Uncle Tom\'s Cabin Stowe\'s (2005)

Uncle Tom's Cabin

Stowe's (2005) Uncle Tom's Cabin was the best-selling book of its time period, but there are many people who have a love/hate relationship with it. At times, it looks as though Stowe (2005) is almost unforgivably racist, and that she cares about saving and preserving the souls of white people, even though they are believed to be forfeiting their place in Heaven through the ownership of slaves. Others think that Stowe (2005) was only working with what was available and significant during her time, and that she is showing a radical message about the significance of slavery, how it was wrong, and how it was unpatriotic, unchristian, and not very womanly, either.

For each copy of the book that Stowe (2005) sold when it first came out, around ten people actually read it. For every person who read it, probably 50 saw some kind of dramatic adaptation of it. Many of these adaptations, however, took away a lot of what Stowe (2005) was trying to say and just kept the racial stereotypes and the melodrama, which was not the same thing that was portrayed in the book. In order to get a better understanding of what Stowe (2005) was really trying to say, a reading of the book was necessary. No matter how people learned about it, though, in nineteenth-century America, Uncle Tom's Cabin was big business and it stayed that way for quite some time.

The book became the first one to ever have products spun off from it, like tea sets, card games, board games, sheet music, action figures, and dolls. These are very common with books and movies today, but it was unheard of back then -- until Stowe (2005) made it happen with a book that came out of nowhere and that everyone was talking about. It permeated the culture of America at that time, and people could not seem to be sure how they felt about it. There was some middle ground, but a lot of the people who read it or heard about it either loved it or hated it. They either saw the value in it, or found it offensive -- and their minds were not easily changed once they had made them up.

Of course, for those who are looking to fault Stowe (2005) there are many ways to do so, and many reasons that can be used. The culture today is very politically correct in most circles, and her work is not at all like that. Most of what she shows are racial stereotypes, pulled primarily from the minstrel stage. These are not at all what would be seen today. Many, many organizations and private individuals would speak out against something like Uncle Tom's Cabin if it were written today. In the time period in which it was created it was still shocking, but not because of political correctness it was more shocking because of the way it shed glaring light on what was the status quo at the time. Despite being the status quo, though, few people actually talked about it. Stowe (2005) decided to change all of that.

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 North is culpable in slavery as well as the South. 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.