Jacobsen's immediate importance was his status as the 'writer of his generation.'
Jacobsen's breakthrough came already in 1876 with the historical and psychological novel Fru Marie Grubbe," entitled Marie Grubbe in English, "which for the first time in Danish literature presented a profound portrayal of a woman as a creature of instinct and desire and as a being searching for her own identity. The book's defiant individualism asserting human values as opposed to society's judgment was also a sign of modernity."