In the antebellum period, the Cult of True Womanhood was prevalent among upper and middle-class white women. This set of ideals, as described by Barbara Welter, asserted that all women possessed (or should possess) the virtues of piety, purity, domesticity, and submissiveness. Venetria K. Patton explains that Jacobs and Harriet E. Wilson, who wrote "Our Nig", reconfigured the genres of slave narrative and sentimental novel, claiming the titles of "woman and mother" for black females, and suggesting that society's definition of womanhood was too narrow. They argued and "remodeled" Stowe's descriptions of black maternity.