The section opens in the Louisiana slave warehouse where Tom and several other St. Clare slaves are awaiting sales. Legree is an absolute capitalist tyrant, unchecked by the restraining cultural feminist ethic of white women there are none on the plantation or by rule of law. He has, in effect, turned the plantation into a slave labor camp where slaves are routinely worked to death. The ultimate destruction of the human personality occurs as a result of the heavy, alienated labor the slaves must perform at the Legree plantation. Political Stowe dramatizes numerous examples of the confrontation between men s tendency toward abstract rationalization and women s toward compassionate concern about individual cases.
Domestic ideology can be a political force.
The domestic world is Stowe s policical model for how society at large should operate. Stowe excoriates abstract legalistic discussions of slavery that ignore the reality of individuals suffering. Many white women act on their principles to subvert the evil system. There must be a moral revolution. She has tried to kill her master.