Harriet Beecher Stowe: Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Book Review Example

That Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin is concentrated on the theme of slavery, hardly anyone can deny. Stowe’s book is one of the few, written by a white author, and showing the issue of slavery in its true light. The issue of slavery in Stowe’s novel is integrally linked to discrimination. Moreover, slavery stands as the source of the major vice and hypocrisy. The most interesting aspect of slavery in Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin is in how slavery works in relatively peaceful relationships between slaves and masters, because even when both maintain seemingly positive and tolerant relationships, slavery remains a matter of human suffering and moral degradation.

Really, everything looks positive and peaceful in the relationships between Shelby’s family and their slaves. Beginning with the very first chapter of the book, Shelby look like a family totally objective and open in their judgments about slaves. “Some folks don’t believe there is pious niggers Shelby, but I do” (Stowe 14). However, through the prism of these positive relationships, the vicious nature of slavery becomes even more evident. “The child came up, and the master patted the curly head, and chucked him under the chin. […] Now, Jim, walk like old Uncle Cudjoe, when he has the rheumatism” (Stowe 16). The major feature and the most astonishing literary achievement of Stowe is in that at the beginning of her book, she intentionally avoids depicting the cruelty and violence, with which slavery in literature is usually associated. This literary avoidance is aimed to show slavery as morally inappropriate and hypocritical, regardless of what tools and approaches masters use to rule their slaves.

However, not everything is as perfect as readers may believe. In the 18^th Chapter, in the conversation between Prue and Tom, the former says: “I looks like gwine to heaven, 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” (Stowe 284). In this context, Stowe does not simply show slavery as violent, but she also confirms the issue and the status of slavery as something inescapable. More often than not, slavery changes its face, and becomes almost menacing. “Mas’r, if you was sick, or in trouble, or dying, and I could save ye, I’d give ye my heart’s blood; […] but if ye don’t repent, yours won’t never end!” (Stowe 529). When Tom pleads Legree not to punish him for his silence about Cassy, he also shows the true nature of slavery, which does not leave any chance for an escape. The issue of slavery in Stowe’s book has many facets, but one thing is obvious: it distorts the realistic picture of human relationships and undermines the relevance of natural human rights, among which equality and freedom are the most important.

Works Cited

Stowe, H.B. Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Ignatius Press, 2009.