Uncle Tom's Cabin By Harriet Beecher Stowe

In Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, the author creates a fictional world based upon her observations of slavery in the southern states of America. Taking true events experienced by slaves and pairing them with characters of her own creation, the author is able to compose a piece that exposes the evils of slavery in the United States. Specifically, Stowe strongly develops her female characters and their importance as mothers within her text in order to emphasize this point. While the men within her novel come to represent the slave holding tradition, Stowe looks to female sensitivity to convey the heartbreaking reality of the practice. The legacy of Uncle Tom's Cabin from the feminist point of view is complex and requires an …show more content…
In Stowe's text, the author goes against the traditional understanding of women slaves as animals, and instead depicts them as feeling human beings. In her feminist text, Wearn explains that the author ''contradicts a vision of black womanhood that imagined female slaves merely as a means of production in the slave-holding south; Stowe endows [black mothers] with the natural instincts of motherhood, a characteristics at the time deemed ''white'', even in the north'' (Wearn, 20). An example of Stowe's redefinition of the black female can be seen in the character of Eliza. Eliza is owned by Mr. and Mrs. Shelby and works as a slave within their home. Through the Christian teachings of Mrs. Shelby, Eliza possesses many of the same qualities displayed by her mistress. Eliza is shown as an intelligent mother, with a strong sense of what is good and bad. When her husband George informs his wife that he will escape to Canada, Eliza encourages him to ''have faith'' and to believe that God is doing his very best'' (Stowe, 16). Even in a time of hardship for her family, Eliza is able to look to God for strength and guide her husband in the direction of Christian goodness. In Henning's text she argues that the author emphasizes Eliza's ''Christian sentiment'' and ''courage to maintain …show more content…
This being so, the legacy of female representation that Stowe has created continues to be analyzed as the novel is studied by modern scholars. As the role of the female continues to evolve in differing political and social climates throughout time, Stowe's novel can be a source of tension for the modern feminist trying to break through the traditional vision of women as the sympathetic mother figure. However, though Uncle Tom's Cabin may be an incomplete depiction of the modern female, the scholar must recognize that in her own time Stowe's work was considered revolutionary for taking steps toward finding the female voice and asserting female