In "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl", Harriet Jacobs writes: "Slavery is terrible for men; but it is much more terrible for women " (64). Jacobs' work shows that the harms of slavery were worse for women depending on their gender. Jacobs elucidates the disparity between society's dictates about appropriate roles for 19th-century women and the ways in which slavery prevented a woman from fulfilling those roles. The book illustrates the double standard between white women and black women. Harriet Jacobs is an example of the enslaved woman's desire to maintain the prescribed virtues, but how her circumstances often prevented her from practicing them. The expectations of women of the time lay in four areas: piety, purity, domesticity and obedience. The conditions in which the slave woman lived were opposed to the norms and virtues set by society. This resulted in the enslaved woman being denied what was considered a woman's identity. This was another way in which slavery attempted to eliminate the value that slaves had in themselves. Jacobs continually struggled with this. His belief in the ideas of piety, purity, domesticity is evidenced in his admiration for a rare and caring mistress. Piety was one of the qualities subscribed to. However, to be pious and acquire religious knowledge, it would be necessary to read the Bible. This would pose a barrier to the overwhelming majority of enslaved women because illiteracy was widespread, Jacobs wrote, "...it was against the law; and slaves were whipped and imprisoned for teaching themselves to read" ( 61). Since Jacobs could read and write, illiteracy was not an obstacle. Yet slaves were forbidden from meeting in their own churches, ... middle of paper ... and the annihilation of a slave woman as an individual being. To practice this kind of obedience, to be submissive, would be certain death for Jacobs, whether in the physical or spiritual sense. Jacobs' "disobedience" occurred when his piety, purity, and domestic life were threatened. Instead, Jacobs urged obedience to the precept of morality. Additionally, she adhered to obedience to what was considered moral and right for white women. Prescribed ideas of what constituted womanhood in the 1800s surrounded purity, piety, domesticity, and obedience. These were most of the characteristics that the slave woman was not permitted to practice or acquire. Examining the experiences of Harriet Jacobs in "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl," an eyewitness shows that although Jacobs desired to practice the precepts of her time, slavery often forced her to do otherwise..