Uncle Tom's Cabin
"{It was] for an immense number of people, much less a book than a state of vision, of feeling and of consciousness in which they didn’t sit and read and appraise and pass the time, but walked and talked, and laughed and cried.” -Henry James, 19th century writer
Motivations Stowe read anti-slavery literature including stories of slaves who escaped their cruel masters. One such example was the story of a woman who crossed the Ohio River, clutching onto her child as she leaped onto floating ice chunks.
"Early in the novel when Haley is chasing after her , Eliza... has to cross the Ohio and she jumps across the ice floes to get to Kentucky. That became such a huge important part of American literature during that period and that's the scene that the plays always dramatized because it's such an important moment." ~Prof. Kohn, Interview An immediate reason to write the book was that Stowe's family desperately needed money. |
"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." ~Harriet Beecher Stowe
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Main Plot and Compelling Characters
"The novel describes two parallel tales of redemption and deliverance. Tom, who is sold down the river away from two kindly slaveowners to the brutal Simon Legree, ultimately achieves spiritual salvation; George and Eliza Harris, who escape northward from slavery, ultimately achieve physical freedom." (Source: Harriet, Abolitionists) |
"Sympathetic readers of Uncle Tom's Cabin were thrilled when the fugitive slave Eliza Harris carried her child across the ice floes of the Ohio River and when her husband George fought off slave catchers in a rocky pass. They cried over the death of the angelic little Eva and were horrified by the fatal lashing of Uncle Tom, the gentle, strong enslaved black man. They guffawed at the impish slave girl Topsy and shed thankful tears when she embraced Christianity. They sneered at the selfish hypochondriac Marie St. Clare and loathed the cruel slaveowner Simon Legree. They were fascinated by the brooding, Byronic Augustine St. Clare and were appalled by the stories of sexual exploitation involving enslaved women like Prue and Cassy." (Source: Reynolds, Mightier)
"I'd teach them to read their own Bible, and write their own letter, and read letters that are written to them," said Eva, steadily. "I know … it does come very hard on them, that they can't do these things ... I think it's wrong."
~Uncle Tom's Cabin |
"Now, John, I don't know anything about politics, but I can read my Bible; and there I see that I must feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and comfort the desolate; and that Bible I mean to follow."
~Uncle Tom's Cabin |
"The other slave narratives and sermons contribute to her sense of responsibility to write and this voice reflected in the novel."
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Abolitionists had written six or seven antislavery novels during the 1830s and 1840s, and 'plantation romancers'... For the most part, however, American literature simply ignored the major moral issue of the age.
But the popularity of Uncle Tom's Cabin rested on more than the fact that it dealt with a timely social issue. It succeeded in placing slavery into a religious and moral framework deeply meaningful to early nineteenth-century Americans… By awakening countless Northerners to the fact that black slaves suffered just as the ancient Hebrews had suffered in bondage in ancient Egypt, Uncle Tom's Cabin created a new awareness of the moral evil of slavery."
(Source: Harriet, Abolitionists)