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   Anne Lai_A9527123

   June 20, 2009 at 11:37 pm

   UNCLE TOM’S CABIN – Harriet Beecher Stowe

   Harriet Beecher Stowe published more than 30 works, but it was her best-selling novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin or Life Among the Lowly, that brought her international celebrity and lasting fame.
   Serialized in 1851 in the anti-slavery newspaper The National Era, and published in 1852, the book was an immediate success.
   Within days 10,000 copies sold. By year’s end worldwide sales reached nearly 1.5 million. Only the Bible sold as well.

   AUTHOR

   Harriet Beecher Stowe was born on June 14, 1811 in Litchfield, Connecticut.
   One of nine children of the famous Puritan preacher and educator Lyman Beecher and his first wife, Roxanna Foote Beecher.
   She moved with her family in 1832 to Cincinnati, Ohio, and there she married Calvin Ellis Stowe in 1836.
   Through her father’s work, Stowe became involved in religious and moral thought as a young child, which continued after her marriage when her husband eventually became a professor of Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinnati.
   Stowe’s first novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, is also her most famous. Stowe began writing the novel at the urging of her sister, who asked Stowe to use her writing talents in the cause of eradicating slavery. The death of her youngest child from cholera also motivated her, as she began to fully sympathize with the plight of slave mothers whose children were sold away from them. She began writing the novel after the family moved to Brunswick, Maine, where her husband had been appointed to the faculty of Bowdoin College.
   The novel first appeared in installments in The National Era in 1851-1852 and appeared in book form in 1852. Within a year, the novel had reached sales of 300,000, and in England, sales had reached 1,000 copies per week by August of 1852. Stowe could not have foreseen the book’s immediate and controversial impact.

   MAJOR CHARACTERS

   Uncle Tom – A good and pious man, Uncle Tom is the protagonist of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Even under the worst conditions, Uncle Tom always prays to God and finds a way to keep his faith. As the novel progresses, the cruel treatment that Tom suffers at the hands of Simon Legree threatens his belief in God, but Tom withstands his doubts and dies the death of a Christian martyr.

   Eva – St. Clare and Marie’s angelic daughter. Eva, also referred to in the book as Little Eva (her given name is Evangeline) is presented as an absolutely perfect child—a completely moral being and an unimpeachable Christian. She laments the existence of slavery and sees no difference between blacks and whites. After befriending Tom while still a young girl, Eva becomes one of the most important figures in his life. In death, Eva becomes one of the text’s central Christ figures.

   George Harris – Eliza’s husband and an intellectually curious and talented mulatto, George loves his family deeply and willingly fights for his freedom. He confronts the slave hunter Tom Loker and does not hesitate to shoot him when he imperils the family.

   Eliza Harris – Mrs. Shelby’s maid, George’s wife, and Harry’s mother, Eliza is an intelligent, beautiful, and brave young slave. After Mr. Shelby makes known his plans to sell Eliza’s son to Mr. Haley, she proves the force of her motherly love as well as her strength of spirit by making a spectacular escape. Her crossing of the Ohio River on patches of ice is the novel’s most famous scene.

   Simon Legree – Tom’s ruthlessly evil master on the Louisiana plantation. A vicious, barbaric, and loathsome man, Legree fosters violence and hatred among his slaves.

   OTHER CHARACTERS

   Arthur Shelby, Tom’s master in Kentucky. Shelby is characterized as a “kind” slaveowner and a stereotypical Southern gentleman.

   Emily Shelby, Arthur Shelby’s wife. A deeply religious woman who strives to be a kind and moral influence upon her slaves.

   George Shelby, Arthur and Emily’s son, who sees Tom as a “friend” and as the perfect Christian.

   Augustine St. Clare, Tom’s second owner and father of Eva. Of the slaveowners in the novel, the most sympathetic character. St. Clare is complex, often sarcastic, with a ready wit. Topsy, A “ragamuffin” young slave girl.

   Topsy – A wild and uncivilized slave girl whom Miss Ophelia tries to reform, Topsy gradually learns to love and respect others by following the example of Eva.

   Miss Ophelia, is Augustine St. Clare’s pious, hard-working, abolitionist cousin from Vermont.

   PLOT SUMMARY

   Stowe’s novel tells the stories of three slaves — Tom, Eliza, and George — who start out together in Kentucky, but whose lives take different turns. Eliza and George, who are married to each other but owned by different masters, manage to escape to free territory with their little boy, Harry. Tom is not so lucky. He is taken away from his wife and children. Tom is sold first to a kind master, Augustine St. Clare, and then to the fiendish Simon Legree, at whose hands he meets his death. Stowe relied upon images of domesticity, motherhood, and Christianity to capture her nineteenth century audience’s hearts and imaginations. In spite of the critical controversy surrounding the book, the char-acters of Uncle Tom, Little Eva, and Simon Legree have all achieved legendary status in American culture. Often called sentimental and melodramatic, Uncle Tom’s Cabin nevertheless endures as a powerful example of moral outrage over man’s inhumanity to man.

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