The space of the garret, in which Jacobs confined herself for seven years, has been taken up as a metaphor in black critical thought, most notably by theorist Katherine McKittrick. In her text "Demonic Grounds: Black Women and the Cartographies of Struggle", McKittrick argues that the garret "highlights how geography is transformed by Jacobs into a usable and paradoxical space." When she initially enters her "loophole of retreat," Jacobs states that "continued darkness was oppressive…without one gleam of light…[and with no object for my eye to rest upon." However, once she bores holes through the space with a gimlet, Jacobs creates for herself an oppositional perspective on the workings of the plantation—she comes to inhabit what McKittrick terms a "disembodied master-eye, seeing from nowhere." The garret offers Jacobs an alternate way of seeing, allowing her to reimagine freedom while shielding her from the hypervisibility to which black people—especially black women—are always already subject.