By writing personal accounts of their lives, many women of the nineteenth century used the emotion of sympathy to share their feelings. According to Rosemarie Garland Thompson, "Sympathy is an effective rhetorical strategy in women's writing because it combines and embodies the fundamental elements of the feminine script." (Thompson 131) By using sympathy in their writing, Harriet Jacobs and Elizabeth Barret Browning, both nineteenth century women writers, made their readers want to help reform the South.

Harriet Jacobs wrote a moving slave narrative where she describes in great detail how her master constantly verbally and sexually harassed her. She was scared for her life many times when both her master, and his wife, threatened her. She tried many methods of escape, including becoming involved with a white lawyer who lived next door. Reading of her affair with a white man was completely shocking to...