white domesticity while simultaneously moving outside of it. Jacobs, by following both the rules of domesticity and the rules of slavery, is an enviable figure on whom white women can place their fantasies for lives both in and outside of traditional femininity.

Jacobs’ narrative seems to be a product of working within the constraints of domestic white womanhood, as well as outside of it. Jacobs uses the expectations of white domesticity to protect herself from Dr. Flint—she engages his chivalry by telling him that she is pregnant with his child.

Jacobs has to transgress a core institution of white femininity, marriage, and sleep with a married man out-of-wedlock. Jacobs uses both the laws of white domesticity and the means of the slave woman to stop her attacker. Jacobs’ narrative seems to claim that her own narrative retains the measly benefits of a woman in slavery—more sexual freedom—while also stealing from the rules of white femininity and domesticity.
 

Jacobs allows white women to connect with her on domestic terms, but, in the way cited above, also treads outside the sphere that white women would have been allowed to go. Jacobs calls on white women’s domestic sympathies, like marriage and children. Both of these examples illustrate Jacobs’ domestic priorities, thereby letting white women identify with her on this level. Still, although citing a commitment to these spheres, Jacobs also transgresses them, for example, in the example stated above.

White women, contained within the constraints of only the white female sphere, and not both within and out of it like Jacobs is, may have projected fantasies of retaining their own domestic priorities, while still having the freedom to use methods outside of this realm for their own benefits.
 

Jacobs combines the rules of white femininity and slave transgressing in her interactions with Dr. Flint. Jacobs provides a relatable baseline in white domesticity in her narrative, often mentioning her want to marriage and children, while still illustrating her movement out of the domestic sphere.