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Uncle Toms Cabin Criticism

Decent Essays

Harriet Beecher Stowe tells stories of different slaveholders apathetic, abusive, and hypocritical actions towards various slaves in her beautifully written novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, during the 19th century in order to help convey the true evil behind slavery- no matter the circumstance. The author allows readers to view slavery from seemingly safe environments to hostile settings, and continually shows the bad in every situation. The reality of slavery is shown to anyone willing to read this novel, and Harriet Beecher Stowe does a good job of combining various stories that tie together in order to complete her goal.
The friendliest of environments in the south proved to be apathetic in situations when it came to a slave owners and …show more content…

Harriet Beecher Stowe gives readers insight on situations where masters went unpunished when they physically and mentally abused their slaves. One example of how this trauma was present in the novel was when Prue, slave to Augustine St.’s neighbor, explains her past experience with a slave owner that caused her to lose faith in the Lord and become an alcoholic. When Uncle Tom, the main character, seeks to install faith within Prue and attempt to end her terrible drinking habits, Prue informs him that drinking is her way to the cope with the horrors she has been through. She was physically abused by a former master to breed children that would be sold at the market. (pg. 129) After one of her births, she fell ill while caring for the master’s wife, and Prue was no longer able to provide milk to her newborn. Without any sympathy towards Prue, her master did not give her milk to feed the child, and he forced her to allow the child to die. The poor woman describes how she had to hear the cries of the child and watch the child become nothing but skin and bones until the child took its last breath. She explains how she couldn’t stop hearing the cries of the baby, even after the baby had passed away. She resorted to drinking in order to drown out of the cries of the child, and lost faith in the Lord. Prue claims that if there was a Heaven, that it would probably be filled with whites, and she would rather go to hell, for the

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