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The novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe, focuses on a slave named Uncle Tom to weave a portrayal of the cruelty of slavery, finding redemption in the idea that Christian love can conquer something so destructive. It turned out to be the bestselling novel of the nineteenth century, helping to further the abolitionist cause after publication in 1852. At the start of the American Civil War Abraham Lincoln met Stowe and is said to have declared "So this is the little lady who made this big war." The novel had a major effect on people's attitudes towards slavery at the time.
LisaMaria_C: This is the slave narrative of Harriet Jacobs and shares with Stowe a Christian sensibility and emphasis on how slavery destroys a slaves moral agency.
Anonymous user: Dixon himself called The Clansman a sequel to Uncle Tom. In many ways its antithesis. Both controversial. Both worth examining for historical context more so than literary value.
Initially published in installments, from 1851 to 1852, this American classic is a work of power. Stowe herself disclaimed authorship, attributing the book to God’s hand; and, it isn’t hard to understand why. Uncle Tom’s Cabin would be a wonderful read if only because of Stowe’s excellent skill as a writer, but the true power of the story lies much deeper than literary skill. With bold passion, Stowe calls an entire nation (North and South alike) to carry it’s ways before the great throne of God. She urges humans to feel for the humanity of others, often breaking the “fourth wall” to challenge the reader, “Now, how would you feel if it were you?” She tries her society in the great court of God’s impending judgment, as she writes of one slave-master, “His Master’ll be sending for him, and then see how he’ll look!” Or, again from the closing sentence, “Not surer is the eternal law by which the millstone sinks in the ocean, than that stranger law by which injustice and cruelty shall bring on nations the wrath of Almighty God!” The whole of the book is an unrelenting challenge to see the world through the eyes of Heaven. And, above all else, it is a proclamation of living Gospel. If Stowe believes the world has any hope at all, she believes it is the Gospel of Christ, which she places at the very core of this book. She offers two Christ-figures, one white and one black, in the persons of young Evangeline (a play on the Greek word for “gospel”) and Uncle Tom. The score of characters who find salvation through the life, love, and death of these two figures is the point of the book, as Stowe essentially asserts that man’s only hope against the darkest evils of this world is the Gospel of Christ, received and lived by those who will fully lay down their lives for Him. As a side note, it is terribly unfortunate that “Uncle Tom” has become a derogatory label in our society, as Stowe’s Uncle Tom was the most powerful, Christlike character in the book. It is my understanding that later theatrical adaptations of Uncle Tom cast him in a different light, but to misunderstand Stowe’s Uncle Tom as a weak man is to misunderstand the Gospel of Christ. The true Uncle Tom broke racism on an incredible scale; he did not further it’s cause. ( )
Where to start. Stowe's intended audience were white Americans who had the power to begin the changes necessary to abolish slavery. As a protest novel Stowe appealed to her readers' emotional reactions. Throughout the course of the novel Stowe works to gain her readers' emotional trust and investment in the story and characters, relating closely to common personality types and values of her time. Stowe works to persuade her audience to see slavery through the lens of motherhood and Christianity. Something about how we're all children under God and finding equality there. Since I'm a mother myself, the moves Stowe employs hit home pretty hard. As readers we give authors a little of our trust and Stowe methodically and intentionally betrays that trust. Definitely a book I love to hate. ( )
Late in the afternoon of a chilly day in February, two gentlemen were sitting alone over their wine, in a well-furnished dining-parlor, in the town of P_______, in Kentucky.
Quotations
"Your heart is better than your head, in this case, John," said the wife, laying her little white hand on his. "Could I ever have loved you, had I not known you better than you know yourself?"
Of course, in a novel, people's hearts break, and they die, and that is the end of it; and in a story this is very convenient. But in real life we do not die when all that makes life bright to us dies to us. There is a most busy and important round of eating, drinking, dressing, walking, visiting, buying, selling, talking, reading, and all that makes up what is commonly called living, yet to be gone through; and this yet remained to Augustine.
"Well," said St. Clare, "suppose that something should bring down the price of cotton once and forever, and make the whole slave property a drug in the market, don't you think we should soon have another version of the Scripture doctrine? What a flood of light would pour into the church, all at once, and how immediately it would be discovered that everything in the Bible and reason went the other way!"
My master! and who made him my master? That's what I think of—what right has he to me? I'm a man as much as he is. I know more about business than he does; I am a better manager than he is; I can read better than he can; I can write a better hand,—and I've learned it all myself, and no thanks to him,—I've learned it in spite of him; and now, what right has he to make a dray-horse of me?
The mousing man, who bore the name of Marks, instantly stopped his sipping, and, poking his head forward, looked shrewdly on the new acquaintance, as a cat sometimes looks at a moving dry leaf, or some other possible object of pursuit.
There was not a white person on the place, and, in southern courts, the testimony of colored blood is nothing.
“ Witness, eternal God!” Said George, kneeling on the grave of his poor; “ oh, witness, that, from this hour, I will do what one man can to drive out this curse of slavery from my land!”
Last words
Not by combining together, to protect injustice and cruelty, and making a common capital of sin, is this Union to be saved,—but by repentance, justice and mercy; for, not surer is the eternal law by which the millstone sinks in the ocean, than that stronger law, by which injustice and cruelty shall bring on nations the wrath of Almighty God!
The novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe, focuses on a slave named Uncle Tom to weave a portrayal of the cruelty of slavery, finding redemption in the idea that Christian love can conquer something so destructive. It turned out to be the bestselling novel of the nineteenth century, helping to further the abolitionist cause after publication in 1852. At the start of the American Civil War Abraham Lincoln met Stowe and is said to have declared "So this is the little lady who made this big war." The novel had a major effect on people's attitudes towards slavery at the time.
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