Written by Harriet Beecher Stowe and published in 1852, Uncle Tom’s Cabin is an American anti-slavery novel that is believed to have helped lay the foundation for the Civil War and fuel the abolitionist movement. A native of Connecticut, Stowe was an abolitionist herself. She wrote this novel to show the reality, brutality, and horrors of slavery in America at the time. Not only that, she also proved that Christian faith and love can overcome anything, even human slavery.

In chapter 18, Uncle Tom tries to get the abused and enslaved Prue to become a Christian and believe in God, for doing so will reward her with a place in heaven. Prue responds by saying, “‘I looks like gwine to heaven,’ said the woman; ‘an’t thar where white folks is gwine? S’pose they’d have me thar? I’d rather go to torment, and get away from Mas’r and Missis’” (Stowe, 225). From Prue’s perspective, slavery and racism were inevitable and unalterable truths about life, as she was seemingly programmed to comply with it by her master and his wife. Because of this, Prue thinks that if she accepts Christianity and reaches heaven, she will be a slave there as well. She unintentionally states that she would rather go to torment (hell) than be a slave in the eternal afterlife. Directing the novel at a primarily Christian audience, Stowe wrote these lines in particular to make the reader aware of just how miserable it was to be a slave during that time period.

Last class, we discussed the characteristic of piety associated with womanhood during the nineteenth and this relationship factors prominently in the book. Often, the women in the book are presented as morally superior to their male counterparts and while they never directly control a situation, they can influence the decisions of the men around them. Mrs. Shelby throughout the novel opposes many of her husband’s decisions on a moral ground. She raises objections to the selling of Tom and even helps Eliza escape before being taken away by Haley.

Mary Bird, through moral suasion, convinces her husband to help the escaped slave Eliza, even though he recently helped pass a fugitive slave law in the Senate. Mary struggled to understand how any “Christian legislation” could pass a law like the Fugitive Slave Act (97). Even though Mary never maintained the authority to make the decision on the fate of Eliza, her persuasion forced her husband to morally reflect and offer assistance to the fugitive slave Eliza.

There is also a certain level of connection between the women that crosses racial barriers. Eliza, when she first meets Mary Bird, pleads by asking if she had ever lost a child. Because of her past experiences, Mary relates to the suffering of Eliza and offers her aid. Finding these cross-racial connections must have been important to Stowe because a majority of her audience would have been upper-middle class white women.

In Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe the reader is shown the hardships of discrimination and the horrors of slavery. Stowe’s book reveals the bitter life of African-American slaves in the south during the Nineteenth Century. Harriet Beecher Stowe offers a diverse cast of Christian slaves (Tom, Eliza, Harry, George, and Chloe) and slave owners (Haley, Loker, Marks, Marie, and Simone Legree) to depict the reality of southern lifestyle in Early America. The direct theme of Stowe’s book emphasizes that slavery is evil. Stowe clearly depicts that slavery is not only a curse on colored people, but it is a curse on American society.

In this book the reader is shown the extremes of slavery through the character of Uncle Tom. Uncle Tom is my favorite character because he is honest and kind. Uncle Tom is African-American slave that is a strong believer of Christianity and a devout follower. Throughout the book the reader is shown the difficult hardships that Tom faces throughout his life as a slave. Instead of running away to Canada with Eliza, George, and Harry, Tom stays with his master Mr. Shelby out of trust and loyalty. Throughout Tom’s journey the reader sees the different kinds of slave owners: St. Clare and Simon Legree. For a slave owner St Clare was a generous man and showed some form of respect to his slaves. Legree on the other hand was very cruel to his workers and discriminatory. For instance, he asked Tom to whip one of the other slaves. But, as a Christian follower Uncle Tom refuses to punish another slave for not doing anything wrong. As a result Tom was whipped and abused for not obeying Legree’s request.

In Uncle Tom’s Cabin the author highlights the sinful behavior of slavery and questions if slavery can truly coexist with Christianity. Harriet Beecher Stowe does an excellent job narrating a very dark period in American history. Through Uncle Tom the reader is shown the corruption behind slavery. The participation of violence and discrimination towards African-American minorities seems unholy. As a result the author questions how Christianity can coexist with the evils of slavery and concludes that slave owners are one of the worst kinds of Christian sinners.

In Harriet Beecher Stowe’s book, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, irony is used to display the evil of slavery. Throughout the story, the various slaves the story follows occasionally meet a ‘benevolent’ slave owner. From Mr. and Mrs. Shelby, who treat their slaves with respect, to Eva St. Clare, the daughter of a plantation owner in Louisiana, some white slave owners respected the humanity their slaves possessed while wishing for the abolishment of slavery. Slavery had a great economic benefit to the white slave owning classes in the South of the United States. Legally classified as property, the black slaves were at the whim of their masters. As such, many slaves were worked to death, while others were beaten and whipped for upsetting their masters. The quality of life the slaves would experience was entirely left up to the kindness of their owners.

For example, Eva St. Clare shares her love with all members of the household in which she lives. She loves her white slave owning family in addition to the numerous slaves her family owns. Upon her death bed, Eva wishes for Tom’s freedom and her father agrees. Unfortunately, Eva’s father is killed soon after her death and Tom is not freed as Marie, Eva’s mother, is now his owner. Marie decides to sell Tom who eventually comes under the ownership of Legree, a cruel plantation owner. Tom is eventually severely beaten and later dies from his wounds following his reunification with George Shelby, the son of Arthur Shelby. The Shelby family respected their slaves and only sold Tom as they had accumulated financial debt. This led Tom to be bought and sold a series of times to different slave owners. After seeing Uncle Tom die, George Shelby vows to do anything he can to have slavery abolished.

Though various characters respected their slaves and claimed to want an end to slavery, many white slave owners benefited from slavery as a system. Though George Shelby was upset at the end of Tom’s life and decides to try and end slavery, his family enabled Tom to exist within a system that would allow his death without justification. Though some slave owners may have been legitimately kind people, the system of slavery was always cruel and unpredictable to the black population as whites benefited from their suffering. The system was so large that no individual could have ended the system on their own. The irony Stowe utilizes in the story, shows how even a kind slave owner enabled the growth and strength of the system that subjugated the black population in slave states.

Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin raises questions about the nature of freedom. In the beginning of the book, Eliza learns that her son Henry will be sold to a new master. She decides at once to take a huge risk and escape to Canada with her son. She succeeds in evading Mr. Haley, and makes it to Canada securing freedom for herself and her son. She was able to accomplish this because she had not been broken when compared to other characters such as Tom. Tom is a loyal honest man, but he has lost the spirit that Eliza shows in her split-second decision to save her family by escaping.

Eliza maintains a fighting spirit that the institution of slavery is designed to strip away. Tom has no fighting spirit. This combined with his naturally compassionate disposition results in his destruction. Instead of running away in the face of the severe cruelty of Simon Legree, Tom stays. Instead, he encourages other slaves to escape which results in his violent end. I believe there are two distinct types of freedom portrayed in this book. One is the typical definition of not having a master and being able to do what you want. The other is purely mental and much more difficult to take away. It is having the courage to say no and act on that instinct. This mental freedom is what Tom did not poses, while Eliza did. This was the difference between these two characters, and the reason Eliza survives.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin described the lives of Uncle Tom and George, and their different choices and endings. Uncle Tom is a figure with complex personalities. On one hand, he was diligent, loyal and accommodating. On the other hand, he was a devote Christian, who showed no resistance in response to all cruel treatments he received from some of his masters.  Uncle Tom served three masters：Shelby, Augustine St. Claire and Legree. The first two treated Tom relatively well, whereas Legree was being a completely tyrant, and beat Tom to death. When Tom was serving Legree, he put his fate to God, and believed in it till he was dead. Uncle Tom’s cabin was considered as a monument of freedom, devote religion and honesty.

On the other hand, George Harris was a opposite character, who believed that devote religion would not be able to help him change his status of slavery, and the only way he could gain freedom was by his resistance and rebellion. Though going through many dangers and suffering, George Harris flee to Canada with his wife and his son, even receiving education in France later on.

I saw positive characteristics in both Uncle Tom and George Harris, but I was sad when I read about Tom’s full forbearance towards Legree, making him a less strong figure.  Uncle is mentally religiously strong as he kept his faith till the very end, but do you think his religion and forbearance also showed his weakness as a slavery? George lived till the end despite the fact that he wasnt a religious man, do you consider George as a strong figure or weak figure?

Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe was an abolitionist novel that was written a decade before the Civil War and influenced many Americans. The main theme of the novel is slavery as it follows the life of Uncle Tom, an old African American slave who is extremely loyal to his masters. Tom is treated kindly and never beaten physically at either the Shelby’s or the St. Clares’ residences. Stowe purposely shows positive relationships between Tom and his masters to highlight the fact that even when you treat a slave kindly, you are still morally corrupt. Although Shelby and St. Clare both treat him with kindness and respect, their capacity to tolerate slavery at all makes them ethically weak and unjust. Stowe also shows how slaves still suffered even under kind masters like these when Shelby sells Tom off, forcing him to leave his family behind. Stowe wanted to defuse the argument that slavery could be justified if the masters treated the slaves kindly. She is trying to prove that the way you treat the slaves doesn’t matter because the entire institution of slavery is unjust. She argues that the only way to act in a slave’s best interest is by freeing them. At the end of the book she also shows the harsh reality of how bad slavery can be by taking us to the Legree plantation. Here she shows everything that is wrong with slavery including sexual abuse, brutal beatings, and even killing. Stowe’s novel had a strong influence on the Civil War and was extremely powerful for the abolitionist movement at the time.

The novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin written by Harriet Beecher Stowe, takes the reader into the lives of slaves during the mid-19th century.  Overall, the story portrays the struggles that each slave is forced to go through, discovering the horrors that took place at this time in history.  It also gives us an insight into the various different types of slave owners.  We see the two extremes of slave owners, with Mr. St. Clare being fairly kind to his slaves by trying to befriend them, but we also see owners like Simon Legree who is on the opposite side of the spectrum, working his slaves to death then purchasing cheap ones again, creating a vicious cycle.

One of the themes that really stood out to me in the novel was the theme of uncertainty.  These slaves lived completely in the dark as to what was going to happen to them each day.  By following the story of Tom, the reader sees this theme right from the start.  Tom starts off in a fairly solid situation for a slave but he is forced to be sold because his owner needs the money.  He is then thrown into a great situation with the St. Clare family as he befriends Eva.  This friend is then taken away from him when Eva dies, throwing his life in a spiral as he was promised freedom but has this stripped away when Mr. St. Clare dies.  Then being sold to Simon Legree who eventually beats Tom to death.  These events show that life was very unpredictable for slaves and having no control over it was just another form a torture they were forced to go through.

Reading Uncle Tom’s Cabin, it is difficult to mis-understand the central and direct theme of Stowe’s book:  slavery is evil.  Slavery is not only a curse to the unfortunate souls fettered to the system, but is a curse of all who come in contact with it and who do not make some effort to relieve the system’s misery.  This is certainly true for the slaves themselves (George, Eliza, Harry, Tom, and Chloe), for the most vicious slaveholders (Haley, Loker, Marks, Marie, and Simone Legree), but is no less true for those who might be considered more humanitarian (Mr. and Mrs. Shelby, Augustine St. Claire, Miss Ophelia, and Senator Bird).

No one, of course, suffers on account of slavery’s malevolence more than little Eva, who is too pure to live in a world defiled by the South’s “peculiar institution.”  It is perhaps unfortunate that a little white girl’s suffering is envisioned as greater than the millions who are actually “under the whip” but Stowe may have believed that in order to pull the emotional strings of Northern (and Southern) white women, Eva was a necessary character.

Stowe’s intention in this regard is easy to appreciate; however, we cannot overlook the themes which speak to other elements of the history of the era, such as, the power of religion, the force of emotion, the influence of women, the reality of black humanity, and the burgeoning sense of Northern complicity.  In the end, however, it seems to me that in many ways, Stowe’s book, while not only exposing the evils of slavery (an institution that she had actually never seen first-hand), provides an excellent illustration of the power of the “Cult of Domesticity,” which permeated the lives of many women at the time.  There are many examples of strong women in the novel; none directly seek to usurp male authority – but certainly recognize their ability to influence change.  It was that power to change which may have provoked Abraham Lincoln’s apocryphal comment when they met at the White House in 1862: “So you’re the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war.”

Denis Brennan

James Fenimore Cooper makes Indians seem like they are equal to the English settlers in his novel The Pioneers. The main character Natty Bummpo, or “Leatherstocking” is a white American who lives in the wilderness and is good friends with a number of Indians. His closest friend is a Mohican Indian, Chingachgook, which was very unusual at this time. Cooper uses this character, Natty Bummpo, to emphazise the importance of respecting all kinds of people and the land as well. He distrusts civilization and has a very strong bond with the Indians. Cooper was trying to expose the problems with American society in the early 1800s especially the mistreatment of Indians and the environment. Cooper created the character Leatherstocking by making him relatable to the Indians in order to show people that Indians are humans too. Leatherstocking was also very heroic as he saved Elizabeth’s life by killing a mountain lion. He also saves Elizabeth from a forest fire later on in the novel. He is very well respected by the Indians because he treats them as equals and shares their passionate reverence for nature. I think Cooper’s purpose in writing this novel was to show that there are white American men who live just like just like the Indians but are by no means savages. He portrays them as kind, heroic, and respectful to make the audience realize that Indians could also possess these characteristics.