Topic + Source Exploration: Group 1 - Social criticism, satire, and stereotypes

Members: Andrew, Darcy, Mia

Holly L. Derr, "The Pervading Influence of Uncle Tom's Cabin in American Culture", The Atlantic, 4 September 2013 

From Jane Tompkins's "Sentimental Power"

Tompkins addresses the role of religion and racial stereotypes in the novel and in fiction in general:

The power of a sentimental novel to move its audience depends upon the audience's being in possession of the conceptual categories that constitute character and event. That storehouse of assumptions includes attitudes towards the family and towards social institutions, a definition of power and its relation to individual human feeling, notions of political and social equality, and above all, a set of religious beliefs that organize and sustain the rest. Once in possession of the system of beliefs that undergirds the patterns of sentimental fiction, it is possible for modern readers to see how its tearful episodes and frequent violations of probability were invested with a structure of meanings that fixed these works, for nineteenth-century readers, not in the realm of fairy tale or escapist fantasy, but in the very bedrock of reality. I do not say that we can read sentimental fiction exactly as Stowe's audience did -- that would be impossible -- but that we can and should set aside the modernist prejudices that consign this fiction to oblivion, in order to see how and why it worked for its readers, in its time, with such unexampled effect (Casebook 67). 

Topic + Source Exploration: Group 2 - Religious and philosophical responses to social ills

Members: Priya, Katelyn, Christiana

Idealism and Social Change in The Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin (1853):

"The Men Better than their Laws" 

"In some slave States it seems as if there was very little that the benevolent owner could do which should permanently benefit his slave, unless he should seek to alter the laws. Here it is that the highest obligation of the Southern Christian lies. Nor will the world or God hold them guiltless who, with the elective franchise in their hands, and the full power to speak, write, and discuss, suffer this monstrous system of legalised cruelty to go on from age to age."

Potential overlaps: Group 1 - Social criticism, satire, and stereotypes; Group 6 - Christianity vs. the evils of slavery

Topic + Source Exploration: Group 3 - Idealism and Social Change

Members: Noe, Taylor, Susie

St. Domingo Revolution
Hungarian Revolution


Idealism and Social Change in The Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin (1853):

"The Men Better than their Laws" 

"In some slave States it seems as if there was very little that the benevolent owner could do which should permanently benefit his slave, unless he should seek to alter the laws. Here it is that the highest obligation of the Southern Christian lies. Nor will the world or God hold them guiltless who, with the elective franchise in their hands, and the full power to speak, write, and discuss, suffer this monstrous system of legalised cruelty to go on from age to age."

The Quakers

Miss Ophelia

Topsy

From Jane Tompkins's "Sentimental Power"

"Embedded in the world of Uncle Tom's Cabin, which is the fallen world of slavery, there appears an idyllic picture, both utopian and Arcadian, of the form human life would assume if Stowe's readers were to heed her moral lesson. In this vision, described in the chapter entitled "The Quaker Settlement," Christian love fulfills itself not in war, but in daily living, and the principle of sacrifice is revealed not in crucifixion, but in motherhood. The form that Stowe's utopian society takes bears no resemblance to the current social order. Man-made institutions—the church, the courts of law, the legislatures, the economic system—are nowhere in sight. The home is the center of all meaningful activity; women perform the most important tasks; work is carried on in a spirit of mutual cooperation; and the whole is guided by a Christian woman who, through the influence of her "loving words," "gentle moralities," and "motherly loving kindness," rules the world from her rocking-chair." 

Overlaps: Group 2 - religious and philosophical responses (broadly) to social evils, Group 7 - Christianity and Stowe's Sectional Rhetoric

Topic + Source Exploration: Group 4 - Stowe's Women and Children

Members: Alyssa, Ahmad, Kelsey, Fabian

Profiles of Stowe's women and children from The Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin (1853):

Mr. and Mrs. Shelby

Eliza

Miss Ophelia

Marie St. Clare

Topsy

The Quakers

Stowe's final letter to readers in the last serialized issue of Uncle Tom's Cabin (no spoilers)

Note who Stowe addresses as the primary audience of Uncle Tom's Cabin. What does she hope that these young readers have gained from her didactic novel? 

From Gillian Brown's "Getting in the Kitchen with Dinah" 

"Slavery disregards this opposition between the family at home and the exterior workplace. The distinction between work and family is eradicated in the slave, for whom there is no separation between economic and private status. When people themselves are "articles" subject to "mercantile dealings," when "the souls and bodies of men" are "equivalent to money" (II, 317), women can no longer keep houses that provide refuge from marketplace activities. Slavery, according to Uncle Tom's Cabin, undermines women's housework by bringing the confusion of the marketplace into the center of the family shelter, into the kitchen. The real horror that slavery holds for the "mothers of America" to whom Stowe addressed her antislavery appeal is the suggestion that the family life nurtured by women is not immune from the economic life outside it (II, 316)" (505).
"More than the tragedy of the slave mothers who "are constantly made childless by the American slave trade" (II, 316),the security of free white American mothers and the family institution they guard concerns Stowe. While the slave economy doesn't threaten American mothers with selling their children, it does limit their authority and efficacy when it creates households with "no time, no place, no order" (I, 304)" (506). 

"In fashioning her abolitionist protest as a defense of nineteenth-century domestic values, Stowe designates slavery as a domestic issue for American women to adjudicate and manage. The call to the mothers of America for the abolition of slavery is a summons to fortify the home, to rescue domesticity from shiftlessness and slavery. Someone has to get in the kitchen with Dinah to eliminate hurryscurryation. The chaos in Dinah's kitchen signifies the immanence of the dissolution of domesticity's difference from the marketplace. Hence abolishing slavery means, in Stowe's politics of the kitchen, erasing the sign and reminder of the precariousness of the feminine sphere" (506).

"The ultimate adversary to mothers and housekeepers is not slavery, not even capitalism, but the masculine sphere of the marketplace. The most effective way to save the home from the marketplace, to prevent domesticity from consorting with either slave power or money power, is to abolish the marketplace altogether" (511). 

"The ideal kitchen in Uncle Tom's Cabin functions smoothly under the aegis of 'motherly loving kindness' (I, 196). Rachel Halliday's kitchen in the Quaker settlement that shelters runaway slaves, is, like Ophelia's, 'without a particle of dust'; but more than orderliness, its 'rows of shining tins, suggestive of unmentionable good things to the appetite' indicate the value of abundance and generosity in Stowe's utopian domestic economy...The spirit of mother-love creates a domesticity in the image of paradise: a world before separations, a domestic economy before markets" (512-13). 

"Uncle Tom's Cabin urges a departure from the passivity assigned women by culture, a departure that is also a return home, to the ideal matriarchal home...Abolition in Uncle Tom's Cabin is accordingly conveyed and understood through mothers" (516). 

"Finally, violence in Uncle Tom's Cabin not only is executed by the slave economy and masculine desire that endanger the family and home, but is embedded in the very foundation of home. For Stowe, only a house divided, a house divested of men, markets, and desire, can be a home" (523).

Topic + Source Exploration: Group 5 - Typology and Christ Figures

Members: Hannah, Bridget, Samantha

From The Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin (1853):

Uncle Tom - real analogues (examples) of Tom

From Jane Tompkins' "Sentimental Power" 

"Characters in the novel are linked to each other in exactly the same way that places are—with reference to a third term that is the source of their identity. The figure of Christ is the common term which unites all of the novel's good characters, who are good precisely in proportion as they are imitations of him. Eva and Tom head the list (she reenacts the last supper and he the crucifixion), but they are also linked to most of the slaves, women, and children in the novel by the characteristics they all share: piety, impressionability, spontaneous affection—and victimization" (76-77).

Potential overlaps: Group 1 - social criticism, stereotypes, satire, Group 6 - Christian values versus the evils of slavery, Group 7 - Christianity and Stowe's sectional rhetoric

Topic + Source Exploration: Group 6 - Christian values versus the evils of slavery

Members: Katie, Kari, Cathlin

A 1851 letter from Stowe to the African American abolitionist Frederick Douglass

"I have noticed with regret your sentiments on two subjects – the church - & African
colonization - & with the more regret, because I think you have a considerable share of reason for your feelings on both these subjects – but I would willingly if I could modify your view on both points."

 "In the first place you say the church is “pro slavery – There is a sense in which this may be true... [it] appears that the church has the power to put an end to this evil and does not do it – In this sense she may be said to be pro slavery" 

"I am a minister’s daughter – a minister’s wife & I have six brothers in the ministry – (one is in Heaven) - & I certainly ought to know something of the feelings of ministers"

From The Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin (1853):

The Influence of the American Church on Slavery 

"What, then, is the influence of the church on this great question of slavery? Certain things are evident on the very face of the matter. 

1. It has not put an end to it. 

2. It has not prevented the increase of it. 

3. It has not occasioned the repeal of the laws which forbid education to the slave. 

4. It has not attempted to have laws passed forbidding the separation of families and legalising the marriage of slaves. 

5. Is has not stopped the internal slave-trade. 

6. It has not prevented the extension of this system, with all its wrongs, over new territories."

Mr. and Mrs. Shelby

Miss Ophelia

Marie St. Clare

Topsy

Potential overlaps: Group 2 - religious and philosophical responses (more broadly) to social evil, Group 4 - Stowe's women and and children, Group 5 - Typology and Christ figures, Group 7 - Christianity and Stowe's Sectional Rhetoric

Topic + Source Exploration: Group 7 - Christianity and Stowe's Sectional Rhetoric

Members: Molly and Sydney
(Potential overlaps: Group 3 - idealism and social change or Group 6 - Christian values versus the evils of slavery.)

• Consider Stowe's characterizations of southerners (throughout) and northerners (especially Ophelia, "a living impersonation of order, method, and exactness" (134) with a sense of industry that the servants declare is not ladylike (179).
• Stowe's perception of the responsibilities of North and South -- "If we emancipate, are you willing to educate?" (267). 

On the dangers of intersectional rhetoric -- from Harriet Beecher Stowe's sister Catherine Esther Beecher's Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism (1837):

"It is allowed that the immediate abolition of slavery is to be produced by means of “light and love,” and yet it is maintained as right to withdraw personally from the field of operation, because of consequences; because of the probable danger of approaching. “If we go to the South, and present truth, argument, and entreaty, we shall be slain, and therefore we are not under obligation to go.” If this justifies Abolitionists in their neglect of their offending brethren, because they fear evil results to themselves, it also justifies those who refuse to act with Abolitionists in their measures, because they fear other evil results. But what proof is there, that if the Abolitionists had taken another method, the one more in accordance with the laws of mind and the dictates of experience, that there would have been at the South all this violence? Before the abolition movement commenced, both northern and southern men, expressed their views freely at the South. The dangers, evils, and mischiefs of slavery were exhibited and discussed even in the legislative halls of more than one of the Southern States, and many minds were anxiously devising measures, to bring this evil to an end" 

Creation of Stereotypes Through Uncle Tom's Cabin

Creation of Stereotypes Through Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Definition of stereotype (from Wikipedia, but I think this is a good explanation)

Such scholars as Patricia A. Turner note "stereotyping objects in popular culture that depict blacks as servile, primitive, or simpleminded and explains how the subtle influences of such seemingly harmless images reinforce anti-black attitudes".

Despite the notoriety Uncle Tom’s Cabin has received over the past 150 years, modern scholars argue the novel is condescending and racist regarding Stowe’s black characters.  They cite they way Stowe portrays their speech, appearances, and behavior as evidence for perpetuating and popularizing stereotypes among the black community and Americans at large.

This is a significant claim because Uncle Tom’s Cabin was the #2 selling novel in the world (next to the Bible) during the 19^th Century.  Because of the mass distribution and following of Uncle Tom’s Cabin (plus the illustrations and plays associated with it) it played a significant role in indoctrinating these stereotypes into the minds of Americans young and old. 

Characters and stereotypes associated in the novel:

“Tragic Mulatto”

– this is a character of mixed race (in this case black and white) who is depicted as sad and internally struggling because they do not completely fit in with the “white world” or “black world” spheres. 

Characters: Cassy, Eliza, and Emmeline

Text example:

“Again he stopped before Susan and Emmeline. He put out his heavy, dirty hand, and drew the girl towards him; passed it over her neck and bust, felt her arms, looked at her teeth, and then pushed her back against her mother, whose patient face showed the suffering she had been going through at every motion of the hideous stranger.

The girl was frightened, and began to cry.”

Mammy

- dark skinned, affectionate female character.  The term “mammy” originated in the South as a variant of the word “mother” and referred to a black woman (typically a slave) who worked for a family and nursed their children.  Additionally in the South it was thought to be blasphemous to refer to someone as “God Mother” or “God Father” so the titles Aunt and Uncle are used to show respect to unrelated elders. 

Characters: Mammy – cook at St. Clare Plantation

Text:

“Poor old Prue's child was all that she had, -- and yet she had to hear it crying, and she couldn't help it! Papa, these poor creatures love their children as much as you do me. O! do something for them! There's poor Mammy loves her children; I've seen her cry when she talked about them. And Tom loves his children; and it's dreadful, papa, that such things are happening, all the time!" - Eva

"O, Miss Eva, don't see how I can live without ye, no how!" said the faithful creature. "'Pears like it's just taking everything off the place to oncet!" and Mammy gave way to a passion of grief. - Mammy

Pickaninny

refers to children of black descent, typically with racial slur connotation. 

Character: Topsy

According to Robin Bernstein who describes the meaning in the context of the United States, the pickaninny is characterized by three qualities: "the figure is always juvenile, always of color, and always resistant if not immune to pain"

Text:

   "How old are you, Topsy?"

   "Dun no, Missis," said the image, with a grin that showed all her teeth.

   "Don't know how old you are? Didn't anybody ever tell you? Who was your mother?"

   "Never had none!" said the child, with another grin.

   "Never had any mother? What do you mean? Where were you born?"

   "Never was born!" persisted Topsy, with another grin, that looked so goblin-like, that, if Miss Ophelia had been at all nervous, she might have fancied that 


…….

   "You mustn't answer me in that way, child; I'm not playing with you. Tell me where you were born, and who your father and mother were."

"Never was born," reiterated the creature, more emphatically; "never had no father nor mother, nor nothin'. I was raised by a speculator, with lots of others. Old Aunt Sue used to take car on us."

Uncle Tom

Some argue he was too eager to please the white people and would bow down to any white man.  This however did not result from Uncle Tom’s Cabin, but from staged performances of the novel that Stowe had no control over. 

Text:

“Mas’r, if you was sick, or in trouble, or dying, and I could save ye, I’d give ye my heart’s blood; and, if taking every drop of blood in this poor old body would save your precious soul, I’d give ’em freely, as the Lord gave his for me.”

Conclusion:

During the 1960’s (The Black Power Movement) some blacks argued that Uncle Tom committed racial betrayal and made the slaves out to be worse than the owners.  While I have not formed a concrete opinion or argument yet, I believe Uncle Tom’s Cabin is without a doubt a vital tool in exploring race relations in America.

Questions:

11)  Do you think Uncle Tom’s Cabin perpetuates stereotypes of black Americans? If so, how?  Does this stereotype overshadow the novel as an abolitionist tool?

22) Are there white stereotypes present in the novel as well? 

33) Even with the presence of stereotypes do you believe Uncle Tom's Cabin still played a vital role in shaping the minds of readers about the moral and political implications of racism? 

Reading Checkpoint #6: Analysis to Argumentation

Eva and Topsy (and Augustine and Ophelia)

For Reading Checkpoint #6 make a comment of as many words as needed in which you:

• Identify a general theme or topic you might address in Essay #1 -- you are not required to use substantial portions of Close Reading #1 or #2 in your essay, but I encourage you to use what you can.

• Try to limit or decide on which characters or aspects of this topic or theme you'll discuss in about 5-7 double spaced pages (only about 2.5-3.5 pages single spaced!)

Useful Links

Essay #1 Assignment - due to e314bannedbooks[at]gmail.com by midnight on Sunday, March 9th.

Identify a general topic before worrying about an argument. Once you post, we'll look over and discuss how argumentative claims might be made out of a range of topics.

Guides to Argumentative Thesis Writing (we'll continue to work on these on Thursday and next week)

@UT Undergraduate Writing Center (UWC)

@ Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL) (this guide distinguishes between thesis types -- see argumentative -- more details on debatable theses here)

Previews of arguments from next week's critical readings: 

James Baldwin in "Everybody's Protest Novel" 

"Uncle Tom’s Cabin is a very bad novel, having, in its self-righteous, virtuous sentimentality, much in common with Little Women. Sentimentality, the ostentatious parading of excessive and spurious emotion, is the mark of dishonesty, the inability to feel; the wet eyes of the sentimentalist betray his aversion to experience, his fear of life, his arid heart; and it is always, therefore, the signal of secret and violent inhumanity, the mask of cruelty. Uncle Tom’s Cabin—like its multitudinous, hard-boiled descendants—is a catalogue of violence. This is explained by the nature of Mrs. Stowe’s subject matter, her laudable determination to flinch from nothing in presenting the complete picture; an explanation which falters only if we pause to ask whether or not her picture is indeed complete; and what constriction or failure of perception forced her to so depend on the description of brutality—unmotivated, senseless—and to leave unanswered and unnoticed the only important question: what it was, after all, that moved her people to such deeds" (Baldwin 12)

Jane Tompkins

The very grounds on which sentimental fiction has been dismissed by its detractors, grounds which have come to seem universal standards of aesthetic judgment, were established in a struggle to supplant the tradition of evangelical piety and moral commitment these novelists represent. In reaction against their world view, and perhaps even more against their success, twentieth-century critics have taught generations of students to equate popularity with debasement, emotionality with ineffectiveness, religiosity with fakery, domesticity with triviality, and all of these, implicitly, with womanly inferiority. In this view, sentimental novels written by women in the nineteenth century were responsible for a series of cultural evils whose regrets still plague us: the degeneration of American religion from theological rigor to anti-intellectual consumerism, the rationalization of an unjust economic order, the propagation of the debased images of modern mass culture, and the encouragement of self-indulgence and narcissism in literature's most avid readers—women. To the extent that they protested the evils of society, their protest is seen as duplicitous—the product and expression of the wry values they pretended to condemn. Unwittingly or not, so the story goes, they were apologists for an oppressive social order...these women are generally thought to have traded in false stereotypes, dishing out weak-minded pap to nourish the prejudices of an ill-educated and underemployed readership. 

The thesis I will argue in this chapter is diametrically opposed to these portrayals. It holds that the popular domestic novel of the nineteenth century represents a monumental effort to reorganize culture from the woman's point of view; that this body of work is remarkable for its intellectual complexity, ambition, and resourcefulness; and that, in certain cases, it offers a critique of American society far more devastating than any delivered by better-known critics such as Hawthorne and Melville. Finally, it suggests that the enormous popularity of these novels, which has been cause for suspicion bordering on disgust, is a reason for paying close attention to them. Uncle Tom's Cabin was, in almost any terms one can think of, the most important book of the century. It was the first American novel ever to sell over a million copies and its impact is generally thought to have been incalculable. Expressive of and responsible for the values of its time, it also belongs to a genre, the sentimental novel, whose chief characteristic is that it is written by, for, and about women" (Tompkins 64-5). 

Gillian Brown

"Slavery disregards this opposition between the family at home and the exterior workplace. The distinction between work and family is eradicated in the slave, for whom there is no separation between economic and private status. When people themselves are 'articles' subject to 'mercantile dealings,' when 'the souls and bodies of men' are 'equivalent to money' (II, 317), women can no longer keep houses that provide refuge from marketplace activities. Slavery, according to Uncle Tom's Cabin, undermines women's housework by bringing the confusion of the marketplace into the center of the family shelter, into the kitchen. The real horror that slavery holds for the "mothers of America"(II, 316) to whom Stowe addressed her antislavery appeal is the suggestion that the family life nurtured by women is not immune from the economic life outside it " (Brown 505).  

"More than the tragedy of the slave mothers who "are constantly made childless by the American slave trade" (II, 316), the security of free white American mothers and the family institution they guard concerns Stowe. While the slave economy doesn't threaten American mothers with selling their children, it does limit their authority and efficacy when it creates households with "no time, no place, no order" (I, 304). In fashioning her abolitionist protest as a defense of nineteenth-century domestic values, Stowe designates slavery as a domestic issue for American women to adjudicate and manage. The call to the mothers of America for the abolition of slavery is a summons to fortify the home, to rescue domesticity from shiftlessness and slavery" (Brown 505-6). 

Characterization of Children and The Generational Gap in Uncle Tom's Cabin

Post and Presentation by Alyssa Sallean

So far, in Uncle Tom's Cabin, we have seen a few examples of relationships between slaves and their masters children that I find particularly interesting. Two of the most obvious examples so far are Tom's interaction with George Shelby and Eva St. Clare. 

In the opening chapters of the book, we are introduced to the relationship between George Shelby and Tom. When Tom is eventually sold in Chapter 10, George finds himself more upset than he was expecting, and I think he was surprised at his feelings. 

“ "But you shall take it!" said George; "look here -- I told Aunt Chloe I'd do it, and she advised me just to make a hole in it, and put a string through, so you could hang it round your neck, and keep it out of sight; else this mean scamp would take it away. I tell ye, Tom, I want to blow him up! it would do me good!"

   "No, don't Mas'r George, for it won't do me any good."

   "Well, I won't, for your sake," said George, busily tying his dollar round Tom's neck; "but there, now, button your coat tight over it, and keep it, and remember, every time you see it, that I'll come down after you, and bring you back. Aunt Chloe and I have been talking about it. I told her not to fear; I'll see to it, and I'll tease father's life out, if he don't do it."

   

    "O! Mas'r George, ye mustn't talk so 'bout yer father!"

   "Lor, Uncle Tom, I don't mean anything bad."

   "And now, Mas'r George," said Tom, "ye must be a good boy; 'member how many hearts is sot on ye. Al'ays keep close to yer mother. Don't be gettin' into any of them foolish ways boys has of gettin' too big to mind their mothers. Tell ye what, Mas'r George, the Lord gives good many things twice over; but he don't give ye a mother but once. Ye'll never see sich another woman, Mas'r George, if ye live to be a hundred years old. So, now, you hold on to her, and grow up, and be a comfort to her, thar's my own good boy, -- you will now, won't ye?"

   "Yes, I will, Uncle Tom," said George seriously.

   "And be careful of yer speaking, Mas'r George. Young boys, when they comes to your age, is wilful, sometimes -- it is natur they should be. But real gentlemen, such as I hopes you'll be, never lets fall on words that isn't 'spectful to thar parents. Ye an't 'fended, Mas'r George?"

   "No, indeed, Uncle Tom; you always did give me good advice."

   "I's older, ye know," said Tom, stroking the boy's fine, curly head with his large, strong hand, but speaking in a voice as tender as a woman's, "and I sees all that's bound up in you. O, Mas'r George, you has everything, -- l'arnin', privileges, readin', writin', -- and you'll grow up to be a great, learned, good man and all the people on the place and your mother and father'll be so proud on ye! Be a good Mas'r, like yer father; and be a Christian, like yer mother. 'Member yer Creator in the days o' yer youth, Mas'r George."

   "I'll be real good, Uncle Tom, I tell you," said George. "I'm going to be a first-rater; and don't you be discouraged. I'll have you back to the place, yet. As I told Aunt Chloe this morning, I'll build our house all over, and you shall have a room for a parlor with a carpet on it, when I'm a man. O, you'll have good times yet!"

   Haley now came to the door, with the handcuffs in his hands.

   "Look here, now, Mister," said George, with an air of great superiority, as he got out, "I shall let father and mother know how you treat Uncle Tom!"

   "You're welcome," said the trader.

   "I should think you'd be ashamed to spend all your life buying men and women, and chaining them, like cattle! I should think you'd feel mean!" said George.

   "So long as your grand folks wants to buy men and women, I'm as good as they is," said Haley; "'tan't any meaner sellin' on 'em, that 't is buyin'!"

   "I'll never do either, when I'm a man," said George; "I'm ashamed, this day, that I'm a Kentuckian. I always was proud of it before;" and George sat very straight on his horse, and looked round with an air, as if he expected the state would be impressed with his opinion.

   "Well, good-by, Uncle Tom; keep a stiff upper lip," said George.

   "Good-by, Mas'r George," said Tom, looking fondly and admiringly at him. "God Almighty bless you! Ah! Kentucky han't got many like you!" he said, in the fulness of his heart, as the frank, boyish face was lost to his view. Away he went, and Tom looked, till the clatter of his horse's heels died away, the last sound or sight of his home. But over his heart there seemed to be a warm spot, where those young hands had placed that precious dollar. Tom put up his hand, and held it close to his heart.”

I would just like to point out that there are many passages I would have loved to choose  – I particularly like the ones where Eva is talking about what she would do with the slaves if it were up to her. But this passage about George is of particular interest because he seems to realize that buying and selling slaves is wrong, but doesn't understand the fundamental issue with slavery. George wishes to own them and treat them right, but does not mention any desire to free them. It is also pertinent to point out that their relationship is unique – it is a sort of parent-child relationship that the two share. Tom feels comfortable enough with George to give him some good advice before their parting and George seems to take the advice to heart. 

Not surprisingly, the attitudes of the children in the book towards the slaves seems an exaggeration of the parents. George wishes to take care of his slaves very well, much like Mr. Shelby, but doesn't intend to free them. George doesn't understand the complicated ways of adulthood that may prevent him from doing everything he can to give the slaves the best life. 

Taking a look at Augustine St. Claire, we get a glimpse of his past about how his mother and father treated him and how he had a fairly good relationship with his slaves as he was growing up. When he got of age and had slaves of his own, he seemed to find it “inconvenient” to sell them all, but still wished to give them as good a life as he could. Eva seems to share the opinion that they should be treated as well as possible, but Eva actually intends to free them. Perhaps though, she is blinded by the “ignorance” of childhood. 

One last example of how children are exaggerated forms of their parents in the novel is Henrique. Augustine St. Clare's brother, Alfred St. Clare, never was as kind to his slaves as Augustine was. Henrique is portrayed as a wild child who has a bit of a temper and treats his slaves with much disrespect. 

The point that I wish to make is that I believe that Stowe is trying to use these children as the voice of reason in her books in order to help formulate her overall argument. Many of the readers of the novel would be adults, of course, and perhaps Stowe is hoping to use the children as a reminder to adults who have since lost their way. I believe that this empathy the readers may feel for Eva when she dies and doesn't get her wish for Tom to be freed help Stowe convince her readers that slavery itself is fundamentally wrong and even a child can see that. 

We see children changing their minds about the horrors of slavery, but do we see any adults doing so? Uncle Tom's Cabin was published in 1862. The emancipation proclamation was written in 1863. This means that there had to be a shift in the popular opinion among adults sometime in the years preceding 1863. Generally, these changes of opinion are generational. The children of the 1830's and 1840's are the ones that are going to be making the changes in the 1860's. Perhaps Stowe is attempting to remind those adults in the 1860's about what they may have thought of slavery as children. 

Some Questions to To Ponder:

1) Why did Stowe let Eva die? As in, what was the literary purpose? How does Eva dying contribute to the overall argument of the novel? 

2) Did many slaveowners at the time just do 'as their parent's' did? Did this lead to the continuation of the slave trade to longer than it needed to be or did it contribute to the shift in the general consensus on the morality of slavery in 1862?

Close Reading #2 Workshop

Submit Close Reading #2 via email to e314bannedbooks[at]gmail.com by midnight on Sun 2/23.

Assignment Sheet                 Rubric for CR#2                     Sample Close Reading 

The written assignment itself must be at least 500 words long and should reference the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) at least twice (2x).

You are not required (though you are welcome to) to include a transcription of your passage. Be sure to indicate the pages you close read both in a full initial citation and parenthetical in-text citation within the close reading.  

• In my experience, close readings are easier to approach if you isolate and annotate your passage. I strongly recommend copying your passage from this full online text, pasting it in a word processor, printing it out (use the FAC 10 printer if in class) and marking it up or otherwise commenting on it. 

Citation Guide

You are welcome to use any citation style as long as you are consistent and use parenthetical in-text citation. 

General Citation: 

Stowe, Harriet Beecher. Uncle Tom's Cabin. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, 2005. Page(s). Print. 

For example:

Stowe, Harriet Beecher. Uncle Tom's Cabin. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, 2005. 96-97. Print. 

In-text (parenthetical) 

Use parenthetical citation. Here's a general guide from Purdue's Online Writing Center (OWL).  

• Include the author's last name and the page number in the first parenthetical citation in your paper AND following a citation from another source (like the Oxford English Dictionary): (Stowe 61).  
• Subsequent citations from the same page of the same source do not require parenthetical citation. You may re-cite a page number once your start a new paragraph if you like.
• Cite again when you change pages or if you cite from another source. To re-establish your main source, use the authors' last name and page number. See above. 
• Give detailed information for OED citations: 

• (OED, evangelical, adj.1.b) = ([OED], [term defined], [part of speech: n. = noun, adj = adjective, adv = adverb, etc], [definition number(s) and/or letter(s) if available])
• If you have citations from the OED that immediately follow each other, you can simply identify changing definition letters or numbers. For instance: 1st citation: (OED, fatal, adj. 1)....2nd (fatal, adj. 4.a)

•  Do not include the words or characters page/pg/pp in parenthetical citations.  

Oxford English Dictionary (OED)

• Introduce abbreviations (like OED) by writing them out before using the acronym.
• Access the OED from http://lib.utexas.edu/ -> click on the 'Databases' tab in the main search box -> 'O' -> 'OED (Oxford English Dictionary)'
• Consider what definitions add to your analysis -- don't just define unfamiliar words.
• Include details in parenthetical citations -- see above. For example: (OED, fatal

Religion and Slavery in "The Quaker Settlement" (Chapter 13)

Post and presentation by Taylor Barnett: 

As previous presentations have pointed out, the issue of religion and slavery is a key part of Stowe’s emotional argument against slavery. In previous chapters, there have been characters that believed slavery was wrong on the basis of their religious beliefs yet ironically they still owned slaves.

In Chapter 13, we are introduced to the Quaker Settlement where they do not own slaves and aid, feed, and shelter fugitive slaves in their homes. The Quakers appear to practice their Christian beliefs in the purest form. They are free of the hypocrisy that previous Christians in the novel displayed. I found this passage to display the true devotion that the Quakers had to their Christian beliefs:

"Father, what if thee should get found out again?" said Simeon second, as he buttered his cake.

"I should pay my fine," said Simeon, quietly.

”But what if they put thee in prison?"

"Couldn't thee and mother manage the farm?" said Simeon, smiling.

"Mother can do almost everything," said the boy. "But isn't it a shame to make such laws?"

"Thee mustn't speak evil of thy rulers, Simeon," said his father, gravely. "The Lord only gives us our worldly goods that we may do justice and mercy; if our rulers require a price of us for it, we must deliver it up.

"Well, I hate those old slaveholders!" said the boy, who felt as unchristian as became any modern reformer.

"I am surprised at thee, son," said Simeon; "thy mother never taught thee so. I would do even the same for the slaveholder as for the slave, if the Lord brought him to my door in affliction.”

Simeon second blushed scarlet; but his mother only smiled, and said, "Simeon is my good boy; he will grow older, by and by, and then he will be like his father."

"I hope, my good sir, that you are not exposed to any difficulty on our account," said George, anxiously.

"Fear nothing, George, for therefore are we sent into the world. If we would not meet trouble for a good cause, we were not worthy of our name."

"But, for me," said George, "I could not bear it."

"Fear not, then, friend George; it is not for thee, but for God and man, we do it," said Simeon.

"And now thou must lie by quietly this day, and to-night, at ten o'clock, Phineas Fletcher will carry thee onward to the next stand, -- thee and the rest of they company. The pursuers are hard after thee; we must not delay."

Although it is not directly mentioned, the Fugitive Slave Act of1850 is brought up by one of the sons to his father. The act included a $1,000 fine and six month prison sentence for any person who aided a fugitive slave. Like the Quakers we are introduced to, many abolitionists went against the act and disobeyed it. The son questioned what will happen if they get in trouble for sheltering fugitive slaves again. The reply is that the father will pay their fine and will go to prison if needed. The Quaker family does not question whether or not they want to shelter fugitive slaves. Since Stowe wrote they might “get found out again” in the conversation between father and son, this is proof that the Quakers have been in trouble in the past (Stowe 120). It does not deter them from continuing to shelter fugitive slaves. They saw breaking the law and being punished as a small price to pay for being thankful for the “worldly goods” that the Lord gave them (120). They believed that they have fortunate and gifted lives, and it was not given them for free. If this means they must pay for the life that has been given to them, it needs to be done. The father said it best when he said he “would do even the same for the slaveholder as for the slave, if the Lord brought him to my door in affliction” (120). They believe that all people should be treated equally and wish to achieve that in their lives.

Eliza, George, and Harry who have been staying with the Quakers are going to be taken “onward to the next stand” (120). This is another historical reference that is not directly named. I translated “the next stand” as the next stop on the Underground Railroad, which Quakers were known to have participated in (120). These historical aspects of Uncle Tom’s Cabin must have given more meaning to the novel’s first readers in The National Era. The readers were more familiar with that fugitive slaves were being helped to travel north to escape the horrible things they were being put through in the South. These historical aspects gave readers more context back then as opposed to modern day readers who were not born until many years after slavery had been abolished. I feel like this helped the book make a greater impact on the abolitionist movement after it is was written.

Questions:

Do you think that on going awareness of the Fugitive Slave Act and stories of the Underground Railroad next to the initial publishing of Uncle Tom’s Cabin helped create more awareness for the need to abolish slavery?

The novel focuses on the Fugitive Slave Act quite frequently, but would there been as many as characters who were against slavery if it had not existed? Basically, did the Fugitive Slave Act push some of the characters over the line where they could not support slavery anymore?

How does having the Quakers representing the purest form of Christianity effect the novel?

The Evils of Slavery and Christian Values

Two themes remain consistent and overbearing throughout Uncle Tom’s Cabin, these two themes are the evils of slavery and Christian values. Stowe loves to intertwine these themes together and emphasize their opposition to force a reaction out of her largely Christian based audience.

Throughout the novel, Stowe introduces characters who express their views on the oppression of slavery. It is interesting to see the character’s reactions, regardless of their comfortable lives, to the outright cruel treatment of these slaves. Stowe purposefully uses the reactions of characters that the readers love and trust, like Tom and Eva, to exemplify these oppressed slaves. Stowe also furthers her use of these themes by  making it known that these characters (Tom and Eva) have a strong, prominent faith and are following a religious path.

Eva is an important character used to represent innocence and purity, she is also seen as an angelic figure. Eva’s connection to Christianity is ironic when it is juxtaposed with her personal feelings towards slavery. Also, Tom, being a slave himself, understands the harsh treatments put upon a slave but still stays true to religion and his faith in God. He believes that the answer to most things lies within Christianity.

In the beginning of Chapter 18, Tom is gaining “more and more” responsibility at the St. Clare household. St. Clare was happy with Tom’s work and even gave Tom full control of “all the marketing and providing for the family” (Stowe 172). Stowe emphasizes Tom’s strong Christianity and faith by providing examples of his honesty toward himself, his master, and God. With all this power in his hands a “temptation to dishonesty” but Tom remains very honest and his “Christian faith [is] strengthened” (173). Tom is very proud of himself because of these successes and has no worries of his own.

Toward the end of the chapter, Prue, a slave from down the road, tells Tom about her life and how miserable she is. She proceeds to explain how she has taken up drinking to fill her sorrows. Tom is shocked by this statement and immediately tries to help and asks her if she understands the consequences of drinking heavily, like how “it will be the ruin of ye, body and soul”. She barley listens to Tom’s suggestion and goes on to tell him that she knows she is “[going] to torment” and that she wishes she was already there. The underlined quote shows that slavery is an unchangeable, universal fact. She believes that if all white people go to heaven then she would still have to be a slave there in the afterlife. She decides that she would rather live in hell than to live the afterlife with her masters. This comment most likely shocked Stowe’s Christian readers to what slavery must’ve actually been like. Tom is again struck by this and is “shuddered [by] these frightful words” (184). He then begins to preach to her and tries to convince her to find God so she will be able to go to heaven. She tells him that she knows nothing of religion or this so called God.

Prue then explains her tragic story on how she began this drinking binge. After her story she quietly walks away and Tom is left broken and disheveled. Eva approaches him and realizes that something is wrong, he then relays Prue’s story to her. Eva has quite a reaction to the story, “her cheeks grew pale, and a deep, earnest shadow passed over her eyes” (185).

Tom and Eva’s reaction to Prue’s story allows Christian readers to feel a reaction as well. Since these readers can relate to these characters it allows them to feel what they are feeling. Also through Tom and Eva’s reaction Stowe is insisting that no Christian should be able to accept slavery. Stowe perfectly executed this passage in order to persuade her readers to feel sympathy toward Prue and her oppression and furthermore to feel sympathy toward slavery in general.

 "To get shet o' my misery. I had one child after I come here; and I thought then I'd have one to raise, cause Mas'r wasn't a speculator. It was de peartest little thing! and Missis she seemed to think a heap on 't, at first; it never cried, -- it was likely and fat. But Missis tuck sick, and I tended her; and I tuck the fever, and my milk all left me, and the child it pined to skin and bone, and Missis wouldn't buy milk for it. She wouldn't hear to me, when I telled her I hadn't milk. She said she knowed I could feed it on what other folks eat; and the child kinder pined, and cried, and cried, and cried, day and night, and got all gone to skin and bones, and Missis got sot agin it and she said 't wan't nothin' but crossness. She wished it was dead, she said; and she wouldn't let me have it o' nights, cause, she said, it kept me awake, and made me good for nothing. She made me sleep in her room; and I had to put it away off in a little kind o' garret, and thar it cried itself to death, one night. It did; and I tuck to drinkin', to keep its crying out of my ears! I did, -- and I will drink! I will, if I do go to torment for it! Mas'r says I shall go to torment, and I tell him I've got thar now!"

   "O, ye poor crittur!" said Tom, "han't nobody never telled ye how the Lord Jesus loved ye, and died for ye? Han't they telled ye that he'll help ye, and ye can go to heaven, and have rest, at last?"

   "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. I had so," she said, as with her usual groan, she got her basket on her head, and walked sullenly away.

   Tom turned, and walked sorrowfully back to the house. In the court he met little Eva, -- a crown of tuberoses on her head, and her eyes radiant with delight.

   "O, Tom! here you are. I'm glad I've found you. Papa says you may get out the ponies, and take me in my little new carriage," she said, catching his hand. "But what's the matter Tom? -- you look sober."

   "I feel bad, Miss Eva," said Tom, sorrowfully. "But I'll get the horses for you."

   "But do tell me, Tom, what is the matter. I saw you talking to cross old Prue."

   Tom, in simple, earnest phrase, told Eva the woman's history. She did not exclaim or wonder, or weep, as other children do. Her cheeks grew pale, and a deep, earnest shadow passed over her eyes. She laid both hands on her bosom, and sighed heavily.

Questions

1. Do you believe that Prue’s story actually got a reaction out of Stowe’s Christian audience? And furthermore do you think that these Christian’s took action against slavery because of it?

2. Do you think someone reading this novel without a religious background would react differently than a person with a religious background? If so, why?