Historians have said that the novel Uncle Tom's Cabin had such a great impact on the public so that it led to the Civil War, from which slavery was abolished. It is said, that when Abraham Lincoln met Harriet Beecher Stowe he declared: “So you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war “(Bennett, 284). Harriet Beecher Stowe was born in 1811 in England, but spent much of her life Ohio, a State that was firmly against slavery. The publication of the novel, in 1852, was an event that changed a nation that was already undergoing major changes. Uncle Tom's Cabin was the best-selling novel of the nineteenth century and the second best-selling book of the century, after the Bible (Smith 221). The book helped to feed the abolitionist cause in the 1850s. In the first year after publication, it sold 300,000 copies in the United States. The book is structured in many layers that are combined, creating a surprising novel that can be read at any age.
The first layer is the story itself, perhaps the one most often followed by the child in a summer vacation. This later is represented by the places in which Uncle Tom, a black, gentle and very faithful slave from Kentucky gets, by the parade of colorful, very talkative and always well-defined characters and their words and emotions, because all the people in the novel, white or black, are always ready to express themselves. The second layer is the one of the thoughts, speeches and diatribes against slavery and its foundations. The tone is often very sentimental and naïve. Only an insensitive reader would make a stylistic literary dissection on such a text and would label as embarrassing the narrator’s direct addressing to some potentially mother- readers. If the swirling...
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...l system to remove the stain of slavery and to vaccinate people against similar excesses of dehumanization.
Works Cited
Aiken, George L. Uncle Tom’s Cabin. New York: Garland, 1993, Print
Bennett, William John. America: From the Age of Discovery to a World at War, 1492-1914. Thomas Nelson Inc, 2006. Print
Jordan-Lake, Joy. Whitewashing Uncle Tom's Cabin: Nineteenth-Century Women Novelists Respond to Stowe, Vanderbilt University Press, 2005. Print
Tompkins, Jane. In Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work of American Fiction, 1790–1860. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985. Print
Smith Gail K. The Sentimental Novel: The Example of Harriet Beecher Stowe. The Cambridge Companion to Nineteenth-Century American Women's Writing, Cambridge University Press, 2001, Print
Stowe Harriet Beecher, Uncle Tom's Cabin. Vintage Books. Modern Library Edition, 1991. Print
University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee. “The Classic Text: Harriet Beecher Stowe”. 19 Nov 2001. 5 Jan 2002. <http://www.uwm.edu/Dept/Library/special/exhibits/clastext/clspg149.htm>.
When Abraham Lincoln met Harriet Beecher Stowe, he said, “So, this is the little lady who made this big war”(“History.com Staff”2). After Stowe published Uncle Tom’s Cabin, there was a rumor that this book led to the Civil War. Uncle Tom’s Cabin turned a lot of people in the North against slavery. The people in the North wanted slavery to end which caused them to fight the South. The most important topic of Uncle Tom’s Cabin is that slavery was worse in the South than in the North. Slavery was worse in the South than in the North because of the hard labor, the freedom policy, and the treatment of the slaves.
Overcoming the death of a loved one can be one of life's most difficult tasks, especially when that loss involves a parent or a child. Author and abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe grieved over death as both mother and child. When she was only five years old, her mother Roxana Foote Beecher, died of tuberculosis. Later at age 38, she lost her infant son Charley to an outbreak of cholera. Together these two traumatic events amplified her condemnation of slavery and ultimately influenced the writing of one of America's most controversial novels, Uncle Tom's Cabin.
Tompkins, Jane. Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work of American Fiction 1790- 1860. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.
Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Olaudah Equiano’s Narrative of his Life both endeavor to stir antislavery sentiment in predominantly white, proslavery readers. Each author uses a variety of literary tactics to persuade audiences that slavery is inhumane. Equiano uses vivid imagery and inserts personal experience to appeal to audiences, believing that a first-hand account of the varying traumas slaves encounter would affect change. Stowe relies on emotional connection between the readers and characters in her novel. By forcing her audience to have empathy for characters, thus forcing readers to confront the harsh realities of slavery, Stowe has the more effective approach to encouraging abolitionist sentiment in white readers.
Harriet Beecher Stowe publishes “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” in 1852. This anti-slavery book was the most popular book of the 19th century, and the 2nd most sold book in the century, following only the Bible. It was said that this novel “led to the civil war”, or “the straw that broke the camel’s back”. After one year, 300,000 copies were sold in the U.S., and over 1 million were sold in Britain.
Baym, Nina, and Robert S. Levine. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. New York London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2012. Print.
Gilbert, Sandra M., and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic: the Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-century Literary Imagination. New Haven: Yale UP, 2000. Print.
Harriet Jacobs’ feminist approach to her autobiographical narrative Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl brought to life the bondage placed on women, in particular enslaved black women, during the nineteenth-century America. In an effort to raise awareness about the conditions of enslaved women and to promote the cause of abolition, Jacobs decided to have her personal story of sexual exploitation and escape published. The author’s slave narrative focuses on the experiences of women, the treatment of sexual exploitation, its importance on family life and maternal principles, and its appeal to white, female readers. Likewise, through the use of the Feminist/Gender Theory, issues relating to gender and sexuality can be applied to the author’s slave narrative. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and its lack of reception during its own time disclose the strict boundaries and unique challenges Harriet Jacobs encountered and overcame as a woman in antebellum America.
The illumination of the brutal treatment of the slaves, both physically and mentally, are also apparent in the works of Stowe and Jacobs. Stowe, in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, uses the stories of Eliza, Harry, Uncle Tom and Cassy to show how slavery, with both cruel and kind masters, affects different members of the slave community. In Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Jacobs focuses her work on the how the institution is “terrible for men; but is far more terrible for women” (B:933), adding sexual abuse to the atrocities of slavery. Douglass’ Madison gives the reader a masculine perspective on the
Gilbert, Sandra M. and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979. Print.
Perkins, Geroge, and Barbara Perkins. The American Tradition in Literature. 12th ed. Vol. 2. New York: McGraw Hill, 2009. Print
Perkins George, Barbara. The American Tradition in Literature, 12th ed. New York: McGraw Hill, 2009. Print
Works Cited “American Literature 1865-1914.” Baym 1271. Baym, Nina et al. Ed. The Norton Anthology of American Literature.
Belasco, Susan, and Linck Johnson, eds. The Bedford Anthology of American Literature. Vol. 1, 2nd Ed., Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2014. 1190-1203. Print.