The Cambridge Introduction to the 19th-Century American Novel, the plot of the traditional sentimental novel focuses on a young woman finding her way in life , usually without support. from a conventional family. Women overcome life's difficulties, and "the key to their triumph lies in their self-control" (Cane 113). According to Gregg Cane, these didactic novels are aimed at young women to instill in them the idea that home, marriage and family are what build a morally good woman. Plot is used to extract an emotional response from the audience. Nina Baym describes all sentimental novels as having the same plot. In essence, [they are] the story of a young girl who is deprived of the supports she has rightly or wrongly relied on to sustain her throughout her life and who is faced with the need to earn her own way in the world. This young girl is rightly called a heroine because her role is precisely analogous to that of the little-known or underestimated young people in fairy tales who accomplish dazzling feats and find a place for themselves in the land of happy endings. (11-12)These novels were extremely popular with white women in the 19th century. The heroine is a young virginal girl (if not truly virgin, at least retaining the idea that she is still intact and innocent) who must stand on her own two feet and protect her virginity from evil men. She is often depicted as a damsel in distress, and in the end a brave man saves her. They get married and live a perfect happily ever after. In Harriet Jacobs's slave narrative, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, and in Harriet Wilson's autobiographical novel, Our Nig, both African-American authors incorporate the idea of... . middle of paper......Cambridge University Press, 2007. eBook. Foster, Frances Smith. Written by herself: literary production of African-American women, 1746-1892. United States of America, 1993. Print.Johnson, Yvonne. African American Women's Voices: The Use of Narrative and Authoritative Voice in the Works of Harriet Jacobs, Zora Neale Hurston, and Alice Walker. New York: Peter Lang Publishing Company, Inc., 1998. Print. Mullen, Harryette. “Fugue language: resistant orality in the cabin of Uncle Tom, our nigger, incidents in the life of a slave and beloved.” The culture of feeling: race, gender and sentimentality in 19th century America Ed. Shirley Samuels. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. eBook. Santamarina, Xiomara. Elaborate professions: Narratives of African American working-class womanhood. United States of America: The University of North Carolina Press, 2005. eBook.