Uncle Tom’s Cabin in The Readers Review: Literature from 1714 to 1910

Dec 14, 2011 Ensiform rated it liked it

Shelves: fiction

With an Afterword by John William Ward. A once wealthy man is forced to sell his beloved slave, Uncle Tom, to get out of debt. And a female slave escapes with her small child, joining her impetuous, proud husband George in flight. And from there the two plot points continue and diverge in an episodic fashion, and we meet a whole host of characters, including the benevolent, effeminate St. Clare and the brutish Simon Legree.

There are some very stunning passages in the book, some powerful, impassi ...more

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May 15, 2012 Bookguide rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 1001-book-list, usa, black-author-or-major-character

Written in 1850, at the height of slavery on the plantations in America, this novel's criticism of the whole system of slavery has been credited with popularising Abolitionist thinking, and starting discussions which led to the American Civil War. There is an apocryphal tale that when Abraham Lincoln met Harriet Beecher Stowe, he told her that she had started the war with the book; she certainly must have fanned the flames. I have to admit, I had no idea that 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' was considered s Written in 1850, at the height of slavery on the plantations in America, this novel's criticism of the whole system of slavery has been credited with popularising Abolitionist thinking, and starting discussions which led to the American Civil War. There is an apocryphal tale that when Abraham Lincoln met Harriet Beecher Stowe, he told her that she had started the war with the book; she certainly must have fanned the flames. I have to admit, I had no idea that 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' was considered so influential, as I had dismissed it as a children's book, with only vague ideas of what it was about. My initial education on the evils of slavery came through the TV serialisation of Alex Haley's Roots, which absolutely horrified me and made a huge impression on me at the time. I recognised many of the situations described in 'Roots' in this book, and was able to visualise them more easily because of the TV series. Unfortunately 'Roots' has since been attacked as a work of fiction which plagiarised another author's work, but it certainly opened my eyes and shows the power of fiction to raise awareness and promote change. After the publication of 'Uncle Tom's Cabin', the author was also criticised and attempts were made to discredit her, but her book has passed into the annals of world literature, whereas 'Roots' has been excluded from 'The Norton Anthology of African-American Literature'.

Like the previous book I read from this era, Dickens'Hard Times, published in 1854, 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' was first published in weekly instalments and criticises current society. Dickens' audience was not of any particular political persuasion or with a particular religious or moral point of view. Harriet Beecher Stowe, on the other hand, was preaching to the converted, as her serialisation was first published in an Abolitionist weekly, 'Nationalist Era', and was not conceived as a novel. This probably explains the length and complexity of the story, with numerous examples of the bad treatment of slaves, additions of new characters and various sub-plots which are all brought together at the end of the book. The style of writing is easily read in the 20th century, and yet the book took me far longer to read than I had expected, which can be explained by the fact that I have an old hardcover copy of the book which is printed on thin paper and appeared to be a relatively short book, but was actually 448 pages long. Despite its length, it kept my interest throughout. Despite the number of characters, the book focuses on one particular person or family at a time, and connects them more or less seamlessly, with a few exceptions, and the characters are clear and well-formed.

At the end of the book, Mrs. Beecher Stowe makes an impassioned plea for the abolition of slavery. The story told in the book illustrates the plight of the slave, but it does not merely assume that this was an evil which needed to be addressed, it points out the moral inconsistency of the people in the North who opposed slavery but were unwilling to take freed slaves into their society, or who were repelled by black skin, or who had slaves themselves and treated them well, but who still traded in slaves. She pointed out that the Northerners could not consider themselves to be morally superior over the Southerners when families were split up or well-treated slaves could be sold on to less scrupulous masters or slaves who had been taught to read and had been brought up as Christians were "sent South" to lives of hard physical labour where they were not allowed leisure, where they were surrounded by the uneducated or were forbidden to attend religious services. Dickens also comments on a similar situation in 'Hard Times' when he mentions that the eighteen churches and chapels of Coketown were not attended by the working people. In 'Uncle Tom's Cabin', Mrs. Beecher Stowe uses her entire narrative to emphasise the fact that "there is actually nothing to protect the slave's life but the character of the master. [...] The author hopes she has done justice to that nobility, generosity and humanity, which in many cases characterize individuals at the South. Such instances save us from utter despair of our kind. But, she asks any person who knows the world, are such characters common anywhere?"

In spite of all this talk of freeing slaves, providing them with education and religion, there are still plenty of descriptions of what are now known as African Americans as a race which needs special education to become worthy. The attitude is still paternalistic and condescending; many of the good qualities of the slaves in the book are portrayed as a result of having been in close contact with white people. There is a strong element of the "noble savage" and stereotypical descriptions, not all of them complimentary; with modern politically-correct sensibilities, this book is still racist. Having heard of various black stereotypes which are today completely unacceptable, I was surprised to discover that many of the names of particular "types" are in this novel; I don't know if this is their first appearance, but Sambo, Mammy and Topsy have become shorthand (in the USA, in race studies) for a particular sort of person. I also discovered the origin of the phrase "like Topsy it grew" is in this book. Such stereotypes have led to the book losing its popularity, but the fact that images from this book passed into popular culture, racist and anti-racist, is hardly surprising considering the wide influence of the book, which was the most popular novel of the 19th century, only surpassed by the Bible, and sold 300,000 copies in America and 1 million in the UK in its first year of publication. Quite an achievement, and a great though upsetting tale to boot. ...more

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Feb 28, 2018 Chinook rated it it was ok

Shelves: 1001, 500-women

So, I can see why this book has great historical significance, but man, is it a slog. I listened to the audiobook at twice the speed because otherwise there was no way I was going to make it through all that preaching. Normally I listen at 1.25 or maybe 1.5x. I was relatively interested in the basic plot lines, but there was just so much speechifying and so much God. Too much God. I did learn a decent amount about slavery in America and I understand where Uncle Tom and Sambo characters come from ...more

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