Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is a slave narrative that was one of the first autobiographical narratives about the struggle for freedom by female slaves and an account of the sexual harassment and abuse they endured. The book is an in-depth chronological account of Jacobs's life as a slave, and the decisions and choices she made to gain freedom for herself and her children. It addresses the struggles and sexual abuse that young women slaves faced on the plantations, their struggles with rape, the pressure to have sex at an early age, the selling of their children, and the treatment of female slaves by their mistresses.