Uncle

Toms
Cabin
SYNOPSIS AND
THEME

OVERVIE
W

Anti-slavery activist and writer Harriet Beecher Stowe could not

have

foreseen

the

phenomenal

impact

and

undying

controversy that still surrounds "Uncle Tom's Cabin," her first

and most famous novel. The book, which first appeared in
sections in the anti-slavery periodical The National Era,
immediately set off a firestorm of controversy and heated
debate about the moral consequences of owning slaves. Its
publication galvanized the anti-slavery movement in America
to such an extent that President Lincoln, upon meeting Stowe,
jokingly suggested that she started the Civil War.

Despite her clear anti-slavery position, Stowe and her

novel continue to draw intense criticism for the novel's
condescending portrayal of blacks. While some
educators have stressed the importance of
understanding the time period in which the novel was
written (when views toward racial equality were not
nearly as progressive as they are today), others have
been unable to forgive her simplistic and often
startlingly insulting portrayals of black characters. The
book's literary merits have also been debated from the
time it was first published; it received several negative
reviews, and many critics today do not consider the
novel to be a remarkable aesthetic achievement

INTRODUCT
ION

Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly is an antislavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe.
Published in 1852, the novel "helped lay the groundwork
for the Civil War", according to Will Kaufman.
Stowe, a Connecticut-born teacher at the Hartford Female
Academy and an active abolitionist, featured the character of
Uncle Tom, a long-suffering black slave around whom the
stories of other characters revolve. The sentimental novel
depicts the reality of slavery while also asserting that Christian
love can overcome something as destructive as enslavement

Uncle Tom's Cabin was the best-selling novel of the 19th century and
the second best-selling book of that century, following the Bible.[6] It is
credited with helping fuel the abolitionist cause in the 1850s. In the first
year after it was published, 300,000 copies of the book were sold in the
United States; one million copies were sold in Great Britain.
In 1855, three years after it was published, it was called "the most
popular novel of our day." The impact attributed to the book is great,
reinforced by a story that when Abraham Lincoln met Stowe at the start of
the Civil War, Lincoln declared, "So this is the little lady who started this
great war." The quote is apocryphal; it did not appear in print until 1896,
and it has been argued that "The long-term durability of Lincoln's greeting
as an anecdote in literary studies and Stowe scholarship can perhaps be
explained in part by the desire among many contemporary intellectuals ...
to affirm the role of literature as an agent of social change.

Harriet Beecher
Stowe
(June 14, 1811
July 1, 1896)

Bod
y

This novel opens on the Shelby plantation

somewhere in Kentucky before the Civil War. The
Shelby's own numerous slaves all of whom they
treat as though they are family. Unfortunately, at
the opening of the book it is understood that Mr.
Shelby has gotten into some financial difficulties,
and the only way out of debt is to sell some of his
slaves. He is left no other choice but to sell his
most faithful and hardest working slave, Tom, and
a little boy named Harry.

Mr. Haley, a slave trader comes to the Shelby plantation one afternoon to
finalize the deal, but the transaction is overheard by Eliza, Harry's mother.
She goes into a panic and swears that she will not allow them to take her
child, so she tries to persuade Tom to run away with her and Harry. Tom
refuses because, being the loyal man that he is, he knows that Mr. Shelby is
only doing what he has to do. This does not discourage Eliza from doing what
she has to do, running away. Due to the separation of these two parties,
Stowe spends the remainder of the novel updating their progress in
designated chapters.
Eliza and Harry leave the plantation as soon as they can get away, but
their absence is discovered quickly, and this sends Mr. Haley searching for his
property. At one point, Haley is so hot on her trail that Eliza has to
miraculously run across blocks of ice on the Ohio River holding her son. When
they reach the other side, they are taken in by a nice family that introduces
them to a Quaker network that aides slaves in their pursuit of freedom. Like
many other slaves at that time, Eliza is determined to reach Canada. Along

Tom's journey is not filled with so many fortunate situations. He is

bought by a nice man, Mr. St. Clare who has a daughter, Little Eva.
Eva has a great impact on the life of Tom and the other characters in
the novel with her angelic qualities. Unfortunately, within days of
each other, Eva and Mr. St. Clare die, and all the St. Clare slaves are
left in the hands of Maria, the wife. She always hated the slaves and
thought that her husband treated them too nicely, so when she gets
this opportunity, she vows to teach them a lesson, and she sells them
down the river. It is here that Tom's life takes a turn for the worst. He
is bought by an evil man, Simon Legree, who prided himself on being
able to "break" all of his slaves, but Tom is different. He is
untouchable. Tom's great faith in God taught him to be honest and
good, and no matter what Legree does, these attributes remain part

While Tom is trying to heal from this beating, he is

introduced to Casey, another slave of Legree's who
desperately needs to run away. She has lost all faith in
God after being stripped of her children years ago and
subjected to a life of hatred, but after talking with Tom
she finally obtains faith, and with this new faith she is
able to contrive a way to escape the deserted
plantation

with

one

of

the

other

young

slaves,

Emmeline. The two of them escape victoriously, but

since Tom will not tell Legree where the two have gone,
he is beaten again, but this time he does not recover.

The son of Mr. Shelby rescues Tom just before his death. This
is a hopeless feat, but Tom is able to tell George, the son, some
final words for his wife, Aunt Chloe, and the others. After Tom's
death, Master George gives Tom a proper burial on his return
home where he meets up with Cassy and Emmeline. It is here
that Cassy discovers that her daughter, whom she thought she
would never see again, is Eliza, so Master George brings the two
girls to Canada where the family is reunited. When he finally
returns home, George grants Tom's final wish and emancipates
all the Shelby slaves. When he informs them of the news, he tells
each of them to think of their freedom every time they pass
Uncle Tom's Cabin and let it be a memorial to try to live as
honestly and faithfully as Tom with God as their leader. This

Major
Themes

Stowe wrote the novel for the specific purpose of ending slavery, but her

portrayal of domestic values and her characterization of African Americans

has continued to interest critics long after emancipation. The novel, as
several commentators have observed, casts the "peculiar institution" as a
crime against home, family, and true Christian values. Not only is slavery
shown destroying familial relationships and morality within the slave
community, it is depicted as a threat to the homes of all Americans, in both
the South and the North. Many modern readers, however, have found in her
antislavery arguments a critique against "masculine" values of individualism,
competition, and the marketplaceand a concomitant affirmation of
"feminine" values of community, love, and domesticity. Interpretations of
Stowe's portrayal of Tom have also undergone considerable revision. While
many contemporary readers identified him as a model of Christian virtue,

INTERPRETATION
Uncle Toms Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe is a
classic novel that was said to have provoked the
American Civil War. By discussing the issue of slavery and
showing the cruel aspects of it Harriet Beecher Stowe
motivated people to take sides over the issue.
The main focus of Uncle Toms Cabin is to show that
African Americans have souls and feelings just like other
humans. In her time it was common for white plantation
owners and slave holders to view black people as cattle
or a degraded species of humans. Slave auctioneers and
sellers separated mothers and children on the idea that

Harriet Beecher Stowes goal in Uncle Toms

Cabin is to show African Americans as people. Her
basic argument is that blacks suffer just as much as
whites, and therefore it is just as wrong to mistreat
them. Throughout the book Stowe approaches the
idea

of

slavery

from

an

unwavering

Christian

viewpoint. This is not surprising considering that she

had a very religious family, with her father being a
famous minister.

"The book, Uncle Tom's Cabin, is thought of as a

fantastic, even fanatic, representation of Southern
life,

most

memorable

for

its

emotional

oversimplification of the complexities of the slave

system," says Gossett .Harriet Beecher Stowe
describes her own experiences or ones that she has
witnessed in the past through the text in her novel.
She grew up in Cincinnati where she had a very
close look at slavery.

Located on the Ohio River

across from the slave state of Kentucky, the city

was filled with former slaves and slaveholders.

CONCLUSION
Despite this undisputed significance, Uncle Tom's
Cabin has been called "a blend of children's fable and
propaganda." The novel has also been dismissed by a
number of literary critics as "merely a sentimental novel,
"while critic George Whicher stated in his Literary History
of the United States that "Nothing attributable to Mrs.
Stowe or her handiwork can account for the novel's
enormous vogue; its author's resources as a purveyor of
Sunday-school fiction were not remarkable. She had at
most a ready command of broadly conceived melodrama,

Other critics, though, have praised the novel.

Edmund Wilson stated that "To expose oneself in
maturity to Uncle Tom's Cabin may ... prove a
startling experience." Jane Tompkins states that
the novel is one of the classics of American
literature and wonders if many literary critics
aren't dismissing the book because it was simply
too popular during its day.

Referen
ces

http://www.theatredatabase.com
http://www.gradesaver.com
http://www.enotes.com
http://www.sparknotes.com
http://www.helium.com
http://en.wikipedia.org