Jacobs’ desire to see her children dead instead of having them controlled by her enslaver seems similar to what motivated Margaret Garner, the woman who inspired the plot of Toni Morrison’s Beloved, to murder her own daughter instead of seeing her return to slavery. This sentiment is repeated a couple paragraphs later when Dr. Flint throws Jacobs’ son across the room. For a moment, she thinks her son is dead, but when he does open his eyes, she writes, “I don’t know whether I was very happy.”