Uncle Tom’s Cabin, or Life among the Lowly

(1852)

Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin, or Life among the Lowly in serialized segments for the antislavery newspaper the National Era during the years of 1851 and 1852. It was then published as a two-volume set in 1852 by John P. Jewett and Company of Boston. Stowe wrote the novel to rally others to the antislavery movement as a result of her outrage about the institution of slavery in the Southern United States. According to Stowe herself, the story took shape in her mind while she was in church, where she had a vision of a saintly black man being mercilessly flogged, yet praying for his torturers as he died. Her success in persuading readers to join her cause was in large part due to the powerful emotions aroused by her text; readers were so overcome that they cried openly over the heart-wrenching story of Uncle Tom and Eliza. Congressman Horace Greeley, traveling by rail from Boston to Washington, D.C., apparently had “to stop overnight in a hotel in Springfield, Massachusetts, because he had been weeping so copiously in public on the train as he read” (“Preface” viii). The book was the first to feature an African-American hero and certainly the first to depict him as well as the other slave characters as human beings. Humanizing slaves in this way completely changed the attitudes of her readers, who then felt profound sympathy for the plight of slaves. Initially published in a print run of only 5, 000 copies, the book subsequently kept 14 presses running day and night and sold 300, 000 copies in the United States alone. Translated into many languages, Uncle Tom’s Cabin turned Harriet Beecher Stowe into one of the most celebrated authors in the world. On the strength of this success, Stowe became very popular as a public speaker, traveling in Europe as well as across the United States.

The character Uncle Tom is a loyal, devout Christian slave who lives on the Shelby plantation at the opening of the novel. When Mr. Shelby meets financial difficulties, he reluctantly agrees to sell Tom and his wife’s favorite slave, Eliza’s young boy, Harry, whose heartbroken mother decides to flee across the frozen Ohio River to Canada rather than allow him to be sold. In the meantime, Tom is sold at an auction to Augustine St. Clare, whose angelic little daughter, Eva, is saved by Tom when she falls over the side of a riverboat. These events initiate the two primary plotlines in Stowe’s novel: one that leads south with Tom’s eventual descent into the most hellish conditions of slavery, and one that leads north toward Canada and freedom with Eliza, her husband George, and their young son, Harry.

Although Tom misses his family, he is treated kindly by the easygoing St. Clare, and his friendship with Eva flourishes. The two share an extraordinarily strong Christian faith and become highly unlikely disciples (Eva, a white child; Tom, a black slave). However, the young girl has fragile health, and eventually she dies in one of the most memorable and sentimental scenes in the novel. Soon afterward, St. Clare is killed in an accident and Tom is again taken to the slave auction, where he is sold to his final master, Simon Legree, a brutal man who drinks heavily. Despite the evil nature of his master, Tom responds to Legree’s cruelty with courage and religious fortitude. Even when tortured in Legree’s attempt to gain information about two runaway slaves, Cassy and Emmeline, Tom refuses to reveal it. In a rage Simon Legree has him flogged to death. By the time young Master George Shelby arrives to free Uncle Tom and to return him to his loving family, Tom’s death is imminent. George vows to continue the fight for abolition and to keep Tom’s memory alive by proclaiming his cabin as a symbol of his martyrdom.

The other significant line of the plot takes Eliza and her young child Harry on a desperate flight from the slave trader Haley. Two other slaves, Sam and Andy, cross the Ohio River with them and north to freedom in Canada, where they hope to unite with their husband and father, George Harris, who is also fleeing his jealous and cruel master. The image of Eliza’s leaping onto large, shifting chunks of ice to cross the partially frozen river, clutching her son tightly in her arms, is one of the most celebrated and sentimental scenes in the novel. It also works as a symbol of supreme motherhood in keeping with Stowe’s political agenda to overturn patriarchal power by convincing women of their own power within the female sphere. Stowe’s political purpose is further advanced when Eliza arrives at the Quaker Settlement, where she is greeted by the benevolent Rachel Halliday, whose serene “face and form made ‘mother’ seem the most natural word in the world” and who treats the frightened and desperate Eliza as if she were her own daughter. When they sit together for breakfast, Rachel is at the head of the table, usurping the traditionally male place of the head of the household, emanating “nothing but loving words and gentle moralities, and motherly loving kindness.” The scene also enacts the Holy Communion and the ritual “breaking of bread” but triumphantly places Rachel Halliday in the position of the divine. Stowe believed that matriarchal power would create the ideal atmosphere of “mutual confidence and good fellowship” that Eliza witnesses in the Quaker household, and especially in the kitchen, where “everything went on so sociably, so quietly, so harmoniously” that “it seemed so pleasant to everyone to do just what they were doing” (Tompkins, Sentimental Power 519).

In keeping with the highly religious society of the time, Harriet Beecher Stowe takes on a preacherly and highly didactic tone in this novel in a way that suits her purposes as stated in her preface: “Every influence of literature... in our times is becoming more and more in unison with the great master chord of Christianity, ‘good will to man’ ”. In many instances, she appeals directly to the reader’s sympathies by means of a conventional device of 19th-century novels, narratorial intrusion, to make her point abundantly clear. An early example occurs on the Shelby plantation in Kentucky, where Stowe insists that the “good-humored indulgence” of some masters and mistresses, “and the affectionate loyalty of some slaves” should not be misinterpreted as a reason to condone the institution of slavery (Stowe, Cabin 7–8). So long as the law considers all these human beings, with beating hearts and living affections, only as so many things belonging to a master, —so long as the failure, or misfortune, or imprudence, or death of the kindest owner, may cause them to exchange a life of kind protection and indulgence for one of hopeless misery and toil, —so long it is impossible to make anything beautiful or desirable in the best administration of slavery. Stowe’s novel is founded on basic Christian principles, particularly on paradoxes expressed in the beatitudes (Matthew 5: 3): “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” The atonement after death, in spirit, for the injustices in life, in body, will occur after the Judgment Day, when the victory of the spirit will be revealed. This triumphant reversal of power is at the center of her “Appeal to the Women of the United States” (Independent February 23, 1854), where Stowe urges women to influence their husbands, brothers, and other male counterparts to show true Christian compassion and love toward their slaves and in that way to contribute to the abolition of slavery.

Certain episodes, the scene at the Bird household, for example, are pointedly intended to demonstrate the real possibility of maternal power exercised in the domestic sphere overturning patriarchal power in the public sphere (and in this case, Senator Bird even makes the laws). Mrs. Bird, a timid soul, who nevertheless becomes intimidating when faced with the persecution of helpless creatures, exhibits her power when Eliza Harris arrives with her little boy Harry at the Bird home, in desperate flight from her pursuers. Mrs. Bird’s empathy for them flows to her husband, who assists her in protecting them in their home, in spite of the Fugitive Slave Act. The Birds go so far as to offer Eliza and Harry the clothing that was made for their own baby, who died at birth. Such sentimental scenes appear again and again in the novel—a strategy that Stowe hopes will “awaken sympathy and feeling for the African race, as they exist among us; to show their wrongs and sorrows, under a system so necessarily cruel and unjust to defeat and do away the good effects of all that can be attempted for them, by their best friends, under it” (Preface xiii). Thus, Mrs. Bird’s apparent powerlessness in the public sphere is transformed through Stowe’s concept of maternal power in the private sphere so that Mrs. Bird proves able to overturn her husband’s resolve to abide by the law that he himself has helped to legislate.

The most highly charged sentimental scene occurs when the golden-haired angelic child Eva lies on her deathbed. Surrounded by her family and devoted slaves, including her dear friend Uncle Tom, Eva frequently displays Christian love, affecting everyone, even the mischievous and unruly Topsy. The “child angel” scene is a common one in Victorian literature as the purity and innocence of the child serve as a powerful example of redemption for those left behind. Stowe’s rendition of this device works within the Christian framework of sacrifice for the spiritual salvation of others. Little Eva’s triumphant exclamation “O, love! —joy! —peace! ” at the moment of her death is taken as confirmation of the reality of heaven by all of her witnesses, as anticipated by her beloved Tom: “When that ar blessed child goes into the kingdom, they’ll open the door so wide, we’ll all get a look in at the glory. Eva’s golden curls, given to all she leaves behind, are symbols of her victory over death and of the promise to live as good Christians so that they will eventually be with Eva again in heaven. In fact, all those who witness Eva’s death are transformed and converted: Topsy promises to love Jesus and to be a good girl, Aunt Ophelia promises to help Topsy fulfill her promise, and St. Clare rediscovers the faith of his youth before he is accidentally killed. The Christian paradox stated in the beatitudes has been fulfilled, and, more importantly for Stowe’s purposes, through the self-sacrificing power of Eva’s maternal love is confirmed.

As a result of St. Clare’s death, his cold-hearted wife, Marie, believes she must sell all the slaves and, once again, Tom is sent to the auction block. Just as Eva and her father enter paradise, the reader follows Tom’s descent into the hell of plantation slavery. The descent into the Deep South of the lower Mississippi represented the horror of being “sold down the river” to enter into the cruelest form of slavery. If Tom is a Christ figure, then Simon Legree is the Antichrist. Tom is forced to work beyond his physical limits and is whipped mercilessly and often. His passivity, his “turn-the-other-cheek” gesture of forgiveness, infuriates Legree so that his cruel treatment of Tom only increases. The evil nature of Simon Legree serves Stowe’s thematic purpose in emphasizing the implications of not respecting the power of maternal love: Legree’s mother was kind and loving and raised her son according to Christian values, but her son repudiated her love and later burned the letter to him written on her deathbed, along with the curl of hair she enclosed with her words of forgiveness and prayers. When one of Legree’s slaves, Sambo, returns from flogging Tom, he carries a charm that consists of a dollar given to Tom by young George Shelby and a lock of Eva’s hair that Tom wears to fortify himself against pain. Legree is horrified that it might be the hair his own mother had given to him and imagines it to be curling tightly around his finger so he throws it into the fire. These events emphasize Stowe’s purpose in her characterization of Legree, for because he does not have a foundation in Christian faith and because he repudiates his mother’s love, his deep-seated guilt leaves him open to superstition and fear: “[Legree] tried to drink, and revel, and swear away the memory; but often, in the night, whose solemn stillness arraigns the bad soul in forced communication with herself, he had seen that pale mother rising by his bedside, and felt the soft twining of that hair around his fingers, till the cold sweat would roll down his face, and he would spring from his bed in horror”. These very fears also work in assisting his slaves, Cassy and Emmeline, in their conspiracy to distract Legree by infl aming his fears and ghostly visions, thus assuring their escape. Stowe’s theme of the power of the spirit over that of the body, the fundamental paradox of the Christian faith, is enacted again in their triumph.

The plots surrounding the slave women Cassy and Emmeline further illustrate Stowe’s belief in the power of maternal love. Embittered by her deep hatred for an earlier master, by whom she has borne children, Henri and Elise, who were then taken from her and sold, Cassy sees Legree as yet another cruel master and she is vengeful enough to murder him. However, when Legree purchases the beautiful 15-year-old Emmeline for sexual purposes, separates her from her mother, and takes her to his plantation house, Cassy’s feelings change. In keeping with Stowe’s theme of the redemptive power of maternal love, Cassy cares for Emmeline as if she were her own child, while the young girl swears that she will always love Cassy as a mother, since she will probably not see her own again. Empowered by their mutual love, they eventually reach freedom with the help of Tom, who, when questioned repeatedly and then flogged mercilessly for information about their whereabouts, sacrifices his own life for them. And again, it is Tom’s unwavering Christian faith and kindness that will convert Cassy. Uncle Tom’s death scene is described in parallels with that of little Eva. The heightened sentimentality of both scenes is meant to pierce through Stowe’s readers’ blindnesses and objectivity and draw forth their sympathy to slaves with intense emotionality. By linking the divine nature of a golden-haired little girl with that of a faithful old slave, Stowe also emphasizes the humanity of slaves as a whole. Tom’s courageous death so moves his oppressors Sambo and Quimbo that they plead with him to teach them about the Jesus “that’s been a standin’ by [him] so, all this night”. Their conversion dramatically underscores all of the previous conversions in the novel and drives home Stowe’s theme of the power of the spirit: “But, of old, there was One whose suffering changed an instrument of torture, degradation and shame, into a symbol of glory, honor, and immortal life; and, where His spirit is, neither degrading stripes, nor blood, nor insults, can make the Christian’s last struggle less than glorious.” Holding up models of moral perfection for her readers to emulate, Stowe’s theme is fulfilled in the enactment of Tom’s martyrdom. Her allusions to biblical passages clearly indicate her depiction of Tom as a Christ figure. When Legree threatens Tom with death if he will not reveal the whereabouts of Cassy and Emmeline, Tom offers him Christian values of forgiveness, love, and compassion and a plea that he repent in order to avoid eternal damnation. Legree pauses but in the end does not respond to Tom’s kindness, thus sealing his own fate by cruelly striking Tom dead.

The end of the novel finds George and Eliza and Harry happily living in Montreal, Canada. At this point, too, many surprising revelations effect reunions, such as that of Cassy and Eliza, who turn out to be mother and daughter. A characteristic of 19th-century sentimental novels is the use of unlikely coincidence to join various plotlines; Stowe uses the technique for the larger purposes of rewarding those who have shown Christian values of faith and sacrifice and of reuniting mothers and daughters.

Through George Harris’s letter that appears in the final pages of the novel, we learn that he would rather go to Africa, to Liberia, in particular, since he feels more solidarity with the African race than with the white. In a highly oratorical letter, George expresses his desire to help establish an African nation “that shall have a tangible, separate existence of its own”. Topsy also eventually travels to Africa, where she works as a Christian missionary. Stowe’s final plea to the reader is to “ feel right” and, in doing so, to embrace Christian ideals and to effect the abolition of slavery.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin has achieved canonical status despite ongoing critical debate surrounding its representation of slave culture. Black Americans have found Stowe’s racial stereotypes offensive, particularly her portrayal of “Negroes” as emotional, fiercely devout, loyal, and childlike. James Baldwin’s protest against such stereotypes was passionately expressed in his influential essay “Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son.” Baldwin objected to the sterile designation of “Negro” as he wanted “to prevent [himself] from becoming merely a Negro; or, even merely Negro writer.” Moreover, Stowe’s characterization of Uncle Tom as a passive sufferer has become a touchstone for modern critiques of racism. But the moral force of her attack on slavery remains. By humanizing slaves through her highly sentimentalized portrayal of them, Stowe swayed her readers’ hearts and profoundly changed their attitudes toward slavery.

Jane Tompkins’s influential essay “Sentimental Power: Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the Politics of Literary History” offers a strong and convincing defense of the 19th-century sentimental genre in which the novel was written. As Tompkins points out, critics have chosen “to disregard the power of the book because... [its] political message” and its “emotional [tone] made it propaganda”. But, Tompkins argues, “ Uncle Tom’s Cabin retells the culture’s central religious myth, the story of the crucifixion, in terms of the nation’s greatest political conflict—slavery—and of its most cherished social beliefs—the sanctity of motherhood and the family. It is because Stowe is able to combine so many of the culture’s central concerns in a narrative that is immediately accessible to the general population that she is able to move so many people so deeply”.