Uncle Tom's Cabin Authors
One author who stands out in the abolitionist literary canon is Harriet Beecher Stowe who wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1851. Stowe decided to publish her novel as a series of weekly articles in a newspaper entitled the National Era. This magazine appealed to men, women and sometimes even children. The Era’s format included four large pages with about seven columns on each page. The fiction section of the paper was located in the back but was not specifically marked and news and other advertisements could sometimes appear on that page as well. The National Era focused on abolitionist articles and featured authors who were participating in the abolitionist movements. “Within the abolitionist press generally, fiction played only a minor role in
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As stated earlier, fiction was commonly read by women and children as recreation however, Stowe had much bigger visions. She wanted to make fiction a legitimate genre. “Southerners saw Stowe’s use of fiction as “unscrupulous” precisely because of its power to captivate readers. Men of letters regarded fiction as aesthetically inferior to such literary forms as poetry, history, and classical texts” (Hochman 79). Some members of society were fearful that fiction could fill the mind with untruthful thoughts and young minds may be misshaped. Stowe wanted to remove this stigma of fiction being an inferior genre. By the end of the 1850’s fiction was indeed starting to swell. Although concerns about selection, authority, and control were still present, many people (even men) were ready to dive into a genre they may not have been familiar with and those that weren’t necessarily fiction fans were willing to make an exception for Stowe. However, obtaining a copy of the actual novel (after the newspaper publication) was no easy task. Uncle Tom’s Cabin had been condemned in many Sothern states and it was hard to buy. Rosalie Roos of South Carolina write in a letter on May 4, 1853, “In Charlston this book cannot be bought. ...We have been able to borrow it from Mrs. Peronneau’s sister and Eliza read it through in a day and has halfway become an abolitionist from …show more content…
The first being the loss of children exhibited by both Eliza and Mrs. Bird and the second being the character of Eva. Both scenes are tremendously sentimental and specifically appeal to the female reader. The point of the sentimental character or sentimental scene is to hook the reader and urge them to continue with the story, even if there is a different intended meaning in the text. In Uncle Tom’s Cabin, sentimentality was used to fascinate readers however the real message was how horrible slavery was and that is should be
As stated earlier, fiction was commonly read by women and children as recreation however, Stowe had much bigger visions. She wanted to make fiction a legitimate genre. “Southerners saw Stowe’s use of fiction as “unscrupulous” precisely because of its power to captivate readers. Men of letters regarded fiction as aesthetically inferior to such literary forms as poetry, history, and classical texts” (Hochman 79). Some members of society were fearful that fiction could fill the mind with untruthful thoughts and young minds may be misshaped. Stowe wanted to remove this stigma of fiction being an inferior genre. By the end of the 1850’s fiction was indeed starting to swell. Although concerns about selection, authority, and control were still present, many people (even men) were ready to dive into a genre they may not have been familiar with and those that weren’t necessarily fiction fans were willing to make an exception for Stowe. However, obtaining a copy of the actual novel (after the newspaper publication) was no easy task. Uncle Tom’s Cabin had been condemned in many Sothern states and it was hard to buy. Rosalie Roos of South Carolina write in a letter on May 4, 1853, “In Charlston this book cannot be bought. ...We have been able to borrow it from Mrs. Peronneau’s sister and Eliza read it through in a day and has halfway become an abolitionist from …show more content…
The first being the loss of children exhibited by both Eliza and Mrs. Bird and the second being the character of Eva. Both scenes are tremendously sentimental and specifically appeal to the female reader. The point of the sentimental character or sentimental scene is to hook the reader and urge them to continue with the story, even if there is a different intended meaning in the text. In Uncle Tom’s Cabin, sentimentality was used to fascinate readers however the real message was how horrible slavery was and that is should be