1. Brief Introduction of the Author and the Book
Born in Litchfield, Connecticut, in 1811, Stowe was the daughter of a well-known Presbyterian minister, Lyman Beecher. The Beechers expected their children to shape their world. Catharine, the oldest daughter, was a pioneer in women’s education. Isabella, the youngest daughter, was a founder of the National Women’s Suffrage Association. Different from her sisters and brothers, Stowe found her purpose in life was to write. Besides bearing and caring for children after marriage, Stowe became active in local literary clubs, continuing reading the books of her girlhood, and developing writing talents which had been evident in her early life.
Harriet Beecher Stowe published more than 20 books, but Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the best-selling anti-slavery novel, made her an international celebrity and secured her place in history. By the time Uncle Tom’s Cabin began to appear in serial installments in a journal in June 1851, the crisis over slavery in the United States has reached a high pitch. When encouraged by her sister-in-law to “write something that will make this whole nation feel what an accursed thing slavery is,” Stowe declared, ”I will write something. I will if I live.” Upon its publication, the novel immediately produced a flood of imitative dramas, poems and other literary forms. However, after the Civil War it was almost neglected. It’s until the Civil Rights Movement that readers’ interests in reading anti-slavery fiction reawaked and the novel became widely read again.
2. Plot Summary
Tom, who is a good and pious man, is a slave of Kentucky farmer named Arthur Shelby. Having run up large debts, Shelby decides to sell Tom and a young slave Harry, the son of Mrs. Shelby’s maid Eliza. Eliza is an educated mulatto slave, who is her mistress’ petted and indulged favorite. Overhearing the news of selling Tom and her son, she decides to flee. Though Tom has been altered by Eliza, he still chooses to stay for the safety of Eliza and for the interests of his master. In order to evades capture, Eliza makes a dramatic crossing over the half-frozen Ohio River with Harry in her arms. During her escape, with the help of an abolitionist, she meets up with her husband George Harris, who escapes previously and plans to purchase his family’s freedom. Eventually through all kinds of hardships and dangers, the Harris family reunites joyously and journeys north to Canada to seek for freedom.
Meanwhile, Tom is walked off by a slave trader. On the boat towards a slave market, Tom meets and befriends an angelic little white girl who is named Eva. Eva urges her father, St. Clare, to buy Tom from the slave trader. In St. Clare’s home in New Orleans, Tom grows increasingly close to Eva because the deep Christian faith they both have. But good time doesn’t last long. Eva dies of tuberculosis two years later. St. Clare pledges to free Tom, nevertheless, his sudden death dashes this pledge. His cruel wife sells Tom to a vicious plantation owner named Legree.
Tom is taken to rural Louisiana with the other two new slaves, including Emmeline. There, Tom meets Cassy and hears her tragedy. Beatings is as common as hunger in Tom's life. Cassy and Emmeline can not stand the maltreatment any longer, they decide to run away. Though Tom supports their escape, he stays to handle the possible results and withstand Legree’s torments. He is beaten to death because he refuses to tell where Cassy and Emmeline have gone.
On Cassy and Emmeline’s boat to freedom, they meet the Harris family. Cassy finds that Eliza is her long-lost daughter who was sold as a child. The newly reunited family travels to Liberia.
3. Main Characters
Uncle Tom: We first hear of Uncle Tom when his master describes him to a salve trader “Tom is a good, steady, sensible, pious fellow”. He even doesn’t escape while conducting business for him in Cincinnati. Though he knows that he will be sold, he still maintains despite the urging of his wife. In Stowe’s attempt to make Tom an ideal Christian, she wipes out most of the imperfect human nature and adds all virtues she could think of to him. He loves everyone no matter he is white or black. St. Clare describes him as “a moral miracle”. Since falls into the affliction of Legree, he has become more of a saint than a man. Wherever he goes, he tries to spread some of the love and goodwill of his religious beliefs. He helps two slave women to escape, in the spirit of Christian kindness, not from the sense of racial solidarity. He even pledges to Legree that “ Mas’r Legree, as ye bought me, I’ll be a true and faithful servant to ye.” In fact, Tom mentions that he wants to be free just three times in the novel. Finally, in order to help the two slave women to get free, he dies under the cruel beating of Legree. “Poor critters!” said Tom, “ I’d be willing to bar’ all I have, if it’ll only bring ye to Christ! O, Lord! Give me these two more souls, I pray!” His death has something similar with the death of Jesus, which gets people’s sympathy and arises the resentment towards slavery.
Eliza: As a literate, polite Christian woman, Eliza embodies the mid-nineteenth-century ideal of feminity. Her obsessive strength of love for her son, Harry, is showed by a spectacular escape, crossing the Ohio River. She grabs Harry when she hears the alter and leaps over the rushing currents onto a raft of ice. She springs from one chunk of ice to the next, regardless of the pain and cold until she reaches the other side. “I always thought that I must obey my master and mistress or I couldn’t be a Christian”, she says early in the novel. When she overhears her master’s conversation with Harry, a slave trader, motherly devotion leads her frenzied, desperate flight from slavery.
Miss Ophelia: Miss Ophelia is St. Clare’s cousin from the North and she comes to help him manage the household. She is an educated and independent female. As a guest in the St. Clare household, she initially follows Beecher’s advice by restricting her activities to the domestic sphere. Though Eva encourages her to love the black, she still recoils at the thought of kissing and hugging the slaves. This attitude shows her inner unaware prejudice towards slaves. When Miss Ophelia gains legal title to Topsy, she gradually transforms from a typical “woman of the nominally free states” into a slaveholder “Christian woman of the South”. Miss Ophelia shows that she has learned the lesson by converting and educating her slave Topsy: it is futile to educate and Christianize her slave unless she can guarantee freedom to the slave.
George Harris: George Harris, an intellectually curious and gifted mulatto, is Eliza’s husband. “I’m a man as much as he is. I’m a better man than he is. I know more about business than he does; I am a better manager than he is… What right has he to make a dray-horse of me?” he argues that he deserves freedom. At one point, he confesses to his wife, “I an’t a Christian like you, Eliza; my heart’s full of bitterness. I can’t trust in God. Why does he let things be so?” Later, during his escape, George restates his doubts when he acquaints with a white man “Is there a God to trust in?... O, I’ve seen things all my life that have made me feel that there can’t be a God.” Although still determined to fight for freedom, George and Eliza speak of the happiness they receive from being in each other’s company. He manifests a softened spirit and promises to Eliza, “I’ll try to act worthy of a free man. I’ll try to feel like a Christian.” This new attitude is well exemplified in a heated battle with some slave hunters. After George shoots one of the slave hunters, he helps the wounded man to restore health.
Augustine St. Clare: Augustine St. Clare may be the book’s most tragic white figure, because he dies before he can realize his beloved daughter’s request of freeing his slaves. His fails to inherit the love of his mother and inadvertently caused the desperately horrors of Tom’s life under Legree, which embodies the spiritual enervation of his spirit. Though he admits the evil of slavery but he still tolerates and practices it.
Eva: Eva is the “fair, high-bred child, with her golden head, her deep eyes, her spiritual, noble brow and prince-like movements.” We first see her going among the slaves on the riverboat “with her hands full of candy, nuts, and oranges, which she would distribute joyfully to them”. Two years later, Eva becomes a slightly more mature and she responds differently to the evils of slavery. Learning to read, she comes to love the Bible, and she develops her antislavery sympathies into antislavery proposals.Jogos Dora, Eva expresses her belief that slaves should be taught to read Scripture and wishes she had the money to “buy a place in the free states, and take all our people there, and hire teachers, to teach them to read and write.” She is a little loving girl and an beautiful angel. Wearing white clothes like an innocent angel, her heart is fulfilled with love towards all races and classes. When Eva’s father asks her why she wants to buy Tom, she says that she wants him to be happy. When her nurse has a headache, she gives the valuable medicine to her. When she is seriously ill, she requests her aunt to cut some of the curls from her hair and gives all the slaves a lock by which to remember her. Stowe’s idealization of Eva can only be matched by that of Uncle Tom.
4. Comment
It will never be easy to make definite judgments on the merits of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Many major critical studies argued there was no place for Stowe in American literature in this century. It is said that “only recently has she been considered at all central to the great flowering of native literature before the Civil War known as the American Renaissance”.
This book is so famous and I’ve already known it in elementary school. But when I first read this book, I found it was quite different from my expectation. In Uncle Tom’s Cabin, there is an abundance of references to the Bible, Christian imagery and entire biblical passages are quoted. Uncle Tom’s Cabin is primarily a Christian novel. To me, who is not a Christian, it seemed quite alienate to me. In this novel, there are many ideal people, Uncle Tom is among the ones who receive a lavish praise from Stowe. Though what I know about is Christianity is limited, Tom’s policy of “turning the other cheek” reminds me of Jesus. When he is threatened with pain and death by a man who oppresses and torments him, Tom’s first thought is to save his oppressor’s soul. “Mas’r, if you was sick, or in trouble, or dying, and I could save ye, I’d give ye my heart’s blood; and, if taking every drop of blood in this poor old body would save your precious soul, I’d give ‘em freely, as the Lord gave his for me.” Tom shows his love to all people even the one who pushes him to death and still prays for him. However, such a Christian virtue appeared incomprehensible to me. It seems that nowadays Tom’s passivity doesn’t deserve any approving treatment.
Nevertheless, it’s unfair to make judgments on Uncle Tom’s Cabin based on the contemporary moral principles. My impression towards this book totally changed when I place myself in the times of this novel.
Cincinnati, where Stowe lived in, and Kentucky, where slavery was rampant are separated by the Ohio River. Stowe concerned about the misery of slaves very much. After living across the Ohio River from slaveholding communities for 18 years, she witnessed and heard a lot about the painful experience of slaves. She hated the cruelty and evil of slavery.Juegos Dora In 1850, she couldn’t endure the brutalities any long and the desire to accuse burned like a fire. The Fugitive Slave Act passed in the same year. Everyday, a lot of people came to Stowe’s home to confide their misfortunes, cry for the forever parting with beloved and tell their tragic situation. "I wrote what I did because as a woman, as a mother, I was oppressed and broken-hearted with the sorrows and injustice I saw, because as a Christian I felt the dishonor to Christianity - because as a lover of my county, I trembled at the coming day of wrath." Saying these words, Stowe took a pen to record these and expose the horrors of Southern slavery to people in the North.
In Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Stowe draws crucial distinctions in personality and behavior between good people and bad people. Legree is the representative of the darkness of slavery. He demonstrates infernal qualities in every action. He desperately tries to break Tom’s religious faith. Eliza and George Harris may rival any white in the novel in nobility. “I’m a man as much as he is. I’m a better man than he is. I know more about business than he does; I am a better manager than he is… What right has he to make a dray-horse of me?” This argument from George Harris has sense. Eliza has soft voice and manner, which seems to be a gift from God. These natural graces are united with beauty of the most dazzling kind. She has strong character and brave love to her son. George Harris is a bright and talented young mulatto man. He is hired out by his master to work in a bagging factory, where his adroitness and ingenuity caused him to be considered the first hand in the place. They deserve freedom, but receive unjust treatment of being sold. This unfair situation is caused by slavery. Exquisite description molds different characters and makes readers experience the same feeling as the characters in the book. The distinctions between good people and bad people cause readers’ hatred, sympathy and regret. Uncle Tom’s Cabin diagnosed the cruelty of society, and put forward a explosive question “how long will the evil slavery exist”.
In Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the women Stowe portrays are morally conscientious, committed, and courageous. Throughout the book, we can see many examples of idealized womanhood, of perfect mothers and wives who attempt to find salvation for their morally inferior husbands or son. Mrs. Bird, St. Clare’s mother, Legree’s mother and Mrs. Shelby are good examples. However, not all women act as morally virtuous and insightful saints in this novel. Marie St. Clare, the slaveholder is not belong to this group. Unlike Emily Shelby who has always felt that slavery is wrong, Marie St. Clare has always felt it to be right. So we can see although Christianity and sin are shown in active and deadly opposition, although most women appear to be morally superior to most men, and although women bear the responsibility of instilling Christian values in their sons, husbands, and slaves, Christian sympathy is not gender specific. Both women and men are capable of Christian feeling and its opposite. We can see that the problem of slavery in Uncle Tom’s Cabin cannot be resolved by a simple shift of power to women.
After reading this novel for several times, Uncle Tom’s sacrifice moved me to tears. In 1850s, maybe Christianity was a way to help the sufferers find hope for life and release of heart, and it was also a way to restrict the slaveholders’ actions. In the unreasonable slavery world, having belief in God really helped a lot. According to the values of today, we probably appreciate the brave actions of Eliza and George. They survive by running away and reunite their family. I think in 1850s, the death of Tom was more impressive.dora games Stowe wrote this book in order to attack the Fugitive Slave Act and the institution it protected, advocating the immediate emancipation of the slaves and freedom of all people. While still writing this book, Stowe said that she knew at the very start that Tom would die undoubtedly. The appearance of Eva, the angelic girl is also meaningful. She brought hope to the sufferers at that time. The slaves who lived in endless suffering could find the world still had beauty, happiness and truth. The death of Tom and Eva is just like destruction of perfection. Stowe needs to let the hero die to stress that his death is the consequence of the evils of slavery. Legree’s torments on Tom doesn’t break his religious faith. Tom prays for him until he dies, which shows the victory of virtue over villainy. Placing myself in that times, I understand the meaningful using of Christian values in the novel. Spiritual sustenance can support the despairing slaves to keep living and fight for their freedom. Compared with Eliza and George’s eventual happy life, Tom’s stirs up readers’ strong pity, which shows the importance of freedom.
5. Conclusion
The extensive debate between supporters and opponents of Uncle Tom’s Cabin has been existed since its publication. Uncle Tom’s Cabin is an impressive work that can’t be overlooked. This novel appears to foretell the coming of the Civil War and many have regarded Stowe’s works as the cause for starting the war. Her work has received great attention from different social classes. Different times determine different writing styles, contents and material selections. Stowe believed that religious conversion could bring about historical changes. That’s the reason why in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Christianity is an inspiration and a guide along the way to help achieve a society free of slaves.
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