Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in two volumes in 1852, the novel had a profound effect on attitudes toward African Americans and slavery in the U.S., and is said to have "helped lay the groundwork for the [American] Civil War".[1][2][3]
In the United States, Uncle Tom's Cabin was the best-selling novel and the second best-selling book of the 19th century, following the Bible.[7][8] It is credited with helping fuel the abolitionist cause in the 1850s.[9] The influence attributed to the book was so great that a likely apocryphal story arose of Abraham Lincoln meeting Stowe at the start of the Civil War and declaring, "So this is the little lady who started this great war."[10][11]
The book and the plays it inspired helped popularize a number of negative stereotypes about black people,[12][13][3] including that of the namesake character "Uncle Tom". The term came to be associated with an excessively subservient person.[14] These later associations with Uncle Tom's Cabin have, to an extent, overshadowed the historical effects of the book as a "vital antislavery tool".[15] Nonetheless, the novel remains a "landmark" in protest literature,[16] with later books such as The Jungle by Upton Sinclair and Silent Spring by Rachel Carson owing a large debt to it.[17]
Stowe was also inspired by the posthumous biography of Phebe Ann Jacobs, a devout Congregationalist of Brunswick, Maine.[23][24] Born on a slave plantation in Lake Hiawatha, New Jersey, Jacobs was enslaved for most of her life, including by the president of Bowdoin College.[25][26][27][28] In her final years, Jacobs lived as a free woman, laundering clothes for Bowdoin students. She achieved respect from her community due to her devout religious beliefs,[28] and her funeral was widely attended.[29][30]
First appearance of Uncle Tom's Cabin as serialized in The National Era (June 5, 1851)
Uncle Tom's Cabin first appeared as a 40-week serial in The National Era, an abolitionist periodical, starting with the June 5, 1851, issue. It was originally intended as a shorter narrative that would run for only a few weeks. Stowe expanded the story significantly, however, and it was instantly popular, such that protests were sent to the Era office when she missed an issue.[36] The final installment was released in the April 1, 1852, issue of Era. Stowe arranged for the story's copyright to be registered with the United States District Court for the District of Maine. She renewed her copyright in 1879 and the work entered the public domain on May 12, 1893.[37]
While the story was still being serialized, the publisher John P. Jewett contracted with Stowe to turn Uncle Tom's Cabin into a book.[38] Convinced the book would be popular, Jewett made the unusual decision (for the time) to have six full-page illustrations by Hammatt Billings engraved for the first printing.[39] Published in book form on March 20, 1852, the novel sold 3,000copies on that day alone,[36] and soon sold out its complete print run.[40] In the first year after it was published, 300,000copies of the book were sold in the United States.[41] Eight printing presses, running incessantly, could barely keep up with the demand.[42]
By mid-1853, sales of the book dramatically decreased[43] and Jewett went out of business during the Panic of 1857.[44] In June 1860, the right to publish Uncle Tom's Cabin passed to the Boston firm Ticknor and Fields,[45] which put the book back in print in November 1862. After that demand began to yet again increase.[46][47]Houghton Mifflin Company acquired the rights from Ticknor in 1878.[48] In 1879, a new edition of Uncle Tom's Cabin was released, repackaging the novel as an "American classic".[47] Through the 1880s until its copyright expired, the book served as a mainstay and reliable source of income for Houghton Mifflin.[43] By the end of the nineteenth century, the novel was widely available in a large number of editions[47] and in the United States it became the second best-selling book of that century after the Bible.[7]
Uncle Tom's Cabin sold equally well in Britain; the first London edition appeared in May 1852 and sold 200,000copies.[49] In a few years, over 1.5million copies of the book were in circulation in Britain, although most of these were infringing copies (a similar situation occurred in the United States).[50] By 1857, the novel had been translated into 20 languages.[51] Translator Lin Shu published the first Chinese translation in 1901, which was also the first American novel translated into that language.[52]
Plot
Eliza escapes with her son; Tom sold "down the river"
A full-page illustration by Hammatt Billings for the first edition of Uncle Tom's Cabin, 1852. Eliza tells Uncle Tom that he has been sold and she is running away to save her child.
The book opens with a Kentucky farmer named Arthur Shelby facing the loss of his farm because of debts. Even though he and his wife Emily Shelby believe that they have a benevolent relationship with their slaves, Shelby decides to raise the needed funds by selling two of them—Uncle Tom, a middle-aged man with a wife and children, and Harry, the son of Emily Shelby's maid Eliza—to Mr. Haley, a coarse slave trader. Emily Shelby is averse to this idea because she had promised her maid that her child would never be sold; Emily's son, George Shelby, hates to see Tom go because he sees the man as his friend and mentor.
When Eliza overhears Mr. and Mrs. Shelby discussing plans to sell Tom and Harry, Eliza determines to run away with her son. The novel states that Eliza made this decision because she fears losing her only surviving child (she had already miscarried two children). Eliza departs that night, leaving a note of apology to her mistress. She later makes a dangerous crossing over the ice of the Ohio River to escape her pursuers.
As Tom is sold, Mr. Haley takes him to a riverboat on the Mississippi River and from there Tom is to be transported to a slave market. While on board, Tom meets Eva, an angelic little white girl. They quickly become friends. Eva falls into the river and Tom dives into the river to save her life. Being grateful to Tom, Eva's father Augustine St. Clare buys him from Haley and takes him with the family to their home in New Orleans. Tom and Eva begin to relate to one another because of the deep Christian faith they both share.
Eliza's family hunted; Tom's life with St. Clare
An illustration of Tom and Eva by Hammatt Billings for the 1853 deluxe edition of Uncle Tom's Cabin
During Eliza's escape, she meets up with her husband George Harris, who had run away previously. They decide to attempt to reach Canada but are tracked by Tom Loker, a slave hunter hired by Mr. Haley. Eventually Loker and his men trap Eliza and her family, causing George to shoot him in the side. Worried that Loker may die, Eliza convinces George to bring the slave hunter to a nearby Quaker settlement for medical treatment.
Back in New Orleans, St. Clare debates slavery with his Northern cousin Ophelia who, while opposing slavery, is prejudiced against black people. St. Clare, however, believes he is not biased, even though he is a slave owner. In an attempt to show Ophelia that her prejudiced views against black people are wrong, St. Clare purchases Topsy, a young black slave, and asks Ophelia to educate her.
After Tom has lived with the St. Clares for two years, Eva grows very ill. Before she dies she experiences a vision of heaven, which she shares with the people around her. As a result of her death and vision, the other characters resolve to change their lives, Ophelia promising to throw off her personal prejudices against blacks, Topsy saying she will better herself, and St. Clare pledging to free Tom.
Tom sold to Simon Legree
Before St. Clare can follow through on his pledge, he dies after being stabbed outside a tavern. His wife reneges on her late husband's vow and sells Tom at auction to a vicious plantation owner named Simon Legree. Tom is taken to rural Louisiana with other new slaves including Emmeline, whom Simon Legree has purchased to use as a sex slave.
A full-page illustration by Hammatt Billings for the first edition of Uncle Tom's Cabin, 1852. Cassy, another of Legree's slaves, ministers to Uncle Tom after his whipping.
Legree begins to hate Tom when Tom refuses Legree's order to whip his fellow slave. Legree beats Tom viciously and resolves to crush his new slave's faith in God. Despite Legree's cruelty, Tom refuses to stop reading his Bible and comforting the other slaves as best he can. While at the plantation, Tom meets Cassy, another slave whom Legree used as a sex slave. Cassy tells her story to Tom. She was previously separated from her son and daughter when they were sold. She became pregnant again but killed the child because she could not tolerate having another child separated from her.
Tom Loker, changed after being healed by the Quakers, returns to the story. He has helped George, Eliza, and Harry enter Canada from Lake Erie and become free. In Louisiana, Uncle Tom almost succumbs to hopelessness as his faith in God is tested by the hardships of the plantation. He has two visions, one of Jesus and one of Eva, which renew his resolve to remain a faithful Christian, even unto death.
He encourages Cassy to escape, which she does, taking Emmeline with her. When Tom refuses to tell Legree where Cassy and Emmeline have gone, Legree orders his overseers to kill Tom. As Tom is dying, he forgives the overseers who savagely beat him. Humbled by the character of the man they have killed, both men become Christians. George Shelby, Arthur Shelby's son, arrives to buy Tom's freedom, but Tom dies shortly after they meet.
Final section
On their boat ride to freedom, Cassy and Emmeline meet George Harris' sister Madame de Thoux and accompany her to Canada. Madame de Thoux and George Harris were separated in their childhood. Cassy discovers that Eliza is her long-lost daughter who was sold as a child. Now that their family is together again, they travel to France and eventually Liberia, the African nation created for former American slaves. George Shelby returns to the Kentucky farm, where after his father's death, he frees all his slaves. George Shelby urges them to remember Tom's sacrifice every time they look at his cabin. He decides to lead a pious Christian life just as Uncle Tom did.
Uncle Tom, the title character, was initially seen as a noble, long-suffering Christian slave.[14] In more recent years, his name has become an epithet directed towards African-Americans who are accused of selling out to whites.[14] Stowe intended Tom to be a "noble hero" and a praiseworthy person.[53] Throughout the book, far from allowing himself to be exploited, Tom stands up for his beliefs and refuses to betray friends and family.[14]
Eliza is a slave who serves as a personal maid to Mrs. Shelby. She escapes to the North with her five-year-old son Harry after he is sold to Mr. Haley. Her husband, George, eventually finds Eliza and Harry in Ohio and emigrates with them to Canada, then France, and finally Liberia.[54] The character Eliza was inspired by an account given at Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinnati by John Rankin to Stowe's husband Calvin, a professor at the school. According to Rankin, in February 1838, a young slave woman, Eliza Harris, had escaped across the frozen Ohio River to the town of Ripley with her child in her arms and stayed at his house on her way farther north.[55]
Evangeline "Eva" St. Clare is the daughter of Augustine St. Clare. Eva enters the narrative when Uncle Tom is traveling via steamship to New Orleans to be sold, and he rescues the five- or six-year-old girl from drowning. Eva begs her father to buy Tom, and he becomes the head coachman at the St. Clare house. He spends most of his time with the angelic Eva. Eva often talks about love and forgiveness, convincing the dour slave girl Topsy that she deserves love. She even touches the heart of her Aunt Ophelia.[56] Eventually Eva falls terminally ill. Before dying, she gives a lock of her hair to each of the slaves, telling them that they must become Christians so that they may see each other in Heaven. On her deathbed, she convinces her father to free Tom, but because of circumstances the promise never materializes.[57]
Simon Legree is a cruel slave owner—a Northerner by birth—whose name has become synonymous with greed and cruelty.[58] He is arguably the novel's main antagonist. His goal is to demoralize Tom and break him of his religious faith; he eventually orders Tom whipped to death out of frustration for his slave's unbreakable belief in God. The novel reveals that, as a young man, he had abandoned his sickly mother for a life at sea and ignored her letter to see her one last time at her deathbed. He sexually exploits Cassy, who despises him, and later sets his designs on Emmeline.[59] It is unclear if Legree is based on any actual individuals. Reports surfaced in the late 1800s that Stowe had in mind a wealthy cotton and sugar plantation owner named Meredith Calhoun,[60][61] who settled on the Red River north of Alexandria, Louisiana.[62] Rev. Josiah Henson, inspiration for the character of Uncle Tom, said that Legree was modeled after Bryce Lytton,[63] "who broke my arm and maimed me for life."[64]
Literary themes and theories
Major themes
Uncle Tom's Cabin is dominated by a single theme: the evil and immorality of slavery.[65] While Stowe weaves other subthemes throughout her text, such as the moral authority of motherhood and the power of Christian love,[4] she emphasizes the connections between these and the horrors of slavery. Stowe sometimes changed the story's voice so she could give a "homily" on the destructive nature of slavery[66] (such as when a white woman on the steamboat carrying Tom further south states, "The most dreadful part of slavery, to my mind, is its outrages of feelings and affections—the separating of families, for example.").[67] One way Stowe showed the evil of slavery[49] was how this "peculiar institution" forcibly separated families from each other.[68]
"The fugitives are safe in a free land." Illustration by Hammatt Billings for Uncle Tom's Cabin, first edition. The image shows George Harris, Eliza, Harry, and Mrs. Smyth after they escape to freedom.
One of the subthemes presented in the novel is temperance.[69] Stowe made it somewhat subtle and in some cases she wove it into events that would also support the dominant theme. One example of this is when Augustine St. Clare is killed, he attempted to stop a brawl between two inebriated men in a cafe and was stabbed. Another example is the death of Prue, who was whipped to death for being drunk on a consistent basis; however, her reasons for doing so is due to the loss of her baby. In the opening of the novel, the fates of Eliza and her son are being discussed between slave owners over wine. Considering that Stowe intended this to be a subtheme, this scene could foreshadow future events that put alcohol in a bad light.[70]
Because Stowe saw motherhood as the "ethical and structural model for all of American life"[71] and also believed that only women had the moral authority to save[72] the United States from the demon of slavery, another major theme of Uncle Tom's Cabin is the moral power and sanctity of women.[73] Through characters like Eliza, who escapes from slavery to save her young son (and eventually reunites her entire family), or Eva, who is seen as the "ideal Christian",[74] Stowe shows how she believed women could save those around them from even the worst injustices. Though later critics have noted that Stowe's female characters are often domesticclichés instead of realistic women,[75] Stowe's novel "reaffirmed the importance of women's influence" and helped pave the way for the women's rights movement in the following decades.[76]
Stowe's puritanical religious beliefs show up in the novel's final, overarching theme—the exploration of the nature of Christian love[4][77] and how she feels Christian theology is fundamentally incompatible with slavery.[78] This theme is most evident when Tom urges St. Clare to "look away to Jesus" after the death of St. Clare's beloved daughter Eva. After Tom dies, George Shelby eulogizes Tom by saying, "What a thing it is to be a Christian."[79] Because Christian themes play such a large role in Uncle Tom's Cabin—and because of Stowe's frequent use of direct authorial interjections on religion and faith—the novel often takes the "form of a sermon".[80]
Literary theories
Over the years scholars have postulated a number of theories about what Stowe was trying to say with the novel (aside from the major theme of condemning slavery). For example, as an ardent Christian and active abolitionist, Stowe placed many of her religious beliefs into the novel.[81] Some scholars have stated that Stowe saw her novel as offering a solution to the moral and political dilemma that troubled many slavery opponents: whether engaging in prohibited behavior was justified in opposing evil. Was the use of violence to oppose the violence of slavery and the breaking of proslavery laws morally defensible?[82] Which of Stowe's characters should be emulated, the passive Uncle Tom or the defiant George Harris?[83] Stowe's solution was similar to Ralph Waldo Emerson's: God's will would be followed if each person sincerely examined his principles and acted on them.[84]
Scholars have also seen the novel as expressing the values and ideas of the Free Will Movement.[85] In this view, the character of George Harris embodies the principles of free labor, and the complex character of Ophelia represents those Northerners who condoned compromise with slavery. In contrast to Ophelia is Dinah, who operates on passion. During the course of the novel Ophelia is transformed, just as the Republican Party (three years later) proclaimed that the North must transform itself and stand up for its antislavery principles.[86]
Feminist theory can also be seen at play in Stowe's book, with the novel as a critique of the patriarchal nature of slavery.[87] For Stowe, blood relations rather than paternalistic relations between masters and slaves formed the basis of families. Moreover, Stowe viewed national solidarity as an extension of a person's family, thus feelings of nationality stemmed from possessing a shared race. Consequently, she advocated African colonization for freed slaves and not amalgamation into American society.[88]
The book has also been seen as an attempt to redefine masculinity as a necessary step toward the abolition of slavery.[89] In this view, abolitionists had begun to resist the vision of aggressive and dominant men that the conquest and colonization of the early 19th century had fostered. To change the notion of manhood so that men could oppose slavery without jeopardizing their self-image or their standing in society, some abolitionists drew on principles of women's suffrage and Christianity as well as passivism, and praised men for cooperation, compassion, and civic spirit. Others within the abolitionist movement argued for conventional, aggressive masculine action. All the men in Stowe's novel are representations of either one kind of man or the other.[90]
Style
Eliza crossing the icy river, in an 1881 theatre poster
Uncle Tom's Cabin is written in the sentimental[3][91] and melodramatic style common to 19th-century sentimental novels[8] and domestic fiction (also called women's fiction). These genres were the most popular novels of Stowe's time and were "written by, for, and about women"[92] along with featuring a writing style that evoked a reader's sympathy and emotion.[93]Uncle Tom's Cabin has been called a "representative" example of a sentimental novel.[94]
The power in this type of writing can be seen in the reaction of contemporary readers. Georgiana May, a friend of Stowe's, wrote a letter to the author, saying: "I was up last night long after one o'clock, reading and finishing Uncle Tom's Cabin. I could not leave it any more than I could have left a dying child."[95] Another reader is described as obsessing on the book at all hours and having considered renaming her daughter Eva.[96] Evidently the death of Little Eva affected a lot of people at that time, because in 1852, 300 baby girls in Boston alone were given that name.[96]
Despite this positive reaction from readers, for decades literary critics dismissed the style found in Uncle Tom's Cabin and other sentimental novels because these books were written by women and so prominently featured what one critic called "women's sloppy emotions".[97] Another literary critic said that had the novel not been about slavery, "it would be just another sentimental novel",[98] and another described the book as "primarily a derivative piece of hack work".[99] In The Literary History of the United States, George F. Whicher called Uncle Tom's Cabin "Sunday-school fiction", full of "broadly conceived melodrama, humor, and pathos".[100]
In 1985 Jane Tompkins expressed a different view with her famous defense of the book in "Sentimental Power: Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Politics of Literary History."[97][101] Tompkins praised the style so many other critics had dismissed, writing that sentimental novels showed how women's emotions had the power to change the world for the better. She also said that the popular domestic novels of the 19th century, including Uncle Tom's Cabin, were remarkable for their "intellectual complexity, ambition, and resourcefulness"; and that Uncle Tom's Cabin offers a "critique of American society far more devastating than any delivered by better-known critics such as Hawthorne and Melville."[102]
Reactions to the novel
Uncle Tom's Cabin has exerted an influence equaled by few other novels in history.[102][103] Upon publication, Uncle Tom's Cabin ignited a firestorm of protest from defenders of slavery (who created a number of books in response to the novel) while the book elicited praise from abolitionists. The novel is considered an influential[104] "landmark" of protest literature.[16]
Contemporary reaction in United States and around the world
Stowe responded to criticism by writing A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin (1853), documenting the veracity of her novel's depiction of slavery.
Uncle Tom's Cabin had an "incalculable"[102] impact on the 19th-century world and captured the imagination of many Americans. In a likely apocryphal story that alludes to the novel's impact, when Abraham Lincoln met Stowe in 1862 he supposedly commented, "So this is the little lady who started this great war."[10][11][105] Historians are undecided if Lincoln actually said this line, and in a letter that Stowe wrote to her husband a few hours after meeting with Lincoln no mention of this comment was made.[106] Many writers have also credited the novel with focusing Northern anger at the injustices of slavery and the Fugitive Slave Law[106] and helping to fuel the abolitionist movement.[9][3]Uniongeneral and politician James Baird Weaver said that the book convinced him to become active in the abolitionist movement.[107]
Frederick Douglass was "convinced both of the social uses of the novel and of Stowe's humanitarianism" and heavily promoted the novel in his newspaper during the book's initial release.[108] Though Douglass said Uncle Tom's Cabin was "a work of marvelous depth and power," he also published criticism of the novel, most prominently by Martin Delany. In a series of letters in the paper, Delany accused Stowe of "borrowing (and thus profiting) from the work of black writers to compose her novel" and chastised Stowe for her "apparent support of black colonization to Africa."[108] " Martin was "one of the most out-spoken black critics" of Uncle Tom's Cabin at the time and later wrote Blake; or the Huts of America, a novel where an African American "chooses violent rebellion over Tom's resignation."[109]
White people in the American South were outraged at the novel's release,[49] with the book also roundly criticized by slavery supporters.[35] Southern novelist William Gilmore Simms declared the work utterly false[110] while also calling it slanderous.[111] Reactions ranged from a bookseller in Mobile, Alabama, being forced to leave town for selling the novel[49] to threatening letters sent to Stowe (including a package containing a slave's severed ear).[49] Many Southern writers, like Simms, soon wrote their own books in opposition to Stowe's novel.[112]
Some critics highlighted Stowe's paucity of life-experience relating to Southern life, saying that it led her to create inaccurate descriptions of the region. For instance, she had never been to a Southern plantation. Stowe always said she based the characters of her book on stories she was told by runaway slaves in Cincinnati. It is reported that "She observed firsthand several incidents which galvanized her to write [the] famous anti-slavery novel. Scenes she observed on the Ohio River, including seeing a husband and wife being sold apart, as well as newspaper and magazine accounts and interviews, contributed material to the emerging plot."[113]
In response to these criticisms, in 1853 Stowe published A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin, an attempt to document the veracity of the novel's depiction of slavery.[31] In the book, Stowe discusses each of the major characters in Uncle Tom's Cabin and cites "real life equivalents" to them while also mounting a more "aggressive attack on slavery in the South than the novel itself had".[34] Like the novel, A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin was a best-seller, but although Stowe claimed A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin documented her previously consulted sources, she actually read many of the cited works only after the publication of her novel.[34]
A sculpture after an 1869 design by Louis Samain was installed in 1895 on Avenue Louise in Brussels. The scene—a runaway black slave and child attacked by dogs—was inspired by Uncle Tom's Cabin.
Uncle Tom's Cabin also created great interest in the United Kingdom. The first London edition appeared in May 1852 and sold 200,000 copies.[49] Some of this interest was due to anti-Americanism in Britain. As English lawyer Nassau William Senior argued, "The evil passions which Uncle Tom gratified in England were not hatred or vengeance, but national jealousy and national vanity. We have long been smarting under the conceit of America—we are tired of hearing her boast that she is the freest and the most enlightened country that the world has ever seen. Our clergy hate her voluntary system—our Tories hate her democrats—our Whigs hate her parvenus—our Radicals hate her litigiousness, her insolence, and her ambition. All parties hailed Mrs. Stowe as a revolter from the enemy... She taught us how to prove that democrats may be tyrants, that an aristocracy of caste is more oppressive than an aristocracy of station... Our pity for the victim is swallowed up by our hatred of the tyrant.[114]
Stowe sent a copy of the book to Charles Dickens, who wrote her in response: "I have read your book with the deepest interest and sympathy, and admire, more than I can express to you, both the generous feeling which inspired it, and the admirable power with which it is executed."[115] The historian and politician Thomas Babington Macaulay wrote in 1852 that "it is the most valuable addition that America has made to English literature."[116]Charles Francis Adams Sr., the American ambassador to Britain during the Civil War, argued later that "Uncle Tom's Cabin; or Life among the Lowly, published in 1852, exercised, largely from fortuitous circumstances, a more immediate, considerable and dramatic world-influence than any other book ever printed."[117]
Leo Tolstoy claimed that Uncle Tom's Cabin was a greater work than any play written by Shakespeare because it flowed from the love of God and man.[118]
20th century and modern criticism
In the 20th century, a number of writers attacked Uncle Tom's Cabin not only for the stereotypes the novel had created about African-Americans but also because of "the utter disdain of the Tom character by the black community".[119] These writers included Richard Wright with his collection Uncle Tom's Children (1938) and Chester Himes with his 1943 short story "Heaven Has Changed".[119]Ralph Ellison also critiqued the book with his 1952 novel Invisible Man, with Ellison figuratively killing Uncle Tom in the opening chapter.[119]
In 1945 James Baldwin published his influential and infamous critical essay "Everbody's Protest Novel".[120] In the essay, Baldwin described Uncle Tom's Cabin as "a bad novel, having, in its self-righteousness, virtuous sentimentality".[121] He argued that the novel lacked psychological depth, and that Stowe, "was not so much a novelist as an impassioned pamphleteer".[122][123]Edward Rothstein has claimed that Baldwin missed the point and that the purpose of the novel was "to treat slavery not as a political issue but as an individually human one – and ultimately a challenge to Christianity itself."[123]
George Orwell in his essay "Good Bad Books", first published in Tribune in November 1945, claims that "perhaps the supreme example of the 'good bad' book is Uncle Tom's Cabin. It is an unintentionally ludicrous book, full of preposterous melodramatic incidents; it is also deeply moving and essentially true; it is hard to say which quality outweighs the other." But he concludes "I would back Uncle Tom's Cabin to outlive the complete works of Virginia Woolf or George Moore, though I know of no strictly literary test which would show where the superiority lies."[124]
The negative associations related to Uncle Tom's Cabin, in particular how the novel and associated plays created and popularized racial stereotypes, have to some extent obscured the book's historical impact as a "vital antislavery tool".[15] After the turn of the millennium, scholars such as Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Hollis Robbins have re-examined Uncle Tom's Cabin in what has been called a "serious attempt to resurrect it as both a central document in American race relations and a significant moral and political exploration of the character of those relations."[123]
In China, Uncle Tom's Cabin experienced a revival of interest in the early 1960s.[125]:55 In the Chinese communist view of the book, Uncle Tom was interpreted as having been betrayed by his "Christian consciousness."[125]:55 In 1961, Sun Weishi directed a stage play adaptation of the book.[125]:55 The revival of interest in Uncle Tom's Cabin intersected with the translation and popularization of works by W.E.B. Du Bois, who was viewed as having developed a new spirit of Black resistance.[125]:54–55
Despite this undisputed significance, Uncle Tom's Cabin has been called "a blend of children's fable and propaganda".[126] The novel has also been dismissed by several literary critics as "merely a sentimental novel";[98] 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, humor, and pathos, and of these popular sentiments she compounded her book."[100]
Other critics, though, have praised the novel. Edmund Wilson stated that "To expose oneself in maturity to Uncle Tom's Cabin may therefore prove a startling experience. It is a much more impressive work than one has ever been allowed to suspect."[127] Jane Tompkins stated that the novel is one of the classics of American literature and wonders if many literary critics dismiss the book because it was simply too popular during its day.[92]
Creation and popularization of stereotypes
An illustration of Sam from the 1888 "New Edition" of Uncle Tom's Cabin. The character of Sam helped create the stereotype of the lazy, carefree "happy darky".
Many modern scholars and readers have criticized the book for condescending racist descriptions of the black characters' appearances, speech, and behavior, as well as the passive nature of Uncle Tom in accepting his fate.[128] The novel's creation and use of common stereotypes about African Americans[12] is significant because Uncle Tom's Cabin was the best-selling novel in the world during the 19th century.[7] As a result, the book (along with illustrations from the book[39] and associated stage productions) played a major role in perpetuating and solidifying such stereotypes into the American psyche.[129][128]
In the 1960s and 1970s, the Black Power and Black Arts Movements attacked the novel, claiming that the character of Uncle Tom engaged in "race betrayal", and that Tom made slaves out to be worse than slave owners.[123]
Among the stereotypes of blacks in Uncle Tom's Cabin[13][15] are the "happy darky" (in the lazy, carefree character of Sam); the light-skinned tragic mulatto as a sex object (in the characters of Eliza, Cassy, and Emmeline); the affectionate, dark-skinned female mammy (through several characters, including Mammy, a cook at the St. Clare plantation); the pickaninny stereotype of black children (in the character of Topsy); the Uncle Tom, an African American who is too eager to please white people.[53]
Stowe intended Tom to be a "noble hero" and a Christ-like figure who, like Jesus at his crucifixion, forgives the people responsible for his death. The false stereotype of Tom as a "subservient fool who bows down to the white man", and the resulting derogatory term "Uncle Tom", resulted from staged "Tom Shows", which sometimes replaced Tom's grim death with an upbeat ending where Tom causes his oppressors to see the error of their ways, and they all reconcile happily. Stowe had no control over these shows and their alteration of her story.[53]
Title page for Aunt Phillis's Cabin by Mary Eastman, one of many examples of anti-Tom literature
In response to Uncle Tom's Cabin, writers in the Southern United States produced a number of books to rebut Stowe's novel.[130] This so-called Anti-Tom literature generally took a pro-slavery viewpoint, arguing that the issues of slavery as depicted in Stowe's book were overblown and incorrect.[131] The novels in this genre tended to feature a benign white patriarchal master and a pure wife, both of whom presided over childlike slaves in a benevolent extended family style plantation. The novels either implied or directly stated that African Americans were a childlike people[132] unable to live their lives without being directly overseen by white people.[133]
Among the most famous anti-Tom books are The Sword and the Distaff by William Gilmore Simms, Aunt Phillis's Cabin by Mary Henderson Eastman, and The Planter's Northern Bride by Caroline Lee Hentz,[134] with the last author having been a close personal friend of Stowe's when the two lived in Cincinnati. Simms' book was published a few months after Stowe's novel, and it contains a number of sections and discussions disputing Stowe's book and her view of slavery. Hentz's 1854 novel, widely read at the time but now largely forgotten, offers a defense of slavery as seen through the eyes of a Northern woman—the daughter of an abolitionist, no less—who marries a Southern slave owner.[135]
In the decade between the publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin and the start of the American Civil War, between twenty and thirty anti-Tom books were published (although others continued to be published after the war, including The Leopard's Spots in 1902 by "professional racist" Thomas Dixon Jr.).[136] More than half of these anti-Tom books were written by white women, Simms commenting at one point about the "Seemingly poetic justice of having the Northern woman (Stowe) answered by a Southern woman."[137]
Little Eva's death scene in Brady's 1901 revival at the Academy of Music
Even though Uncle Tom's Cabin was the best-selling novel of the 19th century, far more Americans of that time saw the story as a stage play or musical than read the book.[138] Historian Eric Lott estimated that "for every one of the three hundred thousand who bought the novel in its first year, many more eventually saw the play."[139] In 1902, it was reported that by a quarter million of these presentations had already been performed in the United States.[140]
Given the lax copyright laws of the time, stage plays based on Uncle Tom's Cabin—"Tom shows"—began to appear while the novel was still being serialized. Stowe refused to authorize dramatization of her work because of her distrust of drama, although she eventually saw George L. Aiken's version and, according to Francis Underwood, was "delighted" by Caroline Howard's portrayal of Topsy.[141] Aiken's stage production was the most popular play in the U.S. and Britain for 75 years.[103] Stowe's refusal to authorize a particular dramatic version left the field clear for any number of adaptations, some launched for (various) political reasons and others as simply commercial theatrical ventures.[142][143]
No international copyright laws existed at the time. The book and plays were translated into several languages. Stowe received no money, which could have meant as much as "three-fourths of her just and legitimate wages".[144]
All the Tom shows appear to have incorporated elements of melodrama and blackfaceminstrelsy.[15] These plays varied tremendously in their politics—some faithfully reflected Stowe's sentimentalized antislavery politics, while others were more moderate, or even pro-slavery.[145] Many of the productions featured demeaning racial caricatures of black people;[15] some productions also featured songs by Stephen Foster, including "My Old Kentucky Home", "Old Folks at Home", and "Massa's in the Cold Ground".[138] The best-known Tom shows were those of George Aiken and H.J. Conway.[146]
The many stage variants of Uncle Tom's Cabin "dominated northern popular culture... for several years" during the 19th century,[147] and the plays were still being performed in the early 20th century.[148]
A still from Edwin S. Porter's 1903 version of Uncle Tom's Cabin, which was one of the first full-length movies. The still shows Eliza telling Uncle Tom that he has been sold and that she is running away to save her child.
Uncle Tom's Cabin has been adapted several times as a film. Most of these movies were created during the silent film era (Uncle Tom's Cabin was the most-filmed book of that time period).[149] Because of the continuing popularity of both the book and "Tom" shows, audiences were already familiar with the characters and the plot, making it easier for the film to be understood without spoken words.[149]
The first film version of Uncle Tom's Cabin was one of the earliest full-length movies, although full-length at that time meant between 10 and 14 minutes.[150] This 1903 film, directed by Edwin S. Porter, used white actors in blackface in the major roles and black performers only as extras. This version was evidently similar to many of the "Tom Shows" of earlier decades and featured several stereotypes about blacks, such as having the slaves dance in almost any context, including at a slave auction.[150]
In 1910, a three-reel Vitagraph Company of America production was directed by J. Stuart Blackton and adapted by Eugene Mullin. According to The Dramatic Mirror, this film was "a decided innovation" in motion pictures and "the first time an American company" released a dramatic film in three reels. Until then, full-length movies of the time were 15 minutes long and contained only one reel of film. The movie starred Florence Turner, Mary Fuller, Edwin R. Phillips, Flora Finch, Genevieve Tobin and Carlyle Blackwell, Sr.[151]
At least four more movie adaptations were created in the next two decades. The last silent film version was released in 1927. Directed by Harry A. Pollard, who played Uncle Tom in a 1913 release of Uncle Tom's Cabin, this two-hour movie was more than a year in production and was the third most expensive picture of the silent era, at a cost of $1.8million. The black actor Charles Gilpin was originally cast in the title role, but he was fired after the studio decided his "portrayal was too aggressive".[152]
In addition to film adaptations, versions of Uncle Tom's Cabin have been produced in other formats, including a number of animated cartoons. Uncle Tom's Cabin also influenced movies, including The Birth of a Nation. This controversial 1915 film set the dramatic climax in a slave cabin similar to that of Uncle Tom, where several white Southerners unite with their former enemy (Yankee soldiers) to defend, according to the film's caption, their "Aryan birthright". According to scholars, this reuse of such a familiar image of a slave cabin would have resonated with, and been understood by, audiences of the time.[157][158]
Uncle Tom is the title character of Harriet Beecher Stowe's 1852 novel Uncle Tom's Cabin. The character was seen in the Victorian era as a ground-breaking literary attack against the dehumanization of slaves. Tom is a deeply religious Christian preacher to his fellow slaves who uses nonresistance, but who is willingly flogged to death rather than violate the plantation's code of silence by informing against the route being used by two women who have just escaped from slavery. However, the character also came to be criticized for allegedly being inexplicably kind to white slaveowners, especially based on his portrayal in pro-compassion dramatizations. This led to the use of Uncle Tom – sometimes shortened to just a Tom – as a derogatory epithet for an exceedingly subservient person or house negro, particularly one accepting and uncritical of their own lower-class status.
Harriet Elisabeth Beecher Stowe was an American author and abolitionist. She came from the religious Beecher family and wrote the popular novel Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), which depicts the harsh conditions experienced by enslaved African Americans. The book reached an audience of millions as a novel and play, and became influential in the United States and in Great Britain, energizing anti-slavery forces in the American North, while provoking widespread anger in the South. Stowe wrote 30 books, including novels, three travel memoirs, and collections of articles and letters. She was influential both for her writings as well as for her public stances and debates on social issues of the day.
Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp is the second popular novel from American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. It was first published in two volumes by Phillips, Sampson and Company in 1856. Although it enjoyed better initial sales than her previous, and more famous, novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, it was ultimately less popular. Dred was of a more documentary nature whereas Uncle Tom's Cabin had much stronger characters.
The Leopard's Spots: A Romance of the White Man's Burden—1865–1900 is the first novel of Thomas Dixon's Reconstruction trilogy, and was followed by The Clansman: A Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan (1905), and The Traitor: A Story of the Fall of the Invisible Empire (1907). In the novel, published in 1902, Dixon offers an account of Reconstruction in which he portrays a Reconstruction leader, Northern carpetbaggers, and emancipated slaves as the villains; Ku Klux Klan members are anti-heroes. While the playbills and program for The Birth of a Nation claimed The Leopard's Spots as a source in addition to The Clansman, recent scholars do not accept this.
A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin is a book by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. It was published to document the veracity of the depiction of slavery in Stowe's anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852). First published in 1853 by Jewett, Proctor & Worthington, the book also provides insights into Stowe's own views on slavery.
Anti-Tom literature consists of the 19th century pro-slavery novels and other literary works written in response to Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. Also called plantation literature, these writings were generally written by authors from the Southern United States. Books in the genre attempted to show that slavery was beneficial to African Americans and that the evils of slavery, as depicted in Stowe's book, were overblown and incorrect.
Uncle Tom's Bungalow is an American Merrie Melodies animated cartoon directed by Tex Avery, and released to theatres on June 5, 1937, by Warner Bros. The short cartoon is a parody of the 1852 novel Uncle Tom's Cabin and of the "plantation melodrama" genre of the 1930s. It contains many stereotypical portrayals of black characters. The cartoon plays off Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel in that it portrays Uncle Tom as an old man, and wooden shacks and cotton fields pervade the scenery. Director Tex Avery adds his own sense of humor and "trickster" animation, giving the classic theme a modern, humorous twist.
Aunt Phillis's Cabin; or, Southern Life as It Is by Mary Henderson Eastman is a plantation fiction novel, and is perhaps the most read anti-Tom novel in American literature. It was published by Lippincott, Grambo & Co. of Philadelphia in 1852 as a response to Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, published earlier that year. The novel sold 20,000–30,000 copies, far fewer than Stowe's novel, but still a strong commercial success and bestseller. Based on her growing up in Warrenton, Virginia, of an elite planter family, Eastman portrays plantation owners and slaves as mutually respectful, kind, and happy beings.
Tom show is a general term for any play or musical based on the 1852 novel Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe. The novel attempts to depict the harsh reality of slavery. Due to the weak copyright laws at the time, a number of unauthorized plays based on the novel were staged for decades, many of them mocking the novel's social message, and leading to the pejorative term "Uncle Tom".
A number of film adaptations of Harriet Beecher Stowe's 1852 novel Uncle Tom's Cabin have been made over the years. Most of these movies were created during the silent film era. Since the 1930s, Hollywood studios have considered the story too controversial for another adaptation. Characters, themes and plot elements from Uncle Tom's Cabin have also influenced a large number of other movies, including The Birth of a Nation (1915), while also inspiring numerous animated cartoons.
Calvin Ellis Stowe was an American Biblical scholar who helped spread public education in the United States. Over his career, he was a professor of languages and Biblical and sacred literature at Andover Theological Seminary, Dartmouth College, Lane Theological Seminary, and Bowdoin College. He was the husband and literary agent of Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of the best-seller Uncle Tom's Cabin.
Little Eva: The Flower of the South is an Anti-Tom children's book by American writer Philip J. Cozans. Although its publication date is unknown, scholars estimated the release was either in the 1850s or early 1860s. The book follows Little Eva, the daughter of a wealthy Alabama planter. She is characterized through her kindness toward slaves as she reads the Bible to them and teaches the alphabet to slave children. On her ninth birthday, Little Eva nearly drowns, but is rescued by a slave named Sam. Her parents free Sam who decides to remain with the family because he loves them.
The Cabin and Parlor; or, Slaves and Masters is an 1852 novel by Charles Jacobs Peterson, writing under the pseudonym J. Thornton Randolph.
Uncle Tom's Cabin is a 1927 American synchronized sound drama film directed by Harry A. Pollard and released by Universal Pictures. While the film has no audible dialog, it was released with a synchronized musical score with sound effects using the Western Electric sound-on-film process. The film is based on the 1852 novel Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe and was the last version filmed without audible dialogue. This film is important historically as being Universal's first sound feature.
Uncle Tom's Cabin was a 1918 American silent drama film directed by J. Searle Dawley, produced by Famous Players–Lasky Corporation and distributed by Paramount Pictures under the Famous Players–Lasky name. The film is based on Harriet Beecher Stowe's 1852 novel Uncle Tom's Cabin and George Aiken's eponymous play.
Uncle Tom's Cabin is a 1914 American silent historical drama film directed by William Robert Daly using Vitagraph and starring Sam Lucas, Walter Hitchcock, and Hattie Delaro. It was based upon playwright George L. Aiken's theatrical adaptation of Harriet Beecher Stowe's 1852 novel Uncle Tom's Cabin. It was produced at Fort Lee, New Jersey by the newly founded World Film studio. The film is historically notable for being the first movie with a black actor playing a leading role.
Uncle Tom's Cabin is a 1910 American silent short drama produced by the Thanhouser Company. The film was adapted by from the 1852 novel Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe. The plot of the Thanhouser production streamlined the actual story to portray the film over the course of a single reel. The film was released on July 26, 1910, on the same day that Vitagraph released the first reel of their own three reel version of Uncle Tom's Cabin. This prompted the Thanhouser Company to advertise against the Vitagraph film by referring to the other as being overly drawn out. The film garnered mixed, but mostly positive reception in trade publications. The film is presumed lost.
Uncle Tom's Cabin is a 1987 American made-for-television drama film directed by Stan Lathan, and starring Avery Brooks, Bruce Dern, Phylicia Rashad and Edward Woodward. It is based on the 1852 novel of the same name by Harriet Beecher Stowe.
James Cropper (1773–1840) was an English businessman and philanthropist, known as an abolitionist who made a major contribution to the abolition of slavery throughout the British Empire in 1833.
Uncle Tom's Cabin is a 1903 American silent short drama directed by Edwin S. Porter and produced by the Edison Manufacturing Company. The film was adapted from the 1852 novel Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe. The plot streamlined the actual story to portray the film over the course of 19 minutes. The film was released on 3 August 1903 at the Huber's Fourteenth Street Museum in New-York.
↑ de Rosa 2003, On p. 122, de Rosa quotes Tompkins 1985, p. 145 that Stowe's strategy was to destroy slavery through the "saving power of Christian love"..
↑ Tompkins 1985, On p. 141, Tompkins writes "Stowe conceived her book as an instrument for bringing about the day when the world would be ruled not by force, but by Christian love.".
1 2 "First Edition Illustrations". Uncle Tom's Cabin and American Culture, a Multi-Media Archive. Department of English, University of Virginia. Retrieved February 21, 2022.
1 2 3 Winship, Michael (2007). "Uncle Tom's Cabin: History of the Book in the 19th-Century United States". Uncle Tom's Cabin and American Culture, a Multi-Media Archive. Department of English, University of Virginia. Retrieved February 21, 2022. Derived from a presentation at the June 2007 Uncle Tom's Cabin in the Web of Culture conference, sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities, and presented by the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center (Hartford, CT) and the Uncle Tom's Cabin & American Culture Project at the University of Virginia.
↑ Allen 2004, p. 24 states that "Stowe held specific beliefs about the 'evils' of slavery and the role of Americans in resisting it." The book then quotes Ann Douglas describing how Stowe saw slavery as a sin.
↑ "Stand still and see the salvation". Uncle Tom's Cabin and American Culture, a Multi-Media Archive. Department of English, University of Virginia. Retrieved February 20, 2022.
1 2 "Uncle Tom's Cabin on Film". Uncle Tom's Cabin and American Culture, a Multi-Media Archive. Department of English, University of Virginia. Archived from the original on May 10, 2008. Retrieved February 21, 2022.
↑ "The 3-Reel Vitagraph Production (1910)". Uncle Tom's Cabin and American Culture, a Multi-Media Archive. Department of English, University of Virginia. Archived from the original on October 13, 2007. Retrieved February 21, 2022.
↑ "Universal Super Jewel Production (1927)". Uncle Tom's Cabin and American Culture, a Multi-Media Archive. Department of English, University of Virginia. Archived from the original on April 11, 2009. Retrieved February 21, 2022.
↑ "Uncle Tom's Cabin in Hollywood: 1929–1956". Uncle Tom's Cabin and American Culture, a Multi-Media Archive. Department of English, University of Virginia. Archived from the original on April 11, 2009. Retrieved February 21, 2022.
Adams, Charles Francis (1913). Trans-Atlantic Historical Solidarity: Lectures Delivered before the University of Oxford in Easter and Trinity Terms. The Clarendon Press. ISBN978-1331302445.
Allen, John (2004). Homelessness in American Literature: Romanticism, Realism, and Testimony. Routledge. ISBN978-0415945899.
Ammons, Elizabeth (1986). "Stowe's Dream of the Mother-Savior: Uncle Tom's Cabin and American Women Writers Before the 1920s". In Sundquist, Eric J. (ed.). New Essays on Uncle Tom's Cabin. Cambridge University Press. ISBN978-0521302036.
Appiah, Kwame Anthony; Gates, Henry Louis (2005). Africana: Arts and Letters: an A-to-Z reference of writers, musicians, and artists of the African American Experience. Running Press. ISBN978-1422392232.
Badia, Janet Badia; Phegley, Jennifer (2005). Reading Women: Literary Figures and Cultural Icons from the Victorian Age to the Present. University of Toronto Press. ISBN978-0802094872.
Buinicki, Martin T. (2006). Negotiating Copyright: Authorship and the Discourse of Literary Property Rights in Nineteenth-Century America. Routledge. ISBN978-0415976251.
Castronovo, Russ (2014). "Transatlantic vs. Hemispheric: Toni Morrison's Long Nineteenth Century by Amy Brickhouse". The Oxford Handbook of Nineteenth-Century American Literature. Oxford University Press. ISBN978-0199355891.
Keith, LeeAnna (2009). The Colfax Massacre The Untold Story of Black Power, White Terror, and the Death of Reconstruction. Oxford University Press. ISBN978-0195310269.
Larsen, David L. (2000). The Company of the Creative: A Christian Reader's Guide to Great Literature and Its Themes. Kregel Publications. ISBN978-0825430978.
Louis, Fidel; DeSimone, Erika, eds. (2014). Voices Beyond Bondage An Anthology of Verse by African Americans of the 19th Century. NewSouth Books. ISBN978-1588382986.
Noble, Marianne (2003). "The Ecstasies of Sentimental Wounding in Uncle Tom's Cabin". In Rosenthal, Debra J. (ed.). A Routledge Literary Sourcebook on Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. Routledge. ISBN978-0415234733.
Tompkins, Jane (1985). "Sentimental Power: Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Politics of Literary History". Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work of American Fiction, 1790–1860. Oxford University Press. ISBN978-0195035650.
Arnett, A. M. (March 1920). "Review of James Baird Weaver by Fred Emory Haynes". Political Science Quarterly. 35 (1): 154–157. doi:10.2307/2141508. JSTOR2141508. Profile of James Baird Weaver from archive. org, 2007. Retrieved February 17, 2007.
Bellin, Joshua D (1993). "Up to Heaven's Gate, Down in Earth's Dust: the Politics of Judgment in Uncle Tom's Cabin". American Literature. 65 (2): 275–295. doi:10.2307/2927342. JSTOR2927342.
Benbow, Mark E. (October 2010). "Birth of a Quotation: Woodrow Wilson and 'Like Writing History with Lightning'". Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. 9 (4): 510. doi:10.1017/S1537781400004242. JSTOR20799409. S2CID162913069. Dixon might be best described as a professional racist who made his living writing books and plays attacking the presence of African Americans in the United States. A firm believer not only in white supremacy, but also in the 'degeneration' of blacks after slavery ended, Dixon thought the ideal solution to America's racial problems was to deport all blacks to Africa.
Berman, Carolyn Vellenga (Summer 2000). "Creole Family Politics in Uncle Tom's Cabin and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl". Novel: A Forum on Fiction. 33 (3): 328–353. doi:10.2307/1346168. JSTOR1346168.
Cuenca, Carme Manuel (Winter 1997–1998). "An angel in the plantation: The economics of slavery and the politics of literary domesticity in Caroline Lee Hentz's 'The Planter's Northern Bride'". The Mississippi Quarterly. 51 (1): 87–104. JSTOR26476914.
DiMaggio, Kenneth (2014). "Uncle Tom's Cabin: Global Best Seller, Anti-slave Narrative, Imperialist Agenda". Global Studies Journal. 7 (1): 15–23. doi:10.18848/1835-4432/CGP/46892.
Dinerstein, Joel (Spring 2009). "'Uncle Tom Is Dead!': Wright, Himes, and Ellison Lay a Mask to Rest". African American Review. 43 (1): 83–98. doi:10.1353/afa.0.0021. JSTOR27802564. S2CID161792306.
Goldner, Ellen J. (Spring 2001). "Arguing with Pictures: Race, Class and the Formation of Popular Abolitionism Through Uncle Tom's Cabin". Journal of American & Comparative Cultures. 24 (1–2): 71–84. doi:10.1111/j.1537-4726.2001.2401_71.x.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
Gossett, Thomas F. (March 1978). "Review of The Building of Uncle Tom's Cabin by E. Bruce Kirkham". American Literature. 50 (1): 123–124. doi:10.2307/2925530. JSTOR2925530.
Grant, David (1998). "Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Triumph of Republican Rhetoric". New England Quarterly. 71 (3): 429–448. doi:10.2307/366852. JSTOR366852.
Hulser, Kathleen (2003). "Reading Uncle Tom's Image: From Anti-slavery Hero to Racial Insult". New-York Journal of American History. 65 (1): 75–79. ISSN1551-5486.
Jones, Douglas A. (October 2019). "Adena Spingarn: Uncle Tom: From Martyr to Traitor". American Historical Review. 124 (4): 1465–1467. doi:10.1093/ahr/rhz962.
Nichols, Charles (1958). "The Origins of Uncle Tom's Cabin". The Phylon Quarterly. 19 (3): 328–334. doi:10.2307/273254. JSTOR273254.
Oertel, Kristen (May 2020). "Sharp Flashes of Lightning Come from Black Clouds: The Life of Josiah Henson". Journal of Southern History. 86 (2): 465–466. doi:10.1353/soh.2020.0107. S2CID219491541.
Ridgely, Joseph V. (January 1960). "Woodcraft: Simms's First Answer to Uncle Tom's Cabin". American Literature. 31 (4): 421–433. doi:10.2307/2922435. JSTOR2922435.
Riss, Arthur (1994). "Racial Essentialism and Family Values in Uncle Tom's Cabin". American Quarterly. 46 (4): 513–544. doi:10.2307/2713382. JSTOR2713382.
Stone, Harry (1957). "Charles Dickens and Harriet Beecher Stowe". Nineteenth-Century Fiction. 12 (3): 188–202. doi:10.2307/3044086. JSTOR3044086.
Szczesiul, Anthony E. (March 1996). "The Canonization of Tom and Eva: Catholic Hagiography and Uncle Tom's Cabin". American Transcendental Quarterly. 10 (1): 59–73.
Winship, Michael (2010). "The Library of Congress in 1892: Ainsworth Spofford, Houghton, Mifflin and Company, and Uncle Tom's Cabin". Libraries & the Cultural Record. 45 (1): 85–91. doi:10.1353/lac.0.0114. JSTOR20720641. S2CID153517304.
Wolff, Cynthia Griffin (1995). "Masculinity in Uncle Tom's Cabin". American Quarterly. 47 (4): 595–618. doi:10.2307/2713368. JSTOR2713368.
Wright, Robert E. (Winter 2021). "Liberty Befits All: Stowe and Uncle Tom's Cabin". Independent Review. 25 (3): 385–396.
Further reading
Aiken, George L. (1993). Uncle Tom's Cabin. Garland.
Gerould, Daniel C., ed. (1983). American Melodrama. Performing Arts Journal Publications.
Parfait, Claire (2007). The Publishing History of Uncle's Tom's Cabin, 1852–2002. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Reynolds, David S. (2011). Mightier Than the Sword: Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Battle for America. W. W. Norton & Company.
Stowe, Harriet Beecher; Gates, Henry Louis; Robbins, Hollis (2007). The Annotated Uncle Tom's Cabin. W. W. Norton & Company.
University of Virginia Web site "Uncle Tom's Cabin and American Culture: A Multi-Media Archive" – edited by Stephen Railton, covers 1830 to 1930, offering links to primary and bibliographic sources on the cultural background, various editions, and public reception of Harriet Beecher Stowe's influential novel. The site also provides the full text of the book, audio and video clips, and examples of related merchandising.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
