Uncle Tom's Cabin

'''''Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly''''' is an -slavery novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe was published on March 3rd, 1852. It greatly influenced many people's thoughts about African Americans and slavery in the United States. It also strengthened the  between the Northern and Southern United States. This led to the American Civil War. The book's  was so powerful that Lincoln said when he met Stowe at the beginning of the Civil War, "So this is the little lady who made this big war."

The main character of the novel is Uncle Tom, a patient black slave. The sentimental novel showed the effects of slavery. It also said that Christian love is stronger than slavery.

''Uncle Tom's Cabin'' was the most popular novel of the 19th century, and the third best-selling book of the century (the first one was the Bible). It helped abolitionism spread in the 1850s.

In these days, it has been praised as a very important help to anti-slavery. However, it has also been criticized for making stereotypes about black people.

## Inspiration and references 
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Harriet Beecher Stowe was born in Connecticut. She was an abolitionist. Stowe wrote her novel because of the 1850 passage of the second Fugitive Slave Act. This law  people who helped slaves run away. It also made the North stop and return the South's black runaways. Mrs. Edward Beecher wrote to Harriet ("Hattie"), "If I could use a pen as you can, I would write something that will make this whole nation feel what an accursed thing slavery is." At that time, Stowe was a wife with six children who sometimes wrote for magazines. She was also helped by the book *American Slavery As It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses* by Theodore Dwight Weld and the Grimké sisters. Stowe also said that she got lots of ideas for Uncle Tom's Cabin by talking to runaway slaves when she was living in Cincinnati, Ohio.

In her book ''A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin* (1853), Stowe wrote about the stories that inspired her when she was writing *Uncle Tom's Cabin''. However,  later  showed that Stowe did not actually read many of the stories inside the book until after her novel was published. In March 20, 1852, the finished book came out.

## Important characters 
### Uncle Tom 
Uncle Tom, the title character of the story, is a patient, noble, unselfish black slave. Stowe wanted him to be a “noble hero”: in the book, he  for what he believes in. Even though they do not want to, even his enemies admire him.

Recently, however, his name has also been used . People often think of "Uncle Tom" as an old black man trying to make his masters happy, as people have criticized his quiet  of slavery. However, others argue that this is not true. First of all, Uncle Tom is not really old - he is only eight years older than Mr. Shelby, which shows that he is probably around fifty.

### Eva 
Eva "Evangeline" St. Clare is St. Clare and Marie's angelic daughter. She enters the story when Tom saves her from drowning when he was going to be sold. Eva asks her father to buy Tom. She says, "I want to make him happy".
***Simon Legree** a slave-owner who cannot break Uncle Tom of his Christian faith. He has Uncle Tom whipped to death because of this. He sexually exploits his female slaves Cassy and Emmeline. His name is used as a synonym for a cruel and greedy man.

## Important themes 
### Slavery 
''Uncle Tom's Cabin'*s most important  is the evil of slavery. Every part in *Uncle Tom's Cabin*  the characters and the story. But most importantly, it always tries to show the reader that slavery is evil, un-Christian, and should not be allowed. One way Stowe showed the evil of slavery was how it forced families from each other.

### Motherhood 
Stowe thought mothers were the "model for all of American life". She also believed that only women could save the United States from slavery. Because of this, another very important theme of *Uncle Tom's Cabin'' is the moral power and sanctity of women. White women like Mrs. Bird, St. Clare’s mother, Legree’s mother, and Mrs. Shelby try to make their husbands help their slaves. Eva, who is the " Christian", says that blacks and whites are the same. Black women like Eliza are brave and pious. She escapes from slavery to save her son, and by the end of the novel, has made her whole family come together again. Some critics said that Stowe's female characters are often unrealistic. However, Stowe's novel made many people remember "the importance of women's influence" and helped the women's rights movement later.

### Christianity 
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."

## Style 
''Uncle Tom's Cabin'' is written in a sentimental and melodramatic style. This style was often used in the 19th century sentimental novel and  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  lots of people. In 1852, 300 baby girls in Boston were named Eva. 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.* When it was published, *Uncle Tom's Cabin*, people who  slavery were very angry and  against it. Some people even wrote books against it. Abolitionists praised it very much. As a best-seller, the novel greatly influenced later  literature.

### Contemporary and world reaction 
As soon as it was , *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.

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 " attack on slavery in the South than the novel itself had". After this, many writers have said that this novel helped make the North angry at slavery and at the Fugitive Slave Law.

*Uncle Tom's Cabin* also interested many people in England. The first London edition came out in May 1852. 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. 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*.

### Literary importance and criticism
*Uncle Tom's Cabin* was the first widely read political novel in the United States. It greatly influenced American literature and protest literature. Some later books that were greatly influenced by *Uncle Tom's Cabin* are *The Jungle* by Upton Sinclair and *Silent Spring* by Rachel Carson.

However, even though *Uncle Tom's Cabin'' was very important, many people thought the book was a mix of "children's fable and ". Many critics called the book "merely (only) a sentimental novel". Some have said that Stowe wrote in her novel what she thought was a solution to the problem that worried many people who did not like slavery. This problem was: was doing things that were not allowed justified if they did it to fight evil? Was it right to use violence to stop the violence of slavery? Was breaking laws that helped slavery right? Which of Stowe's characters should be followed: the patient Uncle Tom or the  George Harris? Stowe thought that God's will would be followed if each (every) person sincerely (truly) examined his  and acted on (followed) them. In this idea, the character of George Harris symbolizes the free . The complex character of Ophelia shows the Northerners who allowed slavery, even though they did not like it. Dinah is very different from Ophelia. She acts by . In the book, Ophelia changes. Like Ophelia, the Republican Party (three years later) declared that the North must change itself. It said that the North must stop slavery actively. For Stowe, families were related by blood, not by family-like relations between masters and slaves. Stowe also saw the nation as a bigger "family". So, the feelings of nationality came from sharing the same . Because of this, she supported the idea that freed slaves should live together in a colony.

The book has also been seen as trying to show that masculinity was important in stopping slavery. Abolitionists began to change the way they thought of violent men. They wanted men to help stop slavery without hurting their self-image or their position in society. Because of this, some abolitionists followed some of the  of women's suffrage, peace, and Christianity. They praised men for helping, working together, and having mercy. Other abolitionists were more : they wanted men to act more forcefully. All the men in Stowe's book show either patient men or traditional men. The book's use of common stereotypes about African Americans and related stage productions) helped make a great number of people accept such stereotypes. He said it was not well-written.

In the 1960s and '70s, the Black Power and Black Arts Movements strongly criticized the book. They said that the character of Uncle Tom was a part of "race betrayal". They said that Tom made slaves look worse than slave owners. Criticisms of the other stereotypes in the book also increased during this time.

However, people such as Henry Louis Gates Jr. have begun studying ''Uncle Tom's Cabin'' again. He says that the book is a " document in American race relations and a significant (important) moral and political exploration of the character of those relations."

## References 
## Other websites 
* 
* Uncle Tom's cabin: or Life among the lowly ; frontispiece by John Gilbert; ornamental title-page by Phiz; and 130 engravings on wood by Matthew Urlwin Sears, 1853 *(a searchable facsimile at the University of Georgia Libraries; DjVu & layered PDF  format)*
* Pictures and stories from Uncle Tom's cabin ; "The purpose of the editor of this little work, has been to adapt it for the juvenile family circle. The verses have accordingly been written by the authoress for the capacity of the youngest readers …" 1853 *(a searchable facsimile at the University of Georgia Libraries; DjVu & layered PDF  format)*
* 
* ''Uncle Tom's Cabin'', available at Internet Archive. Scanned, illustrated original editions.
* Uncle Tom's Cabin Historic Site 
* Free audiobook of Uncle Tom's Cabin at Librivox
* More on the lack of international copyright