Stowe's puritanical religious beliefs are also one of the biggest themes in the novel. She explores what Christianity is like. She believed that the most important thing in Christianity was love for everyone. She also believed that Christian theology shows that slavery is wrong. This theme can be seen when Tom urges St. Clare to "look away to Jesus" after St. Clare's daughter Eva dies. After Tom dies, George Shelby says, "What a thing it is to be a Christian." Because Christian themes are so important, and because Stowe often directly spoke in the novel about religion and faith, the novel is written in the "form of a sermon."
"Uncle Tom's Cabin" is written in a sentimental and melodramatic style. This style was often used in the 19th century sentimental novel and domestic fiction (also called women's fiction). These genres were the most popular novels of Stowe's time. It usually had female characters and a style that made readers feel sympathy and emotion for them. Stowe's novel is different from other sentimental novels because she writes about a large theme like slavery. It is also different because she has a man (Uncle Tom) as the main character. However, she still tried to make her readers have strong feelings when they read "Uncle Tom's Cabin", like making them cry when Eva died. This kind of writing made readers react powerfully. For instance, Georgiana May, a friend of Stowe's, wrote a letter to the writer. In the letter, she said that "I was up (awake) last night long after one o'clock, reading and finishing "Uncle Tom's Cabin". I could not leave it any more than I could have left a dying child." Another reader said that she thought about the book all the time and even thought about changing her daughter's name to Eva. The death of Eva affected lots of people. In 1852, 300 baby girls in Boston were named Eva.
Even though many readers were very moved, literary critics did not like the style in "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and other sentimental novels. They said these books were written by women and had "women's sloppy (messy) emotions." One literary critic said that if the novel not been about slavery, "it would be just another sentimental novel". Another said the book was a "piece of hack (messy) work." In "The Literary History of the United States", George F. Whicher called "Uncle Tom's Cabin" "Sunday-school fiction".
However, in 1985 Jane Tompkins wrote differently about "Uncle Tom's Cabin" in her book "In Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work of American Fiction." Tompkins praised "Uncle Tom's Cabin"'s style. She said that sentimental novels showed how women's emotions changed the world in a good way. She also said that the popular domestic novels written in the 19th century, like "Uncle Tom's Cabin", were intelligently written. She also said that "Uncle Tom's Cabin" shows a "critique of American society far more devastating (powerful) than any ... by better-known critics such as Hawthorne and Melville."
"Uncle Tom's Cabin" has had a very great influence. There are not many novels in history that changed society so powerfully. When it was published, "Uncle Tom's Cabin", people who defended slavery were very angry and protested against it. Some people even wrote books against it. Abolitionists praised it very much. As a best-seller, the novel greatly influenced later protest literature.
As soon as it was published, "Uncle Tom's Cabin" made people in the American South very angry. The novel was also greatly criticized by people who supported slavery.
A famous novelist from the South, William Gilmore Simms, said that the book was not true. Others called the novel criminal and said it was full of lies. A person who sold books in Mobile, Alabama had to leave town for selling the novel. Stowe received threatening letters. She even received a package with a slave's cut ear once. Many Southern writers, like Simms, soon began writing their own books about slavery.
Some critics said that Stowe had never actually went to a Southern plantation and she did not know much about Southern life. They said that because of this, she made wrong descriptions about the South. However, Stowe always said she made the characters of her book by stories she was told by slaves that ran away to Cincinnati, Ohio, where she lived. It is reported: "She observed firsthand (herself) several incidents (happenings) which ... [inspired] her to write [the] famous anti-slavery novel. Scenes she observed (saw) on the Ohio River, including seeing a husband and wife being sold apart, as well as newspaper and magazine accounts and interviews, contributed material to the ... plot."
In 1853, Stowe published "A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin". This was to show the people who had criticized the novel's description of slavery that it was true. In the book, Stowe writes about the important characters in "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and about people in real life who were like them. Through this book, she writes a more "aggressive attack on slavery in the South than the novel itself had". Like the novel, "A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin" was also a best-seller. However, many of the works in "A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin" was read by Stowe after she published her novel.
Even though there were such criticisms, the novel was still very popular. Stowe's son says that when Abraham Lincoln met her in 1862 Lincoln said, "So this is the little lady who started this great war." Historians are not sure if Lincoln really said this or not. In a letter that Stowe wrote to her husband a few hours after meeting with Lincoln, she does not say anything about this sentence. After this, many writers have said that this novel helped make the North angry at slavery and at the Fugitive Slave Law. It greatly helped the abolitionist movement. Union general and politician James Baird Weaver said that the book made him help in the abolitionist movement.
"Uncle Tom's Cabin" also interested many people in England. The first London edition came out in May 1852. It sold 200,000 copies. Some of this interest was because at that time the British people did not like the United States. A writer said, "The evil passions which 'Uncle Tom' gratified in England were not hatred or vengeance [of slavery], but national jealousy and national vanity. We have long been smarting (hurting) under the conceit of America – we are tired of hearing her boast that she is the freest and the most enlightened country that the world has ever seen. Our clergy hate her voluntary system – our Tories hate her democrats – our Whigs hate her ... All parties hailed Mrs. Stowe as a revolter from the enemy." Charles Francis Adams, the American minister to Britain during the war, said later that, ""Uncle Tom's Cabin"; or "Life among the Lowly", published in 1852, influenced the world more quickly, powerfully, and dramatically than any other book ever printed."
"Uncle Tom’s Cabin" was published in Russia at the end of 1857 and was soon recognized as a classic of world literature. Many people saw a very strong link between the world of "Uncle Tom’s Cabin" and the serfdom that still existed in Russia in 1850s. In his letter to an abolitionist Maria Weston Chapman, Nikolay Turgenev wrote, “Many of the scenes described in the book seem like an exact depiction of equally frightful scenes in Russia.” "Uncle Tom's Cabin" served as an educational tool for Russian and Russo-Soviet elite in the post emancipation period, and it also became part of Soviet children literature.
The book has been translated into almost every language. For example, it was translated into Chinese. Its translator Lin Shu made this the first Chinese translation of an American novel. It was also translated into Amharic. Its 1930 translation was made to help Ethiopia end the suffering of blacks in that nation. The book was read by so many people that Sigmund Freud believed that some of his patients had been influenced by reading about the whipping of slaves in "Uncle Tom's Cabin".