Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a Critique of Slavery

By Matthew Cox


Harriet Beecher Stowe’s influential book Uncle Tom’s Cabin, or Life Among the Lowly is a Christian-themed criticism of slavery in the 1850’s. The main character, Uncle Tom is a kindly slave who gets sold to Simon Legree, a mean slave-owner. The servant enrages his master by acting kindly and helping other slaves escape. This makes Legree so angry that he beats Tom to his death. Other important characters include runaway slaves including Cassy, Emmaline, Charles, and Eliza. Kind slave-owners including Mr. St. Clare, Mr. Shelby, and Little Eva change their ways and free their slaves. Literary experts see different kinds of importance in the plot and characters of the story. For example, Nathaniel Hawthorne describes it a passionate and romantic book. Modern critics including James Baldwin, Jane Tompkins, and Anne Douglas find different themes in the book. For example, Baldwin sees how African-Americans are divided by slavery in the plot. Tompkins and Douglas observe feminist concepts in the book. Most experts agree that the work help to turn public opinion against slavery in the 1800’s. Uncle Tom’s Cabin helps to change people’s views on slave owning in the 1800’s.

Uncle Tom, the title character, lives on a the Shelby plantation (Uncle Tom's Cabin Book Notes Summary). He is widely admired by both his owners and fellow slaves. The slave happily lives with his wife and children in their cabin. Mr. Shelby gets into debt with Mr. Haley, a slave trader. He sells Tom and Harry, the son of Eliza, his wife’s servant. The former is very upset and agrees not to runaway. He believes that this will put Mr. Shelby more into debt and force him to sell every slave. Mrs. Shelby vows to buy Tom back once they get the money. After the slave is sold Mr. Haley, he gets sold again to a kind master called Mr. St. Clare. Tom becomes friends with his new owner and Eva, the young daughter. As a strong Christian, she detests slavery and gets sick over it. Eva accepts her death saying that such cruelty does not exist in Heaven. Mr. St. Clare sees the evils of slavery and promises to sign the forms freeing Tom. However, the slave will only get his freedom after the master dies.

Eliza does not want to be separated from Harry and runs away the evening before he is taken away. She finds her way to an anti-slavery family in a Quaker community who take her in. They reunite her with George, her husband. He escapes from a cruel master on a nearby plantation. The family spend the night with the Quakers who before going to the Underground Railroad.

However, Tom gets sold again to Simon Legree, a cruel plantation owner. The slave meets two other African Americans named, Emmiline and Cassy. The former is a young bi-racial woman who arrives at the same time as Tom. She tries to make friends with Cassy who is bitter from years of abuse at the hands of Legree. The older slave’s children are sold over the years. Cassy is also so unhappy at being poor that she does not listen to Tom encouraging her to put her faith in God. Legree tries to turn Tom into an abusive overseer. However, the kind slave refuses. Simon is angry and beats the older involuntary servant. This discourages Tom until he sees a vision of heaven while going to sleep one night. He regains his energy and helps the other slaves. For example, he fills their cotton baskets, gives them food and water, and read his Bible to them. These acts of kindness only make Legree angrier. He also gets upset when Emmiline and Cassy escape. Tom refuses to tell his master where they are. Legree beats Tom so harshly, the slave dies.

Both Cassy and Emmiline make it to a northern-bound ferry that Mr. Shelby is on. He rooms next to a woman named Madame de Thoux. Cassy discovers through a conversation that Eliza Harris is her daughter. Madam de Thoux is George Harris’ brother. Cassy and Madame De Thoux escape into Canada. They meet up with their family. De Thoux says that her husband left their family a huge inheritance. The whole family moves to France. George attends school to receive an education. The Harrises later migrates to Africa. They are reunited with Cassy’s long-lost son who is found. He goes to New England with a woman named Miss Ophelia. Both get married and work in Africa as missionaries. Mr. Shelby frees his slaves, tells them to be Christian, and remember Tom.

Literary Scholars agree that Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or Life Among the Lowly is one of the most influential books in American history (Metcalf). Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author, is deeply religious. Her husband Calvin Stowe, is a theology professor. The writer lives in Kentucky, Ohio, and Maine, while her husband takes different teaching jobs. Harriet publishes the book in 1852 as a response towards the Fugitive Slave Act. The law bans people from harboring escaping slaves and requires citizens to help capture them. The book in highly controversial in the 1800’s because it depicts slave owners as cruel and slavery as immoral. Southerners resent the anti-slavery message and Northerners are shocked at the way slaves are treated. President Lincoln once invited Stowe to the White House and said to her "So this is the little lady whose book started the Civil War (Metcalf)."

The main charachers are Simon Legree, Sambo, Little Eva, and Uncle Tom, the title character. Like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the book is widely banned in schools because it uses the “N” word a lot. However, that is how many people in the 1800’s talked that way. The anti-slavery point is clear. Abolitionists including Fredrick Douglas and W.E.B. DuBois respect Stowe a great deal for writing it. She depicts both Northerners and Southerners as slave-owners. The book echoes with Christian sentiment as shown in the last paragraph:

“day of grace is yet held out to us. Both North and South have been guilty before God; and the Christian church has a heavy account to answer. 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 shall bring on nations the wrath of Almighty God! (Metcalf)”

Although Stowe’s writing style is direct, it still reflects deep thinking about the nature of human identity and responsibility. Nathaniel Hawthorne describes the book as a “passionate effervescence of romantic passion (Metcalf).” The sentiment expressed in the work shows how people can change their ways even though 19th Century Southern society is steeped in slavery. The best way to destroy it is to get rid of the ideas that legitimize slave-owning. First, the book shows that involuntary servitude is abhorrent to Christian teachings. Secondly, slavery is goes against a free society.

Harriet makes her point by centering her narrative around two characters. The first one is George Harris, a fugitive slave who escapes to Canada and presumably his freedom. Harris is proud, intelligent, and proves his leadership ability at a local factory. Stowe points this out with “If God made George Harris, He also made him intelligent; how is Harris' claim on his own fullest potential not a natural right, one that no society should compromise? We stand here as free, under God's sky, as you are (Metcalf).” The writer also points out that liberty is a God-given gift with “by the great God that made us, we'll fight for our liberty till we die (Metcalf)."

Uncle Tom is the other slave. Instead of fleeing to independence, he goes further into the South and into bondage. Although this character is humble and accepts his position in life, he is essential to the moral issues in the book. Stowe got the idea for the story from a picture of a farm owner beating his slave to death. This becomes the book’s climax. She expresses Tom’s Christ-like behavior with "inviolable sphere of peace encompassed in the lowly heart of the oppressed one (Metcalf)." However, the term "Uncle Tom" becomes a word that African-Americans use to describe members of their race who “increasingly connoted a cringing acquiescence, or worse, an outright betrayal of one's own” kind (Metcalf).

Harriet shows how slavery robs African-Americans of their natural talents and the right for them to live as free people. Such a system robs Harris of both a proper education and job advancement. For example, he does not want “40 arcs and mule” but wants to keep his job at the factory where he “invented a machine for the cleaning of the hemp (Metcalf).” Also, the character wants to get a fair wage for his work at the plant. Tom on the other hand, gets beaten to death by Simon Legree. Stowe wants to show readers that death at the hands of an enemy shows redemption or salvation. Such action symbolizes the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ. This is far more important than emancipation from bondage in the material world; what happens in the next life is more important than this one.
Writer James Baldwin writes an essay in the Partisan Review in 1949 critiquing Uncle Tom’s Cabin. He claims that the attention that Tom gets over Harris is not pious or innocent. Both men are depicted as a “race apart (Metcalf).” Harris is considered to be more white than other African-Americans as a “Spanish gentleman, attracting no attention beyond admiration (Metcalf).” Tom is the only true “black man” as he sticks to traditional ways of living and acting like a slave (Metcalf).

Many pieces of literature fade into the past. Uncle Tom’s Cabin survives for more than one hundred years because it influences history. Feminist literary scholar Jane Tompkins writes and essay for the magazine “Glyph” in 1978. She states that Stowe breaks the mold for women writers. Most writers and critics until the 20th Century are male. They only let their views be heard at the expense of women and minorities. Both Tompkins and fellow critic Ann Douglas make three points of the way that Stowe is successful. Firstly, Harriet is sets the example for women writers by taking on the controversy of slavery in a daring way. Secondly, she challenges the sexist attitudes of her time by creating a work that is as aesthically appealing as works by Hawthorne or Melville. Thirdly, interpreting literature is subjective and depends on the values of the reader. Stowe challenges the values of her time by criticizing not only slavery, but chauvinistic attitudes towards females.

Several feminist literary critics focus on Little Eva, the daughter of New Orleans slave owner. She dies of tuberculosis that was apparently created by her own bad feelings over slavery. Ann Douglas writes about the impact of this on American public opinion over views of women of the time in her work The Feminization of American Culture. Harris sums up his views on feminism with I was a little fellow, and laid awake whole nights and cried, it wasn't the hunger, it wasn't the whipping I cried for. No sir; it was for my mother and my sisters…(Metcalf).”
Writer and critic Jane Smiley writes an essay in 1996 for “Harper’s” magazine saying that Uncle Tom’s Cabin should replace The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as the greatest work of American literature. She asserts that it has more ethical grounds against slavery than Mark Twain’s masterpiece. Although Huckleberry Finn helps Jim escape, it does not show the injustices of African Americans being treated harshly by slave owners. Also, Uncle Tom’s Cabin helped to turn around public opinion of slavery in the 1880’s. Bringing the issues of involuntary servitude to the forefront during a time when it divides American is a bold move. It genuinely reflects how people in a free society can make a difference.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin helps to change people’s views on slave owning in the 1800’s. Writer Harriet Beecher Stowe shows the injustices of involuntary servitude by depicting different ways that slaves are treated by their masters. She uses a Christian viewpoint to show that slavery is abhorrent to Bible teachings. For example, kind slave-owners give up possessing African Americans. The mean Simon Legree abuses his slaves and kills Uncle Tom. Other servants Cassy, Emmaline, Charles, and Eliza escape to freedom. Literature experts including Nathaniel Hawthorne, James Baldwin, Jane Tompkins, and Anne Douglas offer different views of the story. For example, Hawthorne comments on its romantic passion. Baldwin sees divisions with African-Americans in the 1800’s. Tompkins and Douglas reveal feminist themes in the plot.


Works Cited

“Uncle Tom's Cabin Book Notes Summary” Retrieved 19 March 2008 from
http://www.bookrags.com/studyguide-uncletomscabin

Metcalf, Stephen. “Uncle Tom's Children, Why Has Uncle Tom’s Cabin Survived-and
Thrived?” Retrieved 19 March 2008 from http://www.slate.com/id/2118927