Thesis and Theme in "Uncle Tom's Cabin"Author(s): Dorothy S. BrownReviewed work(s):Source: The English Journal, Vol. 58, No. 9 (Dec., 1969), pp. 1330-1334+1372Published by: National Council of Teachers of EnglishStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/811916 .Accessed: 20/10/2012 09:21

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Thesis and Theme in Uncle Tom's Cabin

Dorothy S. Brown

Department of English Berea College Berea, Kentucky

T HE thesis of Harriet Beecher Stowe's famous novel is explicit: slavery is al- ways evil. Mrs. Stowe made it clear that her quarrel was not merely with the evils resulting from slavery, but with the evil in the institution itself. That a novel writ- ten for propaganda purposes should be widely read a hundred years after the removal of that evil is an anomaly, but one for which there is, in Uncle Tom's Cabin, an explanation. While the novel's thesis was the evil of slavery, its theme was something entirely separate: the power of love.

Because the book's thesis is so ob- vious and its moral was so effectively presented, it was read by early critics more often as a social document than as literature, and most of what was written about it dealt with its authenticity. Sev- ern Duvall observes that early reviewers of the book seemed to indulge in con- tinued debate over the Missouri Com- promise and other political and moral issues, and to ignore the novel's literary qualities.'

Critics and biographers of the last two decades have become aware of Un- cle Tom's Cabin as something more than social history. Edmund Wilson has de- scribed it as "a much more impressive work than one has ever been allowed to suspect.'"2 C. H. Foster observes that it "possesses most of the large virtues, in- accessible to mere talent, and a few of the graces accessible to any painstaking and intelligent craftsman."3 William R. Taylor is aware that "The extraordinary and unexampled appeal of the novel throughout the Western world... sug- gests its capacity to touch upon and illuminate wide themes."4 Finally, Ken- neth S. Lynn, in his introduction to the 1962 edition, mentions specifically, if briefly, the "religion of love" which pervades the book.5

A reading of Uncle Tom's Cabin with the theme of love in mind is a rewarding experience, but before tracing this theme

1"Uncle Tom's Cabin: The Sinister Side of the Patriarchy," New England Quarterly, 36 (1963). Reprinted in Seymour L. Gross and John Edward Hardy, eds. Images of the Negro in American Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966).

2Patriotic Gore (New York: Oxford Univer- sity Press, 1962), p. 5.

3The Rungless Ladder: Harriet Beecher Stowe and New England Puritanism (Durham: Duke University Press, 1954), p. 59.

4 Cavalier and Yankee (New York: G. Brazil- ler, 1961), pp. 311-312.

5 Uncle Tom's Cabin (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1962), pp. xix-xxiv.

1330

THESIS AND THEME IN UNCLE TOM'S CABIN 1331

it is necessary to dispose of the thesis. After recognizing the obvious and ex- plicit, it will be easier to isolate the subtle and implicit.

64T HE object of these sketches," Mrs. Stowe declares in her preface, "is to awaken sympathy and feeling for the African race, as they exist among us; to show their wrongs and sorrows, under a system so necessarily cruel and unjust as to defeat and do away [sic] the good effects of all that can be attempted for them, by their best friends, under it."6 Through the words and actions of the characters in the novel, many points of view concerning slavery are presented: e.g., the hardened attitude of the slave trader; the tolerant desperation (or des- perate tolerance) of Augustine St. Clare; the open opposition of the Quakers and of St. Clare's New England cousin, Miss Ophelia. Mrs. Stowe's thesis, that even at its best slavery is evil, is most clearly expressed by Mrs. Shelby: "I was a fool to think I could make anything good out of such a deadly evil. It is a sin to hold a slave under laws like ours,-I always felt it was... I thought, by kind- ness, and care, and instruction, I could make the condition of mine better than freedom-fool that I was!" (page 50; Chapter V).

When Mrs. Shelby makes this speech, her husband is in such serious financial difficulty that he finds it necessary to sell Uncle Tom, and also Eliza's little boy. This sale is the first mentioned of several instances in the novel where a slave with a kind master is endangered by the system. Later in the book St. Clare dies unexpectedly, leaving his sel- fish wife, Marie, to dispose of the slaves as she pleases. Still later we learn that Cassy, brought up in refinement and ed-

ucated in a convent, had been made vul- nerable first by her father's death, then by her next owner's infidelity, and final- ly by the gambling debts incurred by the latter to his cousin, who treated Cassy with unmitigated cruelty.

Slavery itself was bad enough, and Mrs. Stowe had a great deal to say on the suffering that resulted from that pe- culiar institution. But the Fugitive Slave Act passed in 1850 made her doubly indignant. This mandate for people in the free states to act in violation of the con- science of a Christian moved Mrs. Stowe to bitter irony. "The catching business," she wrote, "... is rising to the dignity of a lawful and patriotic profession. If all the broad land between the Missis- sippi and the Pacific becomes one great market for bodies and souls, and human property retains the locomotive tenden- cies of this nineteenth century, the trader and catcher may yet be among our aris- tocracy" (p. 92; Chapter VIII).

While it may be possible for good men to pass such laws, it is not, accord- ing to Mrs. Stowe, possible for a true Christian either to enforce or to obey them. So Senator Bird of Ohio, who has voted in favor of this infamous slave law, helps Eliza, a fugitive slave, to es- cape.

Such touches of irony do much to counterbalance the novel's excess of sentimentality, in part caused, if not ex- cused, by the public taste of the era. Its other major fault is its sometimes slovenly style, perhaps the result of the haste in which it was written for serial- ization. In spite of its slovenliness and sentimentality, however, the book emerges as a well-constructed piece of literary architecture embodying a theme of more universal and timeless appeal than its localized and outdated thesis: the theme of the power of love. Love of family is shown in the character of George Harris, who with Eliza and their son escapes to freedom. Tom's charac- ter, however, contains not only love of

6Uncle Tomn's Cabin (New York: Dolphin Books, 1960), p. 6. All subsequent references will be to this edition. Chapter numbers are given also, to facilitate reference by readers using other editions.

1332 ENGLISH JOURNAL

family, but also love of mankind and love of God.

EDMUND Wilson, in Patriotic Gore, has observed that the novel traces the wanderings of George and Eliza, and those of Uncle Tom, in a way which reveals the traits of a whole society. The result is a rhythmic pattern, a kind of picaresque in counterpoint, with the more important passage moving with Uncle Tom, and a somewhat more re- stricted passage carrying the George- Eliza motif.

The subplot of George and Eliza is a saga of young rebels (with a cause) es- caping northward to freedom while the mature southern martyr, the Christ- figure, moves farther south to a final sacrifice. The movement itself is not con- sistently southward, for the Legree plan- tation was a few miles north of New Orleans and Lake Pontchartrain, the two St. Clare estates. But somehow the read- er has a feeling of Tom's downward movement, caused perhaps by the ter- rain of Legree's place (the swamp, the desolation, the wildness) and by its re- moteness.

It is Tom's sacrifices with which the author is primarily concerned. George Harris, the brave young mulatto, can escape; but those who must remain can be freed only by sacrifice. Tom's sacri- fices result in Christian regeneration for both white and black, and eventually in freedom for the Shelby slaves.

These sacrifices are made in three lo- cales: the contented, domestic atmos- phere of the Shelby household; the dis- organized St. Clare estate, where slaves are treated indulgently by their master but contemptuously and cruelly by their mistress; and the Legree plantation, which is seemingly abandoned by God himself. The slaves in these three places are clearly affected by the treatment they receive. Those in the Shelby house- hold take pride in their family; the St. Clare slaves are spoiled, often selfish,

frequently disorganized in their work; the slaves on the Legree plantation have become brutes. Through these three dif- ferent environments moves Tom, un- spoiled by the opulence of the St. Clares and unchanged by the brutality of Le- gree, steadfast in his Christian ideal of love: love of family, love of mankind, and love of God. It is this idea of the power of love which is the central theme of Uncle Tom's Cabin. In the Shelby household the motivating force is love of family. In the St. Clare household, it is love of mankind. At the Legree plan- tation, where Tom becomes a kind of missionary, it is love of God.

The Shelby family is governed by love, tact, and pride of kinship. Before he is forced to sell Tom, Mr. Shelby has always treated him with consideration and respect. Mrs. Shelby has strong feel- ings of responsibility toward Eliza and her son, as well as a genuine affection for them. Young "Mas'r George" treats Tom and Chloe with both respect and affection. In the tranquil domestic scene depicted in the fourth chapter, George is not just a visitor at Tom's cabin; he is an integral part of the family.

The slaves in the Shelby household see themselves not as property, but as "folks." Aunt Chloe reflects pride in her owners when she tells young George:

"Dem Lincons an't much count no way! ... I mean set along side our folks. They's 'spectable folks enough in a kinder plain way; but, as to gettin' up anything in style, they don't begin to have a notion on 't. Set Mas'r Lincon, now, alongside Mas'r Shelby! Good Lor! and Missis Lincon,-can she kind- er sweep it into a room like my missis,- so kinder splendid, yer know! 0, go way! don't tell me nothin' of dem Lincons!" (p. 38; Chapter IV).

This is followed by her admission that the Lincons' Jinny is a "far" cook, but compared to her own pies-that is, Chloe's-Jinny's "wan't no 'count 't all."

Mrs. Shelby has taught her slaves the

THESIS AND THEME IN UNCLE TOM'S CABIN 1333

duties and obligations of Christian mar- riage, and even arranged and directed Eliza's wedding to George Harris, who is owned by a neighbor.

Even the comic Sam and Andy feel themselves a part of the household, not just property. Sam, a kind of nineteenth- century organization man, hopes to please the right person and thereby be advanced in responsibility and prestige. He is willing enough to catch Eliza, if this is what his master wishes, until he learns from Andy that Mrs. Shelby wants Eliza to escape, and then he en- thusiastically foils Haley's pursuit. Like Sambo and Quimbo, he is motivated by the desire for favor and position: he tries to please "Missis" so that he can be elevated to Tom's place. But his actions are governed by the kindness of Mrs. Shelby, while Sambo's and Quimbo's are governed by the evil of Legree.

TOM'S character is formed by the domestic tranquillity which sur- rounds him. Though his piety may tire the modern reader, he is not a passive, submissive character. He is a pillar of strength, not a symbol of weakness or submission. He does refuse to flee with Eliza, just as later in the book he tells St. Clare that he will not leave "as long as Mas'r needs me," and still later he rejects escape with Cassy because he feels that he must stay and continue his missionary work. Each refusal is a sacrifice; two of these sacrifices are to save members of his own race. He submits to being bought by Haley from Mr. Shelby not because he is afraid, or because of loyalty to his owner, but because he is so valuable that without his sale all the others, including his wife and children, will have to be sold. This is his first sacrifice, made to preserve the unity of the Shelby house- hold and to maintain the welfare of his fellow slaves.

Mr. and Mrs. St. Clare are not, like the Shelbys, happily married. Although St. Clare is kind and generous, his chari-

table acts are scattered and impulsive. Marie is cruel, selfish, domineering, and a poor housekeeper. Eva is a saint too good for this world, though while here she does what she can, and even she lacks a sense of order, as Miss Ophelia makes clear when we first meet her on the boat and she is helping Eva get her things together to disembark. "What did you ever do, child, when you were coming on with only your papa. I should have thought you'd a lost everything you had," protests the orderly Miss Ophelia. "Well, aunty," Eva replies, "I did lose a great many; and then, when we stopped anywhere, papa would buy some more of whatever it was" (p. 192; Chapter XV).

The disorder of the St. Clare house- hold is symbolically illustrated in the description of Aunt Dinah's kitchen, which is the despair of Ophelia, who found in one drawer

".. . a nutmeg-

grater and two or three nutmegs, a Methodist hymn-book, a couple of soiled Madras handkerchiefs, some yarn and knitting-work, a paper of tobacco and a pipe, a few crackers, one or two gilded china-saucers with some pomade in them, one or two thin old shoes, a piece of flannel carefully pinned up, enclosing some small white onions, several damask table-napkins, some coarse crash towels, some twine and darning-needles, and several broken papers, from which sun- dry sweet herbs were sifting into the drawer" (pp. 244-245; Chapter XVIII). But even in this chaotic kitchen, Dinah manages to turn out delicious meals, just as the St. Clare home, badly managed as it is, and cursed with the institution of slavery, can produce the saintly, if dis- orderly, Eva.

THE confusion and disorder of the St. Clares represents the South and its

problems. When Miss Ophelia, who has learned of the cruel treatment of a slave belonging to a neighbor family, con- fronts her cousin with the issue he replies,

1334 ENGLISH JOURNAL

"If we are to be prying and spying into all the dismals of life, we should have no heart to anything. 'Tis like looking too close into the details of Dinah's kitchen" (p. 258; Chapter XIX).

The lesser members of the St. Clare household are as frivolous as the head cook is disorganized. Adolph, spoiled by his master, is addicted to fancy clothes and expensive cologne, both of which he appropriates from St. Clare's supply. Jane and Rosa are more interested in their earrings, their balls, and their flirta- tious banter with Adolph than in either their work or their souls.

Into this disorderly but amiable group St. Clare, who buys slaves, apparently, out of a whimsical desire to help them and to entertain himself, brings Topsy as a challenge for his New England cousin. Topsy, who has been abused all her life, does not respond to the good intentions and kindly treatment of Ophelia, but she does respond to Eva's love, a power greater than justice, or duty, or any of "Miss Feely's" New England virtues.

The power of Eva's love is shown also when her cousin Henrique mistreats his slave Dodo, then throws him a coin. Eva wins Dodo's gratitude by kind words and a tender smile. Henrique's mistreatment of his mulatto slave is another example of the effect of environment on behavior. Augustine St. Clare's brother Alfred, Henrique's father, is a proud aristocrat, and the boy is growing up with the same attitude as his father. "That's the way papa manages," Henrique explains to the distressed Eva.

Eva's death, like Tom's, is a kind of sacrifice, a martyrdom which results in the unfulfilled promise of her father to free Tom and in the belated ability of Ophelia to bestow on Topsy the love an affection which she needs to be less "wicked."

Unlike Eva's, Tom's sacrifice for St. Clare's benefit is not death but continued bondage, a death-in-life. At St. Clare's death, Tom is concerned only with his

master's soul. Neither Tom nor his mas- ter thinks of what seems, to the reader today, more important: the completion of Tom's manumission papers. Because of St. Clare's final sin of omission, Tom is again sold, this time to a cruel master.

SIMON Legree, Tom's next owner,

represents cruelty and oppression even to people who have never read the novel. Only Cassy has any power at all over him, and she controls him by playing on his superstitious nature.

The Legree plantation is Tom's Geth- semane. He is tempted, but he resists the temptation and remains steadfast. He is here surrounded by slaves who have been reduced to a state of brutality by their master. At the Legree plantation all sem- blance of family life has disappeared, as has all love for mankind and all knowl- edge of God. Sambo and Quimbo, who sadistically beat their fellow slaves, re- place the cheerful and obliging Sam and Andy of the Shelby home and the fastid- ious Adolph of the St. Clares. Cassy, who has killed her last child to prevent its suffering, and who but for Tom's in- fluence would have killed Legree, re- places the tender Eliza of the Shelby household and the frivolous Jane and Rosa of the St. Clares'. The place has no kitchen and no cook: each slave grinds and cooks his own meal. The nameless, faceless creatures who live there are able to think only of their own individual sur- vival, and at the same time to hope for death. They cannot even pray.

In the midst of this degredation Tom is whipped to death by Legree. The re- wards (for others) of his death are great- er than those of Eva's. Sambo and Quim- bo become humanized again, and beg his forgiveness; Cassy and Emmeline es- cape; and young George Shelby, who melodramatically appears moments be- fore Tom dies, resolves to free all his slaves. He keeps this resolution.

Tom's death is triumphant as was (Continued on page 1372)

1372 ENGLISH JOURNAL

dreary repetitiveness of the traditional grammar texts, English has taken a different turn. Those who are out-of-touch with the interesting and provocative changes of these ten years are truly disadvantaged. In the '60s the Institutes have brought us the "new English" to take its place with modern math and new science: the new criticism, the old rhetoric, and "modern" grammar. From these have come Project English studies and innovations and so many bags of teaching tricks that no one is able to live long with old college notes and test files. We have no more than absorbed the ideas of the Dartmouth Seminar before we are confronted with the interesting comparisons of American English education with comparable British programs. And now we discover that it is not enough to teach English, but we must think about establishing behavioral objectives for judging our performance.

The sixties are about at an end. They have been filled with paradoxes and frustra- tions; they have offered new voices, new challenges, and a new organization for old ideas. They seem to foreshadow the future, and at the same time they have provided the bonfires on which we burned some of the dead verbiage of English teaching. We can look to see what kind of phoenix may be rising from these ashes.

The phoenix may be the English teacher or department chairman ready to assert himself and demand his rightful spot in the sun. It could be, too, that the phoenix will be nothing more than a plucked bird, bereft of bright plumage, singing a melodious dirge as he sets fire to his nest of spices and prepares to be reborn as the Humanities. But, that I do not believe.

It is only the "dead" language which does not change. English-alive and vociferous -has a dynamic future as an educational force in our schools.

Thesis and Theme in Uncle Tom's Cabin

(Continued from page 1334)

his life. It is hard to forgive him for not killing Legree, which he could easily have done, leading the slaves out of bondage and returning to his wife and children. But, within the frame of refer- ence of the novel, the soul is more im- portant than the man, the eternal life more important than the temporal. Tom, being a saint, could not act otherwise. Throughout the novel Tom never changes, never fluctuates, never loses his faith or his courage. If we see him as a Christ-figure, a symbol of love, as he was obviously intended to be, this super- natural steadfastness is convincing.

Lookin' In by Floyd L. Bergman

Every time they read Sir Walter Raleigh they borrow it.

Article Contentsp. 1330p. 1331p. 1332p. 1333p. 1334p. 1372

Issue Table of ContentsThe English Journal, Vol. 58, No. 9 (Dec., 1969), pp. 1289-1420Volume Information [pp. 1406 - 1419]Front Matter [pp. 1289 - 1356]Bi-Dialectalism: The Linguistics of White Supremacy [pp. 1307 - 1329]"African Genesis" and "Lord of the Flies": Two Studies of the Beastie Within [pp. 1316 - 1337]"A Separate Peace": Meaning and Myth [pp. 1322 - 1329]Thesis and Theme in "Uncle Tom's Cabin" [pp. 1330 - 1372]All Greek? [pp. 1335 - 1337]"O. K."--Vachel Lindsay [pp. 1338 - 1340]Teaching Semantics in High School [pp. 1341 - 1346]Toward a New English [pp. 1347 - 1352]Teaching Reading Skills in the Junior High School [pp. 1357 - 1361]Teachers Talk Too Much! [pp. 1362 - 1365]Readers, Attention: Correction: What's Black and White and Read All Over? [p. 1365]Riposte[Letter from Patricia Borgstrom] [pp. 1366 - 1369][Letter from Eugene H. Smith] [p. 1369]

NCTE Counciletter: The Disadvantaged [pp. 1370 - 1372]This World of English [pp. 1373 - 1377]Book Marksuntitled [p. 1378]untitled [pp. 1378 - 1379]untitled [p. 1379]untitled [pp. 1379 - 1380]untitled [p. 1380]untitled [pp. 1380 - 1381]untitled [p. 1381]untitled [pp. 1381 - 1390]

The Scene [pp. 1382 - 1390]Professional Publicationsuntitled [pp. 1391 - 1392]untitled [p. 1393]untitled [pp. 1393 - 1394]untitled [pp. 1394 - 1395]

NCTE/ERIC Report: Independent Study Programs [pp. 1396 - 1405]Teaching Materialsuntitled [pp. 1401 - 1402]untitled [pp. 1402 - 1403]untitled [pp. 1403 - 1404]untitled [pp. 1404 - 1405]untitled [p. 1405]

Back Matter [pp. 1420 - 1420]