Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Back when I was in college Uncle Tom's Cabin was one of the novels assigned in my American literature class. For some reason that I can't really remember, I never ended up actually reading it. I used online summaries to get through my assignments, which ended up working out fine. As a stereotypical goody two shoes, this was highly unusual behavior for me. I chalk it up now to the stress of college, but I am still a little disappointed in myself for not actually reading it when I was supposed to. I always knew I wanted to come back to it one day, so when I was planning out my Back to the Classics Challenge for this year, I decided to use it for the "classic by a female author prompt."

I was further inspired to pick this novel up again just a few weeks ago, when I took a trip to the Harriet Beecher Stowe house in Hartford, Connecticut. The tour through her home was absolutely lovely, and I purchased a fresh copy of Uncle Tom's Cabin in the gift shop on the way out. Standing in the rooms that she stood in and learning about her journey to write this novel was a very moving and powerful experience. I knew then that I had to read this book sooner rather than later. Accordingly, once I finished up The Book Junkie Trial books I was working on, I got started.

Uncle Tom's Cabin is the abolitionist novel that Abraham Lincoln famously declared to be the book that started the Civil War. It has a complicated legacy and a bit of a controversial history, but at its heart, it is a straightforward story about the evils of slavery. The plot centers around two different slaves in the 1850s, the eponymous Uncle Tom and a young woman named Eliza Harris. At the start of the novel, both Eliza and Tom are the property of the Shelby family in rural Kentucky. They feel that they are treated very well by their master and are happy with their lives on the cotton plantation. Tom  has a sterling reputation in the community, built on his trustworthiness and reliability. He is entrusted with caring for the horses, driving Mr. Shelby around, and carrying out other important errands for the family. He is married to another slave named Aunt Chloe, and he lives with her and their three children in a small cabin on the property. Eliza has a similarly good reputation with the family, and works as Mrs. Shelby's personal maid. She is married to a slave named George, who works on a neighboring plantation. They have a young son together, named Harry.

When Mr. Shelby makes some unwise investments, he finds himself in a difficult financial position. He decides to sell off some of his more valuable slaves to a slavebroker to settle his debts and avoid losing his farm. The slaves he sells are Tom and young Harry. When Eliza and Tom discover this terrible news, their reactions are quite different. Eliza immediately takes Harry and runs away to the north, while Tom accepts his fate and is sold further south. Throughout the rest of the novel, the story shifts between both characters as they struggle to adjust to their new lives and try to reconnect with their families.

From page one of this novel, it is very clear that Stowe was on a mission to end slavery with this story. Her narration overtly states the evils of the institution hundreds of times throughout the text, and she frequently breaks into the story to address the reader directly and question their beliefs and assumptions about the practice. She is not subtle with her messaging, and often does this using all capital letters, to emphasize the moral  horror she is trying to convey. I learned during my tour of the Stowe house that much of Stowe's distaste for slavery centered around the separation of families, and her own experience of losing one of her children to an illness solidified her feelings in this regard. Accordingly, much of her rhetorical strategy in the text caters to female readers, appealing to their maternal instincts to highlight the cruelty of taking children from their mothers and husbands from their wives. Both Eliza and Tom's distress at being taken from their families occupy large portions of the story, with Stowe frequently asking readers how they would feel if their babies were ripped from their arms and sold to a faraway stranger. It's a smart and effective strategy. Stowe knew that much of her audience would be female and tailored her story to allow them to empathize with her characters.

Uncle Tom's Cabin was a bestseller when it was published in 1852, and massively influential in the fight to end slavery. People fell in love with Tom and Eliza, and were quite upset at the troubles they suffered. It helped to convince people that slavery was cruel. In more modern times, however, the book has faced a lot of criticism. The phrase "Uncle Tom" is now used as a slur to describe someone of color showing excessively subservient behavior to a white person. While this idea of Tom being overly subservient is more a product of stage and movie adaptations than the actual text, the negativity still affects the public's perception of the book. There are other troubling attitudes shown throughout the story as well, including the belief that black people are more innocent and childlike than whites, and the assertion that black people feel emotions more strongly than whites, as if on a primal level. There are also some characters that don't come across well, especially the impish Topsy, who's behavior and mannerisms are completely informed by harmful stereotypes.

It is clear from reading that Stowe herself believed that whites were superior to blacks on an intellectual level. However, it is also clear that she abhorred slavery, sympathized with the struggles that slaves had to endure, believed that slaves loved their children just the same as white people did, and sincerely thought that the institution should be abolished. Much of her novel hasn't aged well, but her intentions were pure and her efforts to persuade others to support the abolitionist cause met with tremendous success in her time period. Ultimately, I choose to admire the fact that she saw an injustice happening in her world and didn't just stand idly by, lamenting the situation; she tried to help change it. I don't think there's much point in critically analyzing her treatment of race here. She was writing in 1852. It's not realistic to expect her to have modern views.

So while I deeply admire Stowe's effort throughout Uncle Tom's Cabin, evaluating my actual enjoyment of it is another matter. This novel is undoubtedly an interesting work of historical significance to America, and it's worth reading for that reason alone. As literature, however, it isn't exactly a page-turner. This is a long novel, and a repetitive one at that. The plot is a bit meandering, especially in the Uncle Tom sections, which are much longer than the Eliza sections. The constant breaking in of the narrator to denounce slavery directly to the reader grows tiring after a while as well. It doesn't feel like a real story that sweeps you away. Rather, it feels like a lecture. It's a fairly entertaining lecture, but a lecture nonetheless. It tough to criticize the book for that though, as convincing people slavery was wrong was the entire point of it. I should have been able to finish reading it in a week or so, but I ended up taking double that, simply because I wasn't excited to pick it up. I didn't exactly dislike it, but I didn't love it either. What saved the experience for me was the historical value the novel has. It felt like I was reading something important, and that made me appreciate it more.

Ultimately, I am glad that I finally read Uncle Tom's Cabin. While it is a novel with its share of problems, its impact on history is undeniable and Stowe's heart was in the right place while writing it. It was an interesting look at a dark time in America's past, and an essential read for anyone interested in classic literature. It may not have become a favorite for me, but it was certainly illuminating.


Challenge Tally
Classics Club (#72 on my list): 51/100 
Back to the Classics 2019 (Classic by a Female Author) 10/12 Books Read 

Total Books Read in 2019: 56