"Things have got to a pretty pass, if a woman can't give a warm supper and a bed to poor, starving creatures, just because they are slaves, and have been abused and oppressed all their lives, poor things!"
Internet Quotation: "Never since books were first printed has the success of Uncle Tom been equalled." - Putnam's Monthly Magazine, January 1853
Summary: If there was ever any doubt about Uncle Tom's Cabin use as propaganda for the abolitionist cause, let me point to this first quotation. Said by Mrs. Bird, the little homemaker who turns fiery at the passing of the Fugitive Slave Act, this passage is meant to display the humanity of the slaves and the inhumanity of the people oppressing them. Slaves are people too, and rightfully deserve the same respect as every other person in the world. By perpetuating slavery, how can one call oneself "right and Christian," as Mrs. Bird, and likely Harriet Beecher Stowe herself, would say?
The second quotation is meant only to convey the overwhelming success of the novel. Despite a lukewarm response when it was serialized in a Washington D.C. abolitionist journal, the book form of Uncle Tom's Cabin was far and away the biggest bestseller, other than the Bible, of course, to ever come out in the United States. Something akin to The Da Vinci Code of today. Only better. And with actual truth. And less Dan Brown.
My Ideas: I'm afraid to say anything negative about Uncle Tom's Cabin or the woman that wrote it, given how instrumental it was in raising the awareness of the American populace on the issue of the cruelty of slavery. Lincoln himself allegedly called her "the little woman who wrote the book that started this Great War." What could I possibly say against a person like that?
Therefore, I shall step cautiously into negative territory by first giving a placatory positive. The book obviously accomplishes what it set out to do, with a real compassion for the slaves and a perfect vernacular portraying the humanity of the abused. You can't not connect with these slaves. That's the good. What I don't like, however, is just how melodramatic the whole thing is. In order to make the biggest impact on her audience, Stowe shoots right for the heart in the most obvious way possible. "Ma'am... have you ever lost a child?" says Eliza, utilizing a brief pause for added effect. Present in this novel is the type of histrionics that, honestly, make for a bestseller. It is easy to see why people gobbled this up like so much Harry Potter; the book has a captivating plot, a varied, lively cast of characters, and a feeling of complete tension. What I'm afraid it misses is some sort of subtlety in making its case for abolition and emancipation. Instead of presenting perhaps a more wholly accurate tale of the horrors of slavery – which I feel you really don't need any sort of extreme measures to convey, given just how monstrous slavery is – we are instead shown a bunch of hilarious vaudevillian slaves (Sam and Andy), overly dramatic dialogue, and full-blown action sequences of impossible deftness. Jumping across ice floes in the Ohio River with bleeding feet and a child on your shoulder after having been chased by men on horses? Mrs. Stowe was doing Hollywood before Hollywood.
But like I said, I feel dirty and wrong saying these things, given the somewhat sacrosanct nature the book has achieved in recent years. It is an important work and a testament to the power of literature as a means of creating social change, and I love that like I love my mother. Yet there is something about the book that just doesn't sit well with me. The most glaring issue is just how sentimental the novel is in its portrayal of black slaves. To top this off, many of the behavioral traits of the blacks in the book were adopted by the collective American mind and made into stereotypes of the black race (bestsellers have a tendency of doing such things). The negative image of the "happy darky," for example, stems from Stowe's depiction of the slaves.
The book clearly reads like a pull-on-the-heartstrings bestseller, something to read quickly, get agitated, and talk loudly to your friends about. That isn't a bad thing at all – but it isn't necessarily a great thing either.
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