Stowe Harriet Beecher. NSPRetail 3. Frequently Bought Together. Uncle Tom's Cabin. The Edible Woman. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Add 3 Items to Cart. Rate Product. Shourya Veer Certified Buyer. Delivered much before time, which is very good.
Convenient sized. I am happy with this book. An iconic novel, please try this out. Lovers of classic literature, you must add this book to your collection. Supriya Bhuyan Certified Buyer , Bhubaneswar. Must read book to understand the century long black slavery in America and the cruelty inflicted on the Blacks from Africa.
Holds you spell bound from the 1st page to the last. Ramchander Homma Certified Buyer , Hyderabad. The story is very nice. It shows the difficulties slaves faced during 18th century. Dinesh Kumar Certified Buyer. Flipkart Customer Certified Buyer , Kolkata. Flipkart Customer Certified Buyer. Tom refuses. Insulted, Leglee whips Tom until Tom is almost dead. This scene broke my heart that I have to stop reading this book in a day or two because it was too sad I had to start reading Dag Hammarskjold and ask where was God when the black African slaves were treated as commodities in America.
Truly a sad phase in that great nation's history. Now I understand how our national hero Jose Rizal was moved by this novel that he decided to sit down and write his own novel. Our Rizal wrote about the sad flight of his own people. If Harriet Beecher Stowe was this little woman who started the Civil War, Jose Rizal 5'2" as this little man who started the Philippine Revolution in against the Spanish colonizers. Two short people. But two great tall books. Books that launched and propelled races to take arms and fight for what they believed was right.
Bravo to all the shorties of this world! View all 13 comments. Jun 07, Amanda rated it did not like it Shelves: crap. View all 7 comments.
Apr 17, Apatt rated it really liked it Shelves: classics. Why a man get treated like a dog by another man and the law is all right with that? I knoe it dont mean nuthin now we is all civilased with iPads and lor knows what, but whar was it ever OK? At the beginning of the book, Tom is one of the more fortunate slaves working for the very kind Shelby family who treat their slaves as human beings. Eliza makes a run for it, taking her son with her, but Tom—incredibly pious man that he is—stays put and meekly goes with the slave trader.
During his voyage with the slave trader down the Mississippi River Tom lucks out again and meets Augustine St. Clare, a very kind man traveling with his angelic little daughter Eva. Augustine buys Tom and takes him to his home in New Orleans where Tom lives happily for a couple of years, and is promised his freedom by Augustine. Augustine dies and Tom is sold again—in an auction—by the nasty Mrs. Marie St. This time, he is bought by the irredeemably evil plantation owner named Simon Legree, leading to the most harrowing part of the book.
Besides being fascinating Uncle Tom's Cabin is also harrowing, disturbing and heartbreaking. This is one of the most historically significant slave narratives ever, it played a major part in helping to bring about the abolition of slavery in the US. I have not read either of these books, though I found the TV series and the film very moving. What these narratives have in common is the shocking portrayal of an era when people are so unenlightened as to treat fellow human beings as mere tools; buying and selling them like animals, splitting up families, in order to sell the individual members as separate items.
The slave traders put a price tag on the slaves on the basis of their physical attributes. OK, in the sense of "sanctioned by law", with certificates of "ownership" and everything, so the people can legitimately own what they could not possibly own; human beings are "unownable". Still, the lighter moments are overwhelmed by the tragic lives of the enslaved characters.
Besides being a slave narrative Uncle Tom's Cabin also clearly belongs to the Christian fiction genre. Any atheist reading this book to find out more about slavery in the nineteenth century America is likely to be put off by the Christian piety which underpins just about every page of the book.
There are even scenes which verges on the miraculous or divine intervention. The characters are very vividly drawn but the eponymous Tom, and the spooky little girl, Eva St. Clare, are too Christ-like to be entirely believable. In any case Uncle Tom's Cabin , as a novel, is very readable, there is not a dull moment and Harriet Beecher Stowe knew what buttons to push to connect with the readers on an emotional level.
If you are OK with all that then the book is highly recommended. John Greenman. Thank you! This is not how Tom is portrayed in the novel at all, he meekly accepts abuses aimed at himself, but draws the line at being ordered to abuse other slaves.
According to Wikipedia there are more than twenty books of this kind, they generally portray slavery as beneficial for the African Americans who will come a cropper without the white man's supervision.
I don't know what these authors are smoking but I don't want any! Now, they say," said Haley, assuming a candid and confidential air, "that this kind o' trade is hardening to the feelings; but I never found it so.
Fact is, I never could do things up the way some fellers manage the business. I've seen 'em as would pull a woman's child out of her arms, and set him up to sell, and she screechin' like mad all the time;—very bad policy—damages the article—makes 'em quite unfit for service sometimes.
Nevertheless, as this young man was in the eye of the law not a man, but a thing, all these superior qualifications were subject to the control of a vulgar, narrow-minded, tyrannical master.
And, woman, though dressed in silk and jewels, you are but a woman, and, in life's great straits and mighty griefs, ye feel but one sorrow! Talk of the abuses of slavery! And the only reason why the land don't sink under it, like Sodom and Gomorrah, is because it is used in a way infinitely better than it is.
For pity's sake, for shame's sake, because we are men born of women, and not savage beasts, many of us do not, and dare not,—we would scorn to use the full power which our savage laws put into our hands. And he who goes the furthest, and does the worst, only uses within limits the power that the law gives him. Whatever is too hard, too dirty, too disagreeable, for me, I may set Quashy to doing. Because I don't like work, Quashy shall work. Because the sun burns me, Quashy shall stay in the sun.
Quashy shall earn the money, and I will spend it. Quashy shall lie down in every puddle, that I may walk over dry-shod. Quashy shall do my will, and not his, all the days of his mortal life, and have such chance of getting to heaven, at last, as I find convenient. View all 19 comments. May 04, Arianne Thompson rated it really liked it Shelves: classics. I think the saddest thing about this book is that everybody remembers Uncle Tom, even if only as a particularly ugly byword, but nobody remembers George Harris.
Harris, of Kentucky, did call me his property. But now I'm a free man, standing on God's free soil; and my wife and my child I claim as mine You can come up, if you like, but the first one of you that comes within the range of our bullets is a dead man.
That's the difficulty with Uncle Tom's Cabin , at least for me: if you judge it by our modern sensibilities about what a novel should be and do, it doesn't hold up at all.
The characters are mostly one- or two-dimensional figures, often exaggerated past all believability, who are sketched out to serve an obvious purpose.
Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote every page of this book to rail against slavery, and although she skewers her subject from a hundred different ways and angles, that is really her only aim. For us in the 21st century, for whom slavery has melted away from all but the darkest corners of the world, this is pretty much preaching to the choir. Let me tell you why it's still an amazing book. You might know that it was written in - a time in which the issue of slavery was boiling over in Congress and at dinner tables across the nation, but still almost ten years before the breakup of the United States and the start of the Civil War.
In the last pages, she talks with faint hope about Liberia, where she imagines American slaves could go to construct a nation of their own, but that's it. At the time when she put pen to paper, this author went to bed at night and rose in the morning knowing that human beings were still suffering and dying by the millions.
So I guess what I'm saying is, absolutely do read this book - and when you do, read it less for the plot and more for the real, non-fiction people who inspired it. And also for George Harris, 19th-century action hero. View 2 comments. Mar 14, Marie rated it it was ok. An important book, surely, historically, and I found the forward more interesting than most as it argued about the book's place in American Literature. Though, sadly, like most academic forwards, rife with spoilers. I'm reading this for the first time, don't tell me who dies and who gets married and who goes to Africa!
Stowe's strength is in her more merry passages, particularly when she can put her bible down for five seconds and turn a wry, Twain-like eye on popular culture. Sadly, Wow. Sadly, these passages are too few and far between, drowning under gallons of preaching and an over-sentimentalized series of accounts that rob the actions of their innate horror.
She did her homework, and the accounts of atrocities of slavery jive with those I've read in Frederick Douglas' autobiography, but I would recommend Douglas' work over hers twenty-to-one. It is more compassionate, more rooted in reality, and lest damn preachy. Also, there are a few very very offensive passages that just made me gasp and want to look away View all 3 comments.
Sep 11, Antoinette rated it really liked it Shelves: american-literature , classics. This is the kind of book that makes me shake my head at humanity. So often I was brought to either tears or anger as I read. That again seems to be our society today. Why they were thought of as less than human, I will never understand.
Even the kindly Mrs. Shelby says of them I can just imagine how it was received in She was also very pro Christianity. There are many references to religion and Christianity throughout the book. There were a couple of instances where I felt this bogged down the story, but for the most part, it did seem integral to the purpose of the book. An important read that I feel should be read by many more people, especially with what is going on presently.
May 15, Shane rated it really liked it Recommends it for: Those wanting to revisit Race issues. This book should become essential reading during these times of racial unrest. I saw the movie many years ago in another country and could not relate to the issues as well as I did when I finally bit the bullet and read the real deal during times of pandemic, MAGA, and Black Lives Matter.
Despite its archaic style that hinges on the sentimental and melodramatic, and the annoying tendency of the author to intrude frequently, directing the reader to the next scene or explaining that she is now goin This book should become essential reading during these times of racial unrest. Despite its archaic style that hinges on the sentimental and melodramatic, and the annoying tendency of the author to intrude frequently, directing the reader to the next scene or explaining that she is now going to leave one set of characters and move to the next, Harriet Beecher Stowe is overtly uncompromising in three key messages: slavery is evil, Christianity is redemption, and women would do a better job of running the show given their maternal leanings.
The further south one travelled in the United States in the first half of the 19th century the harsher the conditions for slaves became, and the further north one went, they improved. Canada was considered nirvana for liberated slaves. The book therefore cleaves north and south from the benign centre of Kentucky, the opening setting of the book, where slaves are treated well in the Shelby household. However, as finances get tight, Uncle Tom, the Christ-like figure who has been a loyal servant of his owner, is sold down the river to Louisiana, while Eliza and her family escape and head north to Canada.
The story weaves back and forth between these two journeys. Some great characters emerge, sharply delineated: Uncle Tom : honest and loyal to a fault, uncompromising in his love of God and his ability to forgive those who trespass against him. Evangeline Eva : the young girl in the St. A man who treats his slaves like animals so that they behave like animals.
Cassy : the quadroon and discarded sex-slave of Legree, one who has given up hope that God exists, and would rather kill her offspring to prevent them coming into this world. Ophelia : the northern pro-abolitionist, who is a paragon of order, propriety, and hard work, but whose sympathies are only intellectual, for she lacks the ability to touch the slaves. Augustine St. He understands the problems of the South but is unwilling to take a stand. His lack of faith and resolve is his undoing, just as Tom, possessing both these qualities in abundance, is undone by them too.
The stupidity of those counter claims ring true today when we see blacks exceed in all areas of endeavour if given the opportunity. The author rings off the book by tying all the loose ends: those who head north live happily ever after, those left behind in the south are in a horrible situation. She also steps onto her political platform and overtly claims that this book was based on real people she knew and that the situations she depicted in the book have occurred, more or less.
She then implores the North not to be complicit in slavery by reaping its economic rewards but staying non-involved. She must have touched a nerve, for this novel was the highest selling book next to the Bible during that period. I can understand why President Lincoln, when meeting Harriett Beecher Stowe in remarked, "So this is the little lady who started this great war.
Aug 28, Jessica Reese rated it liked it Recommends it for: history classes, Beloved fanatics. Shelves: literature. I think my friend and I may even have taken turns reading parts of it, but it never really happened. But, this last semester I actually read it twice, because that's what my Amer. Romanticism professor suggested we do, and, to be honest I was kind of scared of him for a while But, here's the deal.
It really isn't a great book. It started out as bed time tales for her kids, progressed to installments in a magazine, and then event O. It started out as bed time tales for her kids, progressed to installments in a magazine, and then eventually became a famously historical book.
That having been said, here are the things I find interesting. Notice that Stowe, while she empowers women in many ways that were uncommon among her contemporaries she still places women within "their" sphere. And, it is the women who are successful within their sphere caring for the children and husband, making sure the kitchen is neat and orderly even if they don't actually do the cooking , having a well run household, etc.
These are the women who succed in life. The other women, well, they tend to be the characters we hate. I could write a lot about this I did a paper on it , but I would love to know if anybody else sees the same similarities I do.
Besides this one crazy woman who wrote an article saying Beloved was a rewrite of Uncle Tom's Cabin I really didn't buy her argument at all, and I would hate to think she's the only one who agrees with me Either you're Christian and good or not Christian and bad. Or, you are struggling between the two, and trying to attain the title of Christian. Oh, and that the best Christians are really the slaves, because they are more "childlike" and vulnerable therefore closer to Jesus.
Jul 06, Ann Marie rated it it was amazing. Life-changing book. This was a great read-aloud with my kids. We finished it on Easter Sunday - very appropriate. Feb 12, Angela rated it it was amazing Shelves: classics , best-of-the-best , poc-author.
I don't even really know where to start with this book. Don't be intimidated by it because it's old; it's easy to read and follow linguistically, and the story itself is riveting.
Honestly, I think would have been better off just reading this book. The story begins with a certain Mr. It's one thing to read a novel about slavery written in the present day or recent past, but there is a whole other weight that comes with reading something that was written and published before the Civil War, while the practice was still legal and common place.
If you can get through this book without becoming utterly enraged and heartbroken about the things that went on in this country, for hundreds of years, under the full protection of the law, to say nothing of what the fall out was and continues to be , I kind of feel like you shouldn't get to call yourself an American.
I spent a good 18 years hating the school subject of history and completely unable to see the point of studying it; maybe if I'd been assigned fewer textbooks and more primary works like this one, I would have understood how critical it is to study and make sense of the past particularly the parts that make us the most uncomfortable.
Highly, highly recommend. View 1 comment. Dec 24, Thomas rated it liked it Shelves: historical-fiction , read-for-college. This book launched the Civil War, and at what cost? In her novel Uncle Tom's Cabin , Harriet Beecher Stowe writes about the plight of enslaved individuals, and she relies on religion to advance her argument that slavery should not exist. The characters often appear as nothing more than archetypes.
Stowe's writing comes across as propaganda more times than not. And yet the story of Uncle Tom's Cabin itself possesses an undeniable power, a strength fueled by outright sentimentalism and moralist rhe This book launched the Civil War, and at what cost?
And yet the story of Uncle Tom's Cabin itself possesses an undeniable power, a strength fueled by outright sentimentalism and moralist rhetoric. I wrote about ten pages of analysis of this book for my Social Protest Literature class. During that time I could not help but compare it to the Dove Real Beauty campaign. Dove promotes body positivity, and at the same it over-emphasizes the role of beauty and discounts a lot of diversity. Stowe opposes slavery, and she also includes sentiments of romantic racism and overt Christian bias in her book.
If you read Uncle Tom's Cabin , I would recommend approaching it from a critical lens; it did a lot to progress racial equality, while still enforcing a slew of problematic ideas we still see in today's discussions of race. Overall, an important book in our nation's history and one I would encourage people to read if they possess an interest in the institution of slavery or social protest literature in general.
Not the most eloquent book ever written, but revolution does not always require a lot of eloquence, as evidenced by this story and many others. There have been so many reviews done about the book it seems a bit ridiculous for me to come so late to the game and offer my own insightful and poignant thoughts I don't think that much of myself, really! So instead, I thought I'd write about about my decision to read this book, why it took me so long, and how it affected me personally.
I'd first heard of Uncle Tom's Cabin in college. But at that time I was reading the biographies of classical composers and other literary works that caught my interest Austen, Bronte etc. My youngest sister is now a Junior in high school and was required to read this book just this year.
I'd heard of it many times since my early college years and asked her what she thought of it. She told me it was interesting. With the Book challenge and some of my challenges I chose for the opportunity presented itself for me to finally read it. I am not going to lie to you - this was a hard read.
The dialect throughout the book makes for slow going until you get used to it, which still takes a while. There are entire portions devoted to the preaching of the Word. I do not doubt at all in Stowe's faith and it's apparent that she believed that slavery was wrong on all levels, both political and spiritual.
Of course, there is absolutely no fault in that and I agree. Of course the book is dated. There are references made that, if put in a book of today, would cause a huge outcry.
If anything, the references should be taken as an example of the history of our nation and be learned from today. I'm reminded so many times of stereotypes made and I'm not talking about politically correct nonsense , but stereotypes not only made based on race, but on sexual orientation, religion and education - to name a few.
We'd be wise to remember that years from now our children's children will be reading what we record and wondering at what we say. And finally I was struck at how some things do not change. More than all, Stowe spoke for education. Today, this is the same. Education can do wonders and it should be our primary focus.
So those are my thoughts as I close this novel. Is it one of my favorite books? I'd have to say no. But I respect and appreciate the effort put forth by Stowe and hope that the spirit of her message will continue to affect the young adults who read it. Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.
The CCLaP In which I read for the first time a hundred so-called "classics," then write reports on whether or not they deserve the label Essay Uncle Tom's Cabin , by Harriet Beecher Stowe The story in a nutshell: First written serially over the course of and '51, Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin actually tells several related stories concerning the horrors of slavery, starting at the relatively benign Kentucky household of Arthur and Emily Shelby, who treat their slaves more as respected hired help than property.
But property they indeed are; and when the Shelbys find themselves in money trouble, they're forced to sell off several of their slaves, including not only the gentle, much loved overseer of the family farm, the eternally good-natured "Uncle" Tom, but also the physically strong son of Emily's personal maid Eliza, particularly heartbreaking because of Eliza having had two miscarriages previously and now intensely devoted to her only remaining son Harry.
She's so devoted, in fact, that after hearing of the upcoming sale, she escapes one night with him by wading across a frozen river with no winter protection, kicking off an epic chase between her, her reunited husband and fellow runaway George, and the cruel slave-hunter Tom Loker who's been hired to bring them back, an action-packed story that takes the family from the Mason-Dixon line all the way to Canada and beyond, and interacting with such famed groups as the Quakers and the Underground Railroad.
Meanwhile, the docile "perfect Christian" Tom has decided to humbly accept his fate; but after saving a precocious six-year-old white girl named Eva from drowning during a steamboat ride to his new destination, the girl's father Augustine St. Clare buys him out of gratitude, and brings him back to his sort-of experimentally liberal home in New Orleans, where Tom is set to live a life of relative ease, or at least relative to the backbreaking manual labor that was awaiting him at his original destination.
And in fact, Stowe uses this home, and the appearance of St. Clare's Yankee cousin Ophelia, as an excuse to have a series of expositional debates over the issue of "malignant" versus "benign" slavery, with Ophelia for example being an abolitionist yet who personally finds black people abhorrent, which St. Clare argues is just as bad as being a slaveowner to begin with. But alas, after the emotionally moving and Christlike death of little Eva, and her father's deathbed promise to make Tom a free man, St.
Clare is unfortunately stabbed to death in a bar fight before he can do so; and that's when Tom ends up getting sold to the human monster Simon Legree, and taken Heart of Darkness style into the unending nightmare of the deep rural South, an infinite horror show of torture-friendly atheism and deadly black-on-black violence, where Legree is determined to make an example of Tom for his refusal to whip other slaves because of his deeply Christian beliefs.
Needless to say that things don't end well for Tom, leading to the angry indignation among readers that Stowe precisely wanted them to have, even as we also finish the book watching a very different fate await Eliza, George and Harry, who manage to escape to Europe and eventually make their way to Liberia, an actual African country in the s that was created specifically for escaped American slaves. And please note that there's actually a lot more that could be said about this book's surprisingly dense plot; I'm giving here just the barest outline of the story for the sake of brevity.
The argument for it being a classic: Well, for starters, it was the second most purchased book on the planet of the entire 19th century, beaten only by the freaking Bible and including this being the very first American book to ever be translated into Chinese ; plus it had such a profound impact on those who read it, no less than Abraham Lincoln is said to have remarked to Stowe upon meeting her for the first time, "So this is the little lady who started this great war.
And that's because Stowe did something that no other author up to that point had ever done, argue her fans, which was to humanize the issue of slavery to a massively effective degree, when up to then most people were more used to debating it as an abstract economic issue; for example, Stowe hammers home over and over here the emotional toll that comes with having a baby literally ripped from a mother's arms and sold off to strangers, a detail about the slave industry that ended up profoundly upsetting tens of millions of middle-class white mothers when first made public knowledge, and that immensely helped change the view they had been fed their whole lives that black people are in actuality little more than animals, and are no more upset by the loss of a child than a dog would be by one of its litter dying.
This incidentally makes Uncle Tom's Cabin a proto-feminist tale as well, say its fans, in that Stowe believed that only the maternal love inherent in women could bring about a society of equals, with the men of this book almost exclusively being either bloodthirsty animals or whiny hypocrites with endless financial troubles; and along the way, it also serves as a nearly perfect piece of Liberal Christian propaganda, arguing for the exact kind of "religious social justice" that Glenn Beck claims is a sign of Nazism.
It was literally this book, its fans claim, that convinced the majority of Northerners in the mids to change their belief in the idea of compromise with the South over slavery as best typified in the literal "Compromise of " and resulting Fugitive Slave Act, which infuriated Stowe and was the main inspiration behind her writing this in the first place , and to instead see this indignity as an important enough basic human issue as to be worth fighting a violent, nation-splitting war over, in fact what turned out to be the bloodiest war in American history still to this day.
The argument against: While few of this book's critics deny any of the things just mentioned, they also add something that its fans don't -- that in her noble but misguided attempt to "humanize" black people in the eyes of terrified whites, Stowe inadvertently created a whole series of new negative stereotypes that were to haunt African-Americans for the next century, chief among them the "Uncle Tom" of the book's title, by now a slangy insult used whenever accusing a black person of being a grinning, cuckolded, semi-retarded apologist for white cruelty, and to this day a profoundly offensive term here in the US.
For example, look at how support for presidential candidate Ralph Nader plummeted during the election, after he glibly accused Barack Obama during a stump speech of being a "Big Business Uncle Tom. Of course, even ignoring all that, critics argue that there's a much more basic problem with the idea of Uncle Tom's Cabin being a literary classic, which is simply that it's not very good; already an overwritten, purplish victim of its mid-Victorian time period, it was also deliberately written in the "sentimental" style that has so profoundly fallen out of favor in the ensuing decades, with the additional problem of Stowe simply being a subpar writer to begin with, making this a perfect example of what was called at the time "Sunday School stories" and that by the 20th century had become known as "Genteel literature.
My verdict: Today's book nicely illustrates a complicated question that lies at the very heart of this entire essay series, which is whether we should ultimately judge a book's worth based on how it was originally received, or on what kind of lasting impact it eventually has on history and the world at large.
Because the simple fact is that both the fans and critics of Uncle Tom's Cabin are right: it really did almost single-handedly provide the catalyst for the tidal wave that eventually led to the Civil War and the abolition of slavery; but it also did inadvertently establish many of the most offensive stereotypes about blacks to rise in the Reconstructionist period and beyond, taken advantage of by entertainers and production companies to wring money from a suddenly very nervous white population, who largely wished to be assured that despite their newfound free and equal legal status, sociologically-speaking black people were still barely civilized, semi-intelligent animals, good only for singing, dancing and physical labor, an attitude that still sadly exists among huge swaths of the American South to this day, especially when you replace "dancing and physical labor" with "gangster rap and basketball.
Because, yes, even though it suffers from the same stylistic problems as most other novels of the mid-Victorian era, and its heavy-handed "Little Eva As Jesus No Wait I Mean Uncle Tom As Jesus" symbolism gets awfully tired awfully fast, it also contains a kind of simple, moving power that I've rarely seen in books from this period, and sometimes tackles the various sub-issues of slavery with a subtlety that will surprise most; see for example how it's not just slave-owning farmers who Stowe condemns but also secretly racist abolitionist Northerners, who agree in theory that slavery should be abolished but want nothing to do with the more troubling question of what to do with these millions of uneducated, penniless laborers after abolition, the very issue that led to segregation, the Jim Crow laws, and all the other postbellum ugliness of the 20th century.
It's a slog at many points, don't get me wrong, and absolutely must be read with open eyes and an open mind, but I found Uncle Tom's Cabin to be imminently worth my time, a book that remains as affecting and powerful as when it first came out years ago. There is no doubt in my mind that it remains a classic and will for some time, even with all the complicated post-publication problems it's accidentally caused.
It comes highly recommended, no matter what your race, class or nationality. Is it a classic? Yes And don't forget that the first 33 essays in this series are now available in book form! Feb 26, Werner rated it it was amazing Recommends it for: All readers of 19th-century fiction. Shelves: general-fiction , classics. Harriet Beecher Stowe became one of the very few American writers before the Civil War to be widely read outside of the United States, not only in Europe but even in Asia, and that mostly on the strength of this book, which became the best selling novel of the 19th century.
That fact in itself would imply something positive about her literary ability, and on the face of it would seem to suggest that her position in the "official" literary canon ought to be considerably higher than it is. In actu Harriet Beecher Stowe became one of the very few American writers before the Civil War to be widely read outside of the United States, not only in Europe but even in Asia, and that mostly on the strength of this book, which became the best selling novel of the 19th century.
In actuality, today's critical clerisy treats her practically as a non-person. That neglect started with the generation of critics around the turn of the 20th century, who had a conscious agenda of disparaging and downplaying female writers. As the idea became dominant in critical circles, in the course of that century, that popularity with ordinary readers who, in this view, are knuckle-dragging idiots incapable by definition of appreciating greatness is an infallible indicator of literary mediocrity, the very popularity of the book also worked against her; and so did her strong Christian faith, as the cultural elite became more and more militantly anti-Christian.
Beginning in the late 20th century, changing critical fashions called for re-discovery of neglected women writers and of writers with a concern for social justice. That might have been expected to work to her benefit on both counts, especially given that this novel is probably the most powerful literary indictment of slavery ever written and was rabidly attacked by slavery apologists.
But those expectations have never been realized; the bias against her has always proved too strong, and she still remains outside the "canonical" pale. When I studied American Literature in high school and college, I was taught next to nothing about her though she got mentioned in U. History class. When Barb and I were home-schooling, that was a neglect I resolved not to repeat with our girls; so this was one of the books I read as background reading for teaching American Literature.
I read it with an open mind, resolved to make my own judgment about its quality. As a work of literature, it held its own, in my view, with the best 19th-century fiction I'd previously read. Stowe's diction is characteristic of the period, and won't be to every reader's taste. But this doesn't bother me, nor does the fact that her writing here is, as some critics disparagingly put it, "sentimental" --that is, she's part of the Romantic school, which appeals quite frankly and unapologetically to the reader's emotions.
She creates an absorbing plot which held my interest throughout, and well-drawn, nuanced characters who come very much alive. To her credit, she doesn't demonize Southerners, or slave owners, as a group, but portrays them as human beings with varying degrees of good and bad qualities, who are caught up in a pernicious system to which they react in various ways.
She also largely lets the story-line itself carry her message, without depending on lengthy sermonizing. In those respects, this could be a gold-standard model for issue-oriented fiction; it makes its case honestly, which is largely why it's as convincing as it is. Nevertheless, the criticism of slavery is never soft-pedaled, and it's a criticism that goes to the basic heart of the question: that it's fundamentally wrong, and insidious, for one person to legally own another.
Her case against slavery does not rest on any contention that all slaves everywhere were routinely being brutalized and starved; as Stowe makes clear, we're dealing here with a system that's profoundly wrong in itself , regardless of how it's applied.
She also does, however, turn the spotlight on the very real instances of far from rosy treatment of slaves; and here she draws on a solid basis of real-life material, first person accounts from numerous escaped slaves she met through her involvement with the Underground Railroad, and from a brother who was a long-time resident in the South.
The reference in the book to a slave woman who killed her own newborn child to keep the little one from growing up in slavery comes from the former source; Toni Morrison drew on the same account as an inspiration for her novel Beloved , but Stowe made the first literary use of it.
This is very definitely a Christian novel, reflecting the author's own faith. Characters make a case against slavery which is explicitly based on Biblical and Christian principles; and other characters are confronted with the demand of the Christian gospel for repentance from sin and spiritual conversion with various responses.
Related to this, Stowe does not preach root-and-branch hatred for white people as a response to slavery, not simply because she was herself white as her detractors on the Left would suggest , but because she sees the love ethic as a paramount norm for all human beings, which alone has the power to redeem and transform situations of profound suffering and injustice.
Nor does she advocate violent responses. Her title character who was based on the real-life escaped slave Josiah Henson embodies her philosophy of moral integrity within a stance of loving peacefulness, which is far from the obsequious toady-ism implied in the contemporary sneering usage of the term "Uncle Tom. I can't add to what he wrote, except that I'm struck by the similarity of Tom's stance and Martin Luther King's. In summary, I highly recommend this novel to anyone who appreciates 19th-century fiction.
IMO, in many ways, it's just as relevant to the American conversation now as it was in Having had an abiding interest in studying the Civil War, I have been surprised at myself that I have not previously read Uncle Tom's Cabin.
I have now remedied that failure. I found the book riveting in parts. Harriett Beecher Stowe is a better writer than I expected. Her powerful character development makes the book all the more heartwrenching.
I loved Uncle Tom's Christ-like character. I also loved the religious allusions and overtones in the book. In , when the book was published, it ser Having had an abiding interest in studying the Civil War, I have been surprised at myself that I have not previously read Uncle Tom's Cabin. In , when the book was published, it served as a much-needed grand national chastisement over the practice of slavery. She used the story to teach basic compassion for the slaves.
It is shocking to a modern reader that teaching such basic compassion was ever necessary. Stowe gave no leniency to northerners in her chastisement "We [southerners:] are the obvious oppressors of the negro; but the unchristian prejudice of the north is an oppressor almost equally severe.
I was disappointed that she ended the book by sending so many of her main characters back to Africa. It was an unfortunate cop out. Because of her effective depiction of slavery and all of its ugliness, I readily believe that President Lincoln said, upon meeting Mrs. Stowe, "So you're the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war! Quite a powerful book that must have been revolutionary for its time because we all know how utterly insane it is to entertain the notion that black people have, um, feelings ; that they grieve at being torn away from their families and feel the humiliation of being whipped and kicked and insulted, day in and day out.
There were too many heartbreaking stories -which probably reflect only a tiny fraction of the injustice and cruelty done to slaves all over America in the past few centuries.
Yet th Quite a powerful book that must have been revolutionary for its time because we all know how utterly insane it is to entertain the notion that black people have, um, feelings ; that they grieve at being torn away from their families and feel the humiliation of being whipped and kicked and insulted, day in and day out.
Yet there were also kind, compassionate individuals who did what they could, and they were like a shining beacon in this unending darkness, like Mrs Shelby and her son, St. Clare and his daughter, and Miss Ophelia and the Quakers. It is your respectability and humanity that licenses and protects his brutality.
Another downside lies in the writing, which was a bit all over the place, sometimes touching on the sublime and others on the boring and the mundane. The end result was satisfactory, in my opinion. All in all, I think it is a depressing, yet powerfully moving read, not to mention that it is unfortunately still relevant.
It's funny how we still have to debunk racism as being nothing but blind hatred and prejudice in the 21st century. For shame. Strip it of all its ornament, run it down to the root and nucleus of the whole, and what is it? Why, because my brother Quashy is ignorant and weak, and I am intelligent and strong,—because I know how, and can do it,—therefore, I may steal all he has, keep it, and give him only such and so much as suits my fancy.
This I take to be about what slavery is. I defy anybody on earth to read our slave-code, as it stands in our law-books, and make anything else of it. In the midst of life we are in death. I know this is a seminal work, but oh lord I was bored. Let's just be real from the beginning: This is a problematic book, especially when viewed from a perspective. I do believe Harriet Beecher Stowe's heart was in the right place, but sort of in one of those ways where people want to do something good, and all they do is just "like" things on Facebook, or say to one another how bad things are, but then shrug and say "But what can we do?
There's that whole unproven comment that Abraham Lincoln said something to Stowe about her being the "little woman who started the big war", referring, of course, to the start of the American Civil War. There's no actual proof that statement was ever made, by the way, but that's okay because it sounds pretty cool.
Don't we all want to be the little person who does something so incredible that the entire course of history is changed because of us? You're probably lying if you say you haven't at least once in your life considered it. Just think about that a moment. It's probably unfair to read this book from a contemporary perspective. There's so much shit happening in our world right now and it's hard to say if any of it will get any better anytime soon.
People like to say that slavery no longer exists, but what they mean is that slavery the way Stowe wrote about it doesn't exist anymore. The truth is, of course, that slavery exists in many different ways, maybe less obviously, than forcing people of color to work on plantations or to be indentured servants or whatever else. Human trafficking which is how slavery begins still exists. The number of people of color who are trafficked and forced into prostitution and drug-trafficking are extraordinarily high.
Racism runs rampant in most of the United States, even though we like to pretend that things are "better" today. Racism, like sexism, is so ingrained in our everyday experiences that we barely even notice when it happens around us anymore, unless we pay really close attention.
Many don't, though. So when we read a book like this, we cringe at some of the more sentimental beliefs Stowe held that she wrote in this book of hers. To break it down to a very basic level, slavery is bad, Christianity is good.
That's all you really need to understand to get through this book. I imagine most of Stowe's readers were already of the same mindset - I don't know how many plantation and slave-owners would pick up this book and actually put it down and think "Summabitch, I've been doing life wrong all this time!
I am WOKE. There are some characters who elicit this sort of response, generally after said character dies. Then all the survivors are all "Shit, my life is changed, I will never be bad again - pass the Bible!
She's white, she's blond, she's blue-eyed, she's virtuous, she's straight up awesome-sauce. I actually read about half of this on my own around college at some point. Someone in one of my classes did an impressively bad oral presentation with a visual aid on this book and I was so intrigued by how pathetic it was that I had to read the book. I picked it up on my own and got about halfway when I had dinner with my mom who happened to also be reading it on her own.
I had been enjoying up to that point, but she went on such a rant about the book that I didn't feel like reading anymore of it. I didn't understand whatever she was going on about at the time, but I think I get it now. It was probably the same concerns that I have now. I will say this book was great for our book club discussion this week. I appear to have liked it less than others, but I appreciated everything everyone had to say.
We even went so far as to wonder if this book would have been different if it had been written by a man a question that was raised last month when we read Frankenstein as well. Decision: The book would probably never have been written by a man.
And if it had been, it would have lacked in the sentimentality, which almost defeats the entire purpose of this book. It's the sentimentality that pulls at the heart-strings, and without it, it would just be
0コメント