According to Yellin, "Incidents" has a "radical feminist content." Yellin states that "Incidents" is linked to the then popular genre of the seduction novel. That genre, examples of which include "Charlotte Temple" (1791) and "The Quadroons", written in 1842 by M. Lydia Child, who would later become the editor of "Incidents", features the story of a virtuous, but helpless woman seduced by a man. Her failure to adhere to the standard of sexual behaviour set by the "white partriarchy", "inevitably" leads to her "self-destruction and death". Although Jacobs describes her sexual transgression (i.e. the liaison with Sawyer) in terms of guilt and sin, she also sees it as a "mistaken tactic in the struggle for freedom". Most important, the book does not end with self-destruction, but with liberty.