Hochman's analysis of Uncle Tom's Cabin

Uncle Tom's Cabin is a literary and socially relevant classic. The articles and books that offer praise for Stowe's novel are numerous and opinions vary widely. But the one main salient theme that runs through many of the critiques and reviews -- and is implied by others -- is that the novel has a universality. Human nature will always be drawn to stories like Stowe has written. The specifics of whippings and injustice aside, a story of human suffering juxtaposed with an unflinching sense of survival instincts has a purpose in the big picture. For that reason this paper will embrace Uncle Tom's Cabin as a "Purpose Novel"; in the words of Hochman (p. 261), "Stowe's purposiveness…necessarily drew attention to the problem of race, a problem that seemed all the more intractable as the institution of slavery receded into the past."

Body of the Paper -- Purposefulness of the Novel

The fact that Stowe's novel embraces many themes is not a unique idea in the sense of any analysis of Uncle Tom's Cabin. The purpose of any novel is first to entertain, but also it is to inform, and moreover a novelist seeks to stimulate the reader to conscious thought about the characters, settings, conflicts, resolutions, and emotions. In Chapters XX through XII the theme of love is presented in several contexts. Given the first thought that comes to mind when thinking about the novel, love is not likely to come up. But love is evident, both romantic love and Christian love, and it is woven into the novel for a purpose. On page 223 (Chapter XXII) Aunt Chloe is now working for a confectioner in Louisville, to raise money to buy Tom back.

Her skill was so excellent that she was "gaining wonderful sums of money, all of which, Tom was informed," was to be used toward his "redemption money" (Stowe, p. 223). The use of the phrase "wonderful sums" had a specific purpose. Money itself isn't wonderful per se, it's useful and necessary. But when the raising of the money is being done to free someone from being enslaved, it becomes wonderful. And so it would seem the purpose of Stowe placing Chloe in profitable employment is two-fold: for one, the romantic love that Chloe feels for Uncle Tom drives her ambition to earn money towards his release; the second purpose is to show, as Stowe does often in the novel, that women are perhaps a cut above men when it comes to smarts and survival instincts. Stowe's reviewers have posited numerous times that there is a feminist theme and pro-woman purpose running through this book, and clearly there are many signs and symbols that show her clear intention in that regard.

Another purpose for this passage is the universality portrayed through the emotions. On page 260 of her essay, Hochman quotes Charles Dudley Warner -- who had equated Stowe's talent with Cervantes and Homer -- saying that Uncle Tom's Cabin fulfilled "…the one indispensable requisite of great work of imaginative fiction… it appeal[s] to universal human nature in all races and situations and climates." And so while it may not have been Stowe's purpose to make this story universal, in hindsight, from a strictly editorial / literary point-of-view, the universality of the theme and the plot is powerful.

Whether a character is imprisoned by his own inability to shake loose from discomfort, or enslaved through none of his own doing, the universal human sentiment is to set the character free. Meanwhile I disagree with Hochman when she writes that the book's "direct attack on the peculiar institution subverted its claim to timelessness" and adds that because it "critiqued a social evil in a particular historical period" it failed to "transcend its own cultural moment." With the strength of novel's characters and their interaction, and the poignant and graphic depictions of the era of cruelty, how can Hochman make the absurd claim that it is not timeless? For one thing, the differences on issues of ethnicity are still with us. Racism did not disappeared along with Jim Crow laws -- it is alive in 2010. Cruelty is still unfortunately part of our society (re: the psychological and sexual abuse U.S. soldiers visited on prisoners at Abu Ghraib, Iraq).

On page 223 Tom has seen beatings and lashings and yet, Stowe writes so magnificently, he was "…never positively and consciously miserable" and moreover, "…so well is the harp of human feeling strung, that nothing but a crash that breaks every string can wholly mar its harmony" (Stowe, 223). The purpose of that passage is to show the reader that humans bend but don't break. It isn't just about slavery or punishment, but the purpose is to fully depict the willful resistance to indecency.

On pages 233-235 the purpose on Stowe's part is to portray the classic argument for and against slavery -- the justifications and rebuttals to slavery. The brothers Alfred and Augustine argue in a fascinating dialogue that has a universal context, given that the world today is not free from unconscionable racial bias, and likely never will be. Alfred, who supports the whippings and beatings and scoffs at Thomas Jefferson's "free and equal" contribution to the Constitution as "humbug," says "…we can see plainly enough that all men are not born free, nor born equal…it is the educated, the intelligent, the wealthy, the refined, who ought to have equal rights, and not the canaille" (Stowe, p. 233). Augustine argues that "since training children is the staple of the human race… our system [slavery as a bad example] does not work well there" (p. 235).