An End To Slavery: Harriet Beecher Stowes Uncle Toms Cabin

Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1852 work Uncle Tom’s Cabin is considered one of the most influential works of literature in the American canon; this is because, as Charlotte James suggests, it helped to change people perceptions of slavery during the years before the American Civil War.

Harriet Beecher Stowe is known as the author of the novel that some say fuelled the American Civil War. Published in 1852, Uncle Tom’s Cabin was ground breaking in its explicit abolitionist sentiments, and is perhaps suggests that literature can lead to social and political change. Stowe sets up a number of binary contrasts throughout the course of the novel, particularly between the North and the South, men and women, the escape narrative and the slave narrative. Perhaps the most compelling of juxtapositions created by Stowe, however, is that of the immorality of slavery and the belief in a benevolent God. Religion for Stowe’s readers is not merely a persistent theme; it is a journey for the reader just as it is for the character.

We see the devout faith of Uncle Tom tested to breaking point, as he moves further south and further into oppression; we see Eliza empowered by God to take the ‘desperate leap’ over the metaphorical and geographical divide between the north and the south – the Ohio River. Aware of the widespread faith in Christianity across America, Stowe draws on her own religious upbringing to highlight the immorality of slavery as a whole, regardless of the good intentions of kinder masters such as Arthur Shelby. Shelby is undoubtedly good natured, educated, and gentle with his slaves, yet he still tolerates and capitalises on the trade. Any sympathies we may have held for him leave with Uncle Tom, and what once separated Shelby from far more loathsome slave holders such as Legree is undermined by his commodification of a beloved character.

American art at this time focuses hugely on the discovering of new frontiers, and Stowe acts as a guiding light for female writers in a man’s world. Those wanting to read more around this topic might consider Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, and Frederick W. Thomas’ The Emigrant.

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