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Stowe (2005) shows what appears to be romantic racialism in that all black people are portrayed as docile, simple, childlike, and very Christian. On the other hand, anyone who is mixed race is not like that at all. He or she is very intelligent, but also very discontented with the position that he or she has in slavery, allegedly because of the white man's blood that flows through his or her veins. What is more important than that, though, is what is truly important to focus on when looking at Uncle Tom's Cabin. Stowe (2005) created an attack on slavery that was basically domestic, because she found a way to associate slavery in the public sphere with capitalism and economy. The slaves themselves she associated with Christianity and womanhood.
During the time in which she was writing the book, the culture was one of 'true womanhood.' In other words, women were expected to be submissive to men, domestic in that they stayed in the home and in the kitchen, religiously pious, and sexually pure. These prescriptive categories for women were what Stowe (2005) believed in, and this can be seen in the characters of people like Mrs. Bird and Mrs. Shelby. Slavery is evil because it is opposite of these pure things and opposite of Christianity, in Stowe's (2005) eyes. Through the book, Stowe (2005) is able to show how slavery makes problems for women and separates wives from husbands and mothers from children.
She believes that it corrupts the slaveholders morally and that...
The reason for this, according to Stowe (2005) is that the North wants to see the slaves freed but does not want to come near the black people. There are laws for fugitive slaves, and the North is helping return black slaves to their Southern 'owners.' Because of that, the North is not actually holding up its alleged opinion that the slaves should be freed. Of course, Stowe (2005) is but one person, and there are dissenting opinions about what she was really trying to say in the novel and whether she portrayed slavery accurately. Like much of history, there will always be arguments about just exactly what took place, why it occurred, and who had a hand in it.
There are several different adaptations and editions of the novel, and they are all very valuable as contributions to literature and to history. Whether they are accurate in their depiction of slavery is an open-ended question. Because Stowe (2005) lived during that time period it would seem as though her background would give her the knowledge she needed for an accurate portrayal of what took place, but she also wrote something that was clearly fiction. If it were meant as metaphor, there were undoubtedly people who did not see that -- as well as others who saw something completely different from what she was trying to portray. It is clear, though, that Uncle Tom's Cabin and Stowe (2005) have taken their places in history.
Bibliography
Stowe,…
Bibliography
Stowe, Harriet Beecher. (2005). Uncle Tom's Cabin. Dover Publications.
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