Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin Essay

The anti-slavery novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe was written at a time when slavery was a largely common practice among Americans. It not only helped lay the foundation for the Civil War but also contained many themes that publicized the evil of slavery to all people. The book contains themes such as the moral power of women, human right, and many more. The most important theme Stowe attempts to portray to readers is the incompatibility of slavery and Christianity. She makes it very clear that she does not believe slavery and Christianity can coexist and that slavery is against all Christian morals. She believes no Christian should allow the existence or practice of slavery.

But I do not agree with this. I feel that Stowe was just trying to spread awareness and let people know the extreme experiences that slaves were actually put through. I feel that this is very different then promoting racial stereotypes. In a way I feel like this is challenging them more because it is more real and honest. This novel says it how it was there was no sugar coating whatsoever. This to me was a great approach because it was better at spreading awareness of what all those people actually went through.

Stowe first learned of the horrors of slavery when she moved to Cincinnati, Ohio. Kentucky, a slave state, was right next to Cincinnati. She married and lived there for 18 years. All the while, she stored images and thoughts in her mind about slavery. Many times, she would talk to slaves and retain their memories and thoughts.

Stowe features many incidents of mistreatment toward slaves from their master, in order to communicate to her readers that slavery is a wicked attribute to withhold. In many cases of abuse, such as Prues sorrowful and profane situation produced so much misery she pleas to be dead (pg.128). Specifically, Prues wants to die due to her constant dehumanization, because her past master was a slave trader and treated her as if she was an animal by breeding her children out as soon as they were old enough, moreover Prues could do absolutely nothing about her body being used and the continual forced departure with her children (pg. 129). Not only her past master breeded her out, but also her current owner induced her overall despair, because Prues had a baby that she thought she would finally be able to keep, however her milk dried up and her master refused to buy milk to feed the baby and as a result the baby starved to death (pg. 130). The reason why Stowe revealed this story about when Prues expressed to Tom that she wanted to die due to the mistreatment from her masters is for the purpose to demonstrate what many slaves faced. Overall, Stowe aims to show the evils of

One of the things Harriet Beecher Stowe is known for in Uncle Tom’s Cabin is her many literary devices in her writing that have hidden meanings which emphasizes her abolitionist views. She is an effective author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin because her literary devices such as symbolism reiterate her very strong abolitionist views. Firstly, an example of Harriet Beecher Stowe using a character to help her anti-slavery views is during a dialogue between Evangeline and her father, Augustine St. Clare. Her father calls her over to show a statuette that he had bought just for her, and Eva tells him about her feelings that have been suppressed. She says to him, “‘O, that’s what troubles me, papa. You want me to live so happy, and to never have any pain,-never suffer anything,-not even hear a sad story, when other poor creatures have nothing but pain or sorrow, all their lives; … Papa, isn’t

Uncle Tom’s Cabin was written by Harriet Beecher Stowe and was published on March 20th, 1852. Uncle Tom’s Cabin is an anti-slavery novel that talks about how slavery is harmful, traumatic, and it tears families apart and it should be abolished. This book protests the Fugitive Slave Act. Uncle Tom’s Cabin helped cause the Civil War because it was controversial. It wrote about the evils of slavery and put a face to slavery. People in the south believed that the whole story was a lie, and slavery was good. In the south, Harriet Beecher Stowe was portrayed as a villain. But, in the north people agreed with the book and the bad things that were talked about. That caused a huge debate about who was right which eventually led to the civil war. Document C says that Southern people think Harriet Beecher Stowe is a liar and people who believe her aren’t smart. A divide was

As Stowe describes the importance and treatment that comes with a female slave who is attractive in physical appearance, the idea of women inequality continues to be expressed, as a reader with a feminist lens can conclude that women are often times objectified, even in circumstances such as

Stowe presents slavery in the only way she knows how, by using the facts. Several sources of other works in American literature contrast on to how Stowe presents slavery in her novel "Uncle Tom's Cabin." The elements of slavery are driven through the reflections of theme, characterization, and setting to show that the way slavery is presented is not contradicting.

The relationship between a female slave and her master wasn’t always a relationship built only on hard work in the fields or serving in the home. In some instances slave women were forced to comply with sexual advances by their masters regularly. Attempting to resist these advances often led to undesirable consequences that often included beatings and other forms of physical punishment. Because of these harsh and brutal consequences

Uncle Tom’s Cabin—one of the most popular book in nineteenth century, was written by Harriet Beecher Stowe after the Fugitive Slave Act, which also had a significant influence on abolishing movement of slavery in America. This book can be mainly separated into 2 parts – the slaves’ struggles for freedom, and Uncle Tom’s ups and downs in his whole life.

Through incredible storytelling abilities, Harriet Beecher Stowe conveyed to her readers the cruelties of enslavement, the injustices of numerous pro-slave laws, and the desperate need for the abolition of thraldom in our country. Within a month of its publication, an additional 15,000 copies of Uncle Tom's

Stowe explained in the texts of the novel of circumstances and stories she dealt with during this time period. She risked in publishing this anti-slavery novel, but she wanted to make a statement about slavery. Stowe’s work gives us a message of how slavery as a whole was unacceptable and immoral. It gives us a closer look at personal situations and accounts of people living during this time and how slave trades were going about. Many types of stereotypes were used throughout the book like racial names such as “Uncle Tom” and “Mammy”.

Stowe gave numerous instances of cruelty the slaves endured throughout this novel. For example, the Legree plantation is a prime illustration of inhumanity inflicted by slaveowners. On this plantation, the slaves: are allowed one set of clothes per year, must look happy (presumably to strengthen Legree’s paternalistic view on slavery), faith is obstructed, women are rousted, and slaves are

As previously mentioned, Stowe composed Uncle Tom’s Cabin to express the various views of slavery, and how it impacted the lives of those affected by this lifestyle. Growing up in this century, Stowe found the institution of slavery to be corrupt, with “the country requiring her complicity in a system she thought was unjust and immoral” (Uncle Tom’s Cabin). As Stowe did not believe in the Fugitive Slave Law—which required everyone to aid in the capture of fugitive slaves—she chose to hide runaway slaves, and her family promoted her drive to aid those in need. Stowe accomplished this feat through housing, feeding, and smuggling slaves to legal freedom in Canada, because it was the Christian thing to do.

While Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin overtly deals with the wrongs of slavery from a Christian standpoint, there is a subtle yet strong emphasis on the moral and physical strength of women. Eliza, Eva, Aunt Chloe, and Mrs. Shelby all exhibit remarkable power and understanding of good over evil in ways that most of the male characters in Stowe’s novel. Even Mrs. St. Claire, who is ill throughout most of the book, proves later that she was always physically in control of her actions, however immoral they were. This emotional strength, when compared with the strength of the male characters, shows a belief in women as equals to men (if not more so) uncommon to 19th century literature.