14B. Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), Chs. 12 and 26

Scene from a 1901 stage production of "Uncle Tom's Cabin":  "Death of Little Eva"

Ideology:  Human Agency

1. [Eva's] views on humanity were not tainted by the racist world around her. . . .She serves to show the reader that not all people are products of the world around them. Eva grew up in a racist world, surrounded by slaves that her father owned. Despite this constant pressure to be a master, she remained an angelic child that saw all people equally

Ideology: Who has Power?

2. Eva’s death is interesting as it resembles the death of Jesus and the future death of Uncle Tom. Eva shares many similarities with Jesus such as befriending her father’s slaves. Before her death Eva asks that they gather around her as “dear friends” and expresses her love for them saying, “I love you. I love you all.” Eva even cuts off strands of her “handsome” curls and gives them away so that they can look at it to remember her. Her death also resembles Uncle Tom’s as both of them mention Heaven and God before they pass. Eva declares “O! love, -joy, -peace!” and Uncle Tom says “Who, -who, -who shall separate us from the love of Christ?”

3. Stowe is very clearly blaming politicians for the pervasiveness of slavery. She believes complacent politicians let this system proliferate and “corrupt” the country, including slaveowners. The novel asks the reader “Who is most to blame? The enlighted, cultivated, intelligent man, who supports the system of which the trader is the inevitable result, or the poor trader himself? You make the public statement that calls for his trade, that debauches and depraves him, till he feels no shame in it; and in what are you better than he?”

Aesthetics: Sarcasm

4. I was confused by Mr. Haley when he threw Tom in jail for doing no wrong when he was headed to the auction. Mr. Haley had no reason to place Tom in the jail during the event, yet he saw it fit. I am not sure why I am surprised by this action when enslaved people were punished for little to no reason in many circumstances. Being thrown in jail “by no means produced an agreeable impression on” Tom and rightfully so.

5. I was even confused by something [Stowe] wrote in the narrative. After revealing that John’s wife did not know he was sold, she wrote his tears “came as naturally as if he had been a white man.”

6. Don't miss the many examples of sarcasm throughout this chapter:

• ". . . Tom, we must confess it, was rather proud of his honesty, poor fellow,--not having very much to be proud of; --if he had belonged to some of the higher walks of society, he, perhaps, would never have been reduced to such straits."
• On La Belle Riviere, "All was full of life, buoyant and rejoicing, all but Haley's gang, who were stored, with the other freight, on the lower deck, and who somehow did not seem to appreciate their various privileges."
• "The trader had arrived at that stage of Christian and political perfection which has been recommended by some preachers and politicians of the north, lately, in which he had completely overcome every humane weakness and prejudice. His heart was exactly where yours, sir, and mine could be brought, with proper effort and cultivation."
• "Tom had watched the whole transaction from first to last, and had a perfect understanding of its results. To him, it looked like something unutterably horrible and cruel, because, poor, ignorant black soul! he had not learned to generalize, and to take enlarged views . . . Tom, as we see, being a poor ignorant fellow, whose reading had been confined entirely to the New Testament, could not comfort and solace himself with [more sophisticated views of slavery]."

Ideology: The Slaver's Mind

7. Stowe’s writing does an excellent job capturing the thoughts of not only the slaves, but of the slavers and sympathizers as well. Though her depiction of some characters could be described as stereotypical and perhaps not true to how all people of the time were, they are in a general sense, accurate. 

8. ...what struck me the most was the characterization of slaveowners and how the mental gymnastics they performed to justify their deeds; for example, Mr. Haley compares himself to other slaveowners, he criticizes their cruel treatment of slaves, chaining them and removing them of their humanity. Interestingly, he praises himself for having “left Tom the use of his hands, as long as he behaved well.”

9. Mr. Haley in Uncle Tom’s Cabin . . . reminds me of Mr. [Flint] from Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl when he talks about “how humane he was” and “how ungrateful human nature was” since he didn’t bind his slaves as much as other owners did. He seems to think his slaves should be grateful to him for the little he does to make them seemingly more comfortable, yet he won’t do the humane thing of buying a mother along with her son to allow them to stay together. Even after she begs him to buy her as well he refuses and instead another slave owner who “seemed not destitute of compassion, bought her.”

Aesthetics: The Power of Imagination

10. The son being separated from his mother was devastating, “"Buy me too, Mas'r, for de dear Lord’s sake! —buy me, —I shall die if you don't”! I cannot even begin to imagine being separated from one of my children.

Ideology: The Limitations of Textual Power

11. In chapter 12 “Select Incidents of Lawful Trade” of [Uncle Tom’s Cabin], a group of white people begin debating the morality of slavery as they see slaves being transported onto a steam boat. They fall unto biblical scriptures with one man justifying slavery by reporting that the bible states “Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servant he shall be,” in which Canaan is being presumed an African, and thus all of his descendants, being the entirety of the African race, are deserving of servitude as well. The debate quells, as no one dares to question biblical verse; but then, another man races in quoting “All things whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even unto them” from the bible as well, but is effectively ignored as the steamboat arrives and the stampeding trail of lawful commerce envelopes him and his argument. The scene displays the one-sidedness in the southern argument of slavery, as people blissfully ignore a reasonable counter argument for the one that requires the least amount of effort to pursue, or in Haley’s case, the one that enables the trade he chose “just to make a living.”