Literary
Movements | Timeline
| American
Authors | Harriet Beecher Stowe 1811-1896
: Lecture Notes on Uncle Tom's Cabin
I. Biography
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Stowe's father was a renowned clergyman; Henry
Ward and Edward were celebrated preachers; Catharine pioneered in women's
education.
Stowe wrote for magazines; she created Yankee
character "Uncle Lot" and wrote Sam Lawson's Fireside Stories in
1872. Her The Pearl of Orr's Island (1862) was a huge influence
on Sarah Orne Jewett.
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Her attitude toward African Americans can best
be characterized as "romantic racialism"--a blend of philanthropic and
paternalistic attitudes towards blacks that implies white moral superiority.
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Stowe had read the stories of Maria Edgeworth,
which had much use of dialect: Castle Rackrent, tales of oppressed
Irish people.
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Stowe also drew on narratives of escaped slaves
II. Uncle Tom's Cabin
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Published March 20, 1852, the novel sold 10,000
copies in the first week and 300,000 by the end of the first year.
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Within 2 years had sold 2,000,000 copies
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The July 10, 1851 edition of National Era
carried the memorable episode of UTC: Eliza crossing the Ohio river.
"When the novel was put on stage, a hush fell
on the audience at the National Theatre in New York as Eliza escaped from
her pursuers and reached the northern side of the river. An observer who
turned to look was astonished to see that the entire audience, from the
gentlemen and ladies in the balconies to the rough-shirted men in the galleries,
was in tears."
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"Crossing the river" a common metaphor for both
death and deliverance; crossing the River Jordan, a metaphor for deliverance
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According to Joan Hedrick, Stowe's biographer,
Eliza's miraculous crossing of the river was part and parcel of the miracle
of crossing from this world to the next. Through this story Harriet accomplished
the grief work of carrying Charley (her much-beloved "golden child" who
died as a toddler) tenderly and lovingly to that short where his sufferings
were ended.
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Other antislavery novels had preceded this, including
Richard Hildreth's
The Slave, or the Memoirs of Archy Moore 1836
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In the first 3 years after the publication of
UTC in 1851, 14 proslavery novels were written to contradict her.
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The documents that she and her brothers assembled
ultimately published as A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin 1853
Brief Summary: Innovation and Tradition in
Uncle Tom's Cabin
1. The freedom narrative is primarily a male
story. The bondage narrative was preeminently a female plot. Stowe reversed
these, leaving UT as the (female) slave to die in bondage; to do this she
departed from her literary models.
2. The novel blends realism, high purpose,
mythic power.
3. Eric Sundquist argues that uniting the
secular and religious realms is what made Stowe's novel so radical.
4. Stowe offers the Protestant equivalent
of Roman Catholic mass, with Uncle Tom as the Christ figure offering himself
up for sacrifice.
5. Jane Tompkins comments that UTC offers
a classic example of the jeremiad in George's later speech.
Comments
to D. Campbell.