Preview

Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs

Powerful Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1365 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs
The Realities of Slavery Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe and Incidents In The Life of A Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs are two books which were written against slavery. Both authors are deeply against slavery and write these books to convince their audience that slavery is bad. They both want the reader to get an image of how slavery was about during the 1850's. Only difference is that Stowe writes about things that occur during the 1850's but are not based on a true story. In other words, Uncle Tom's Cabin is fiction where has Jacobs book, it is an autobiography, a slave narrative. Even though Uncle Tom's Cabin is fiction and Incidents In The Life of A Slave Girl is a life story, they both confirm the reality and viciousness of slavery by focusing in religion, mental and sexual abuse, and how slavery obliterates the moral principles of slaveholders. Religion played a major role during slavery. Not only was religion one of the main reasons as to way colored people (and the few white abolitionist there were) believed slavery was wrong but also because it was the only "good" there was during the 1800's. During the 1800's, it was jam-packed with inequality. Therefore, religion was the hope towards freedom, love, and equality amongst all. In Stowe's book, Uncle Tom was the most religious and noble character. In Jacob's book, Aunt Martha was the most religious and kind hearted. Both characters passed on the religious values to others. For example, after Uncle Tom's death was it then that Mr. Shelby, Toms slaveholder, realize that in the eyes of God, Slavery was immoral. Mr. Shelby states, "Witness, eternal God!....Oh, witness that, from this hour I will do what one man can drive out this curse of slavery from my land!" (Stowe, 479). Mr. Shelby had basically said that with the help and guidance of God, and his determination, he was going to put a stop to slavery. He realized how slavery was not right and was determined to work against slavery from that

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) was a novelist and an American abolitionist who is responsible for writing Uncle Tom's Cabin, some people might say the most influential books in the history of America. Her father and her brother were pastors of the Congregational Church in Litchfield. After one of her children had died, it made her contemplate the pain slaves had to face when their family members were sold and taken away, and that’s when she decided to write Uncle Tom’s Cabin. In 1852 when she published her first book, she became known nationally, and went on to write several more books on the same topic of slavery. Uncle Tom’s Cabin sold 500,000 copies in the first 4 years. This book brought about the controversy of the harsh reality…

    • 131 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Harriet Beecher Stowe was infuriated when she heard that the Compromise of 1850 would help slaveholders recapture runaway slaves.…

    • 587 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    It was clever of Harriet Beecher Stowe to include a theme in Uncle Tom's Cabin that was universally relatable. Stowe connects the pain of losing a child with the loss of a child into slavery. Her goal was to motivate slave holders to emancipate and to create compassion for the current slaves.…

    • 223 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Which made it even harder to live their lives in their new-found hope due to the lack of literacy, church regulations, and changes on plantations. Chapter Five’s main idea is the slavery amongst the enslaved being an institution by itself and the way both whites and black went about this institution. Once converted slaves amalgamated their Christian life with their slave lives; while whites did not. This caused problems on plantations when it came to issues like thief, lying and being a true follower of the faith. Slaves thought whites were apathetic to the Christian life and used the bible to their advantage to further ideals of…

    • 437 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    When I hear the word slavery, the only thing that comes to my head is cruelty. I could not even imagine how a human can threat another one like animals, as if they were and inferior or less because of the skin color. The idea of being able to read a book that was written by someone that lived during this years of brutality amazed me. Harriet Jacobs was taught how to read and write by her mothers mistress, this was not common for many of the slaves, and it is the reason why she used the name “Linda” to talk about herself during her stories, because if by any chance her master knew that she could read and write, she would have had the punishment of being whipped and put in jail. During the first chapters of her book we could notice that not all her years as a slave were miserable. In fact the first six years of her life were happy, because she didn’t know she was a slave, once she grew up her innocence started to fade, her days started to turn dark and sad. As described in her book the living conditions were like hell on earth. Slavery not only affected the slaves, it also completely destroyed moral…

    • 1236 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Uncle Tom's Cabin Thesis

    • 1028 Words
    • 5 Pages

    The novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” is a book written by Harriet Beecher Stowe who was highly against slavery. She believed slavery was evil, un-ethical and un-Christian. This book is an anti-slavery novel meant to persuade the Northerners that keeping slaves and mistreating them is “evil”. Slavery was thought of as one of the worst times in American history and one of the most embarrassing and tainted times in history. The harm that was brought upon other humans and how they were treated like cattle was very evil and Harriet agreed.…

    • 1028 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Uncle Toms Cabin Thesis

    • 963 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Uncle Tom’s Cabin is based on slavery in the 1800’s. Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of the novel, was an avid abolitionist. Her main goal of the novel was to convince the North of the urgency to end slavery, and to ‘expose’ the south and the horrible stories of slavery.…

    • 963 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Uncle Tom's Cabin or Life Among the Lowly was written in 1852 by Harriet Beecher Stowe. Stowe was an abolitionist who wrote this book to show the evils of slavery. This book heavily impacted the views Northerners had on slavery. It gave them more hope and desire towards the abolition, and even Abraham Lincoln recognized that this book was one of the events that led to the outbreak of the Civil War.…

    • 537 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote the abolitionist novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1852, a book that quickly became a topic of polarizing national discussion. Harriet Beecher Stowe used the power of the pen to prompt a debate about change centered on the social movement of abolitionism. Considered one of the precipitants of the Civil War, Uncle Tom’s Cabin raised awareness among abolitionists and northerners who had never interacted with African Americans or had never experienced slavery first hand. When slavery’s defenders vehemently disputed the novel’s authenticity, Stowe published the factual research for her novel in A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin the following year. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s book portrayed a face, a mind, and a soul of black Americans…

    • 266 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs are two authors with very similar backgrounds. Both Douglass and Jacobs were slaves, and both wrote about the accounts they went through while enslaved. Jacobs views are expressed in "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave," and Jacobs views in "Incidents in The Life of a Slave Girl. Douglass's work is directed towards anyone willing to listen, and emphasized the fact that slavery was evil and dehumanized those of the African American race. Jacobs aims her work towards upper class white women because she feels they will have sympathy for how she was treated because she is also a female. Both writers wrote about the hardships of slavery, but their stories are different due to the fact that Douglass is a male and Jacobs is a female.…

    • 682 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Narrative of the life of fred. Douglass and Uncle Tom’s Cabin are two very powerful and influential writings about slavery published only 7 years apart, with Uncle Tom’s Cabin being the later. Looking on the outside, these two pieces may have similar effects on readers, but they have just as many differences in the way the authors approach their topic and go about their writing.…

    • 589 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    A Troublesome Property

    • 722 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Duval County slave master Zephaniah Kingsley didn’t like the idea of his slaves being religious because he claimed that the slaves were harder to manage, disobeyed his orders, and stole more food. In other counties like Madison slaves were not permitted to attend religious gatherings, but some of the braver slaves would meet up in secret and have religious services. If the slaves were ever caught taking part in the acts of independence they were whipped severely, some were eve whipped to death. During the time the slaves actually got a chance to practice Christianity the message was taught by a white preacher. He would basically preach to the slaves about minding their masters and mistresses and they would be saved, but if they disobeyed them they would not be saved. The white preachers would also tell the slaves to honor their masters and to have no other god but them because they cannot see the other god, but they can see their masters. Another thing the passage talked about was the quote o quote good slave and master relationships. Some slaves state that their masters treated them well by feeding them well, and giving them comfortable living quarters. Some of the masters would reward the slaves by giving them money, and giving them time off. This chapter also talked about the percentage of runaway slaves. Out of 742 runaways 77 percent were males. The times when slaves ran away were in February, April, May, and June. Some of the main reasons why slaves fled were to be free of course, and because they were separated from their families or loved ones. Most of the runaway slave would flee to south Florida, or the Bahamas. Once the runaways were in the Bahamas they were safe under the British jurisdiction even though the slave masters would plea to get the slaves back.…

    • 722 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In many ways Beecher Stowe’s more moderate method was a success and her novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin was extremely popular. In the work, Stowe was able to showcase the virtues of Uncle Tom, a slave, while condemning Legree, a slave owner to suffer as a sinner. In a dramatic, Jesuslike moment, Uncle Tom proclaims, “Mas’r, if you was sick, or in trouble, or dying, and I could save ye, I’d give ye my heart’s blood…don’t bring this great sin on your soul…if ye don’t repent, [your troubles] won’t never end!” (146). In her portrayal of both Uncle Tom and Legree, Beecher Stowe is hoping to demonstrate how slavery is damaging and dangerous for not only the slaves but the slave owners, who, if they are not confronted by the violence that John Brown and David Walker entreat for, will surely be punished in the afterlife. Beecher Stowe’s Christlike portrayal of Uncle Tom was also an effort to devaluate the harsh slave codes of the South and mitigate the widespread fear that upon being freed, slaves would rise up and repay their former masters in…

    • 627 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Despite many expression of society ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ demonstrates racism through injustice of white people in society; accusing blacks of being dirty or by incriminating them. Harriet Beecher Stowe uses ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ to help the slave workers in the south to the predicament in the north as an act of to abolish slavery. Stowe represents slaves pure and innocent beings and whites and slave owners as inhumane beings, to create a difference between pure slaves and to those who mistreat slaves. It is too much to treat people unfairly based on their skin color and to believe we are beyond race. I learnt that religion is something we can tolerate but never agree upon, as each faith has an ordained…

    • 395 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Christianity is an Abrahamic faith based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. Many good Christians tend to believe in equality and love for all people, no matter what religion, gender, orientation, or race. Harriet Beecher Stowe is able to include Christian ideology into Uncle Tom’s Cabin and use it to argue the morality and righteousness of slavery. “One newspaper, La Civilta Cattolica, objected to Harriet Beecher Stowe's portrayal "of sentiments so noble and virtues so marvelous [being acquired] by the sole reading of the sole Bible, which seems to be the predominant fixation of the author" (qtd. in Rossi 42223)” (Ashley C. Barnes). Barnes is saying that critics and readers have been able to notice Stowe’s incorporation of Christian morals and Bible references.…

    • 262 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays