1852 UncleTomsCabin
- (Stowe, 1852) ⇒ Harriet Beecher Stowe. (1852). “Uncle Tom's Cabin.”
Subject Headings: Slavery in The United States, American Novel, American Civil War.
Notes
Cited By
2020
- (Wikipedia, 2020) ⇒ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncle_Tom's_Cabin Retrieved:2020-12-20.
- Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in 1852, the novel had a profound effect on attitudes toward African Americans and slavery in the U.S. and is said to have "helped lay the groundwork for the Civil War". Stowe, a Connecticut-born teacher at the Hartford Female Seminary and an active abolitionist, featured the character of Uncle Tom, a long-suffering black slave around whom the stories of other characters revolve. The sentimental novel depicts the reality of slavery while also asserting that Christian love can overcome something as destructive as enslavement of fellow human beings. Uncle Tom's Cabin was the best-selling novel of the 19th century and the second best-selling book of that century, following the Bible. It is credited with helping fuel the abolitionist cause in the 1850s.[1] In the first year after it was published, 300,000 copies of the book were sold in the United States; one million copies in Great Britain. [2] Eight power presses, running day and night, could barely keep up with the demand. In 1855, three years after it was published, it was called "the most popular novel of our day.” [3] The impact attributed to the book is great, reinforced by a story that when Abraham Lincoln met Stowe at the start of the Civil War, Lincoln declared, "So this is the little lady who started this great war."[4] The quote is apocryphal; it did not appear in print until 1896, and it has been argued that "The long-term durability of Lincoln's greeting as an anecdote in literary studies and Stowe scholarship can perhaps be explained in part by the desire among many contemporary intellectuals ... to affirm the role of literature as an agent of social change.” The book and the plays it inspired helped popularize a number of stereotypes about black people.[5] These include the affectionate, dark-skinned “mammy"; the “pickaninny” stereotype of black children; and the “Uncle Tom", or dutiful, long-suffering servant faithful to his white master or mistress. In recent years, the negative associations with Uncle Tom's Cabin have, to an extent, overshadowed the historical impact of the book as a "vital antislavery tool."[6]
- ↑ Goldner, Ellen J. “Arguing with Pictures: Race, Class and the Formation of Popular Abolitionism Through Uncle Tom's Cabin.” Journal of American & Comparative Cultures 2001 24(1–2): 71–84. Fulltext: online at Ebsco.
- ↑ Geoffrey Wheatcroft, "The Cousins' War: review of Amanda Foreman, 'A World on Fire'", New York Times Book Review, July 3, 2011, p. 1
- ↑ Everon, Ernest. “Some Thoughts Anent Dickens and Novel Writing" The Ladies' Companion and Monthly Magazine London, 1855 Volume VII Second Series:259.
- ↑ Charles Edward Stowe, Harriet Beecher Stowe: The Story of Her Life (1911) p. 203.
- ↑ Hulser, Kathleen. “Reading Uncle Tom's Image: From Anti-slavery Hero to Racial Insult.” New-York Journal of American History 2003 65(1): 75–79. .
- ↑ Henry Louis Gates, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Africana: Arts and Letters: An A-to-Z Reference of Writers, Musicians, and Artists of the African American Experience, Running Press, 2005, p. 544.
Quotes
... You ought to be ashamed, John! Poor, homeless, houseless creatures! It’s a shameful, wicked, abominable law, and I’ll break it, for one, the first time I get a chance; and I hope I shall have a chance, I do! Things have got to a pretty pass, if a woman can’t give a warm supper and a bed to poor, starving creatures, just because they are slaves, and have been abused and oppressed all their lives, poor things!” “But, Mary, just listen to me. Your feelings are all quite right, dear . . . but, then, dear, we mustn’t suffer our feelings to run away with our judgment; you must consider it’s not a matter of private feeling,—there are great public interests involved,—there is a state of public agitation rising, that we must put aside our private feelings.” “Now, John, I don’t know anything about politics, but I can read my Bible; and there I see that I must feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and comfort the desolate; and that Bible I mean to follow. …
... I looks like wine to heaven,” said the woman; “an’t thar where white folks is gwine? S’pose they’d have me thar? I’d rather go to torment, and get away from Mas’r and Missis. …
... Mas’r, if you was sick, or in trouble, or dying, and I could save ye, I’d give ye my heart’s blood; and, if taking every drop of blood in this poor old body would save your precious soul, I’d give ’em freely, as the Lord gave his for me. Oh, Mas’r! don’t bring this great sin on your soul! It will hurt you more than’t will me! Do the worst you can, my troubles’ll be over soon; but, if ye don’t repent, yours won’t never end! …
... Witness, eternal God! Oh, witness that, from this hour, I will do what one man can to drive out this curse of slavery from my land! …
... It was on his grave, my friends, that I resolved, before God, that I would never own another slave, while it is possible to free him; that nobody, through me, should ever run the risk of being parted from home and friends, and dying on a lonely plantation, as he died. So, when you rejoice in your freedom, think that you owe it to that good old soul, and pay it back in kindness to his wife and children. Think of your freedom, every time you see uncle tom’s cabin; and let it be a memorial to put you all in mind to follow in his steps, and be as honest and faithful and Christian as he was. …
References
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| Author | volume | Date Value | title | type | journal | titleUrl | doi | note | year | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1852 UncleTomsCabin | Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) | Uncle Tom's Cabin | 1852 |