Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin in reaction to her own epiphany concerning the immorality of slavery, which accompanied the passing of the Fugitive Slave Law. Indeed, she developed a novel worthy of protest literature. With each character and scene depicted throughout the book,...
In Martin Scorsese’s 2002 film Gangs of New York, the two main characters—Amsterdam Vallon (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) and Bill “the Butcher” Cutting (played by Daniel Day-Lewis)—attend a ‘Tom’ show (a stage adaptation of Uncle Tom’s Cabin) in New York City. In this scene, which...
Uncle Tom’s Cabin is powerful not only because of its moving plot, but also because of several literary tools used by Harriet Beecher Stowe to accentuate the evils of slavery. In the book, Stowe contrasts a detached and sarcastic tone with personal side-notes to the...
In considering how Stowe represents gender, it must be foregrounded that men and women inhabited different sectors within nineteenth century American society. Males belonged almost exclusively to a public world of work, whilst females were restricted to a private sphere within the home. Different characteristics...
Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, written during the period of boiling tumult that was to erupt into the Civil War, has struck it’s readers in more ways than one. Wildly popular, Uncle Tom’s Cabin was made into theatrical pieces and children’s books. Advertisers, using...
March 20th, 1852 was an important day for the United States of America. Harriet Beecher Stowe finally published her much debated story, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, on this exact date. Recent stringent changes in fugitive slave laws had inspired the creation of this anti-slavery novel. The...
“Is this the little lady who started the great war?” said Abraham Lincoln during his first meeting with Harriet Beecher Stowe. The reaction of one of America’s most celebrated president is a clear demonstration of the effectiveness of Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Harriet Beecher Stowe...
Jane Tompkins writes on how nineteenth century domestic novels characterise ‘a monumental effort to reorganize culture from the woman’s point of view…in certain cases, it offers a critique of American society far more devastating than any delivered by better-known critics such as Hawthorne and Melville’...
The cultural repercussions of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, are undeniable. Uncle Tom’s Cabin became one of the most widely read and profoundly penetrating books of the nineteenth century. Richard Yarborough remarked that, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin was the epicenter of a massive cultural...
‘During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens . . . [I] at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the...
While lying on her death bed, in Chapter 26 of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, little Eva says to the servants in her house who have gathered around her, “You must remember that each one of you can become angels” (418). In this chapter...
In the 19th century novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe portrays Uncle Tom, a black slave, as an heroic figure. Written shortly before the American Civil War, the novel attempts to change negative moral attitudes towards blacks. However, in order to accomplish this, Stowe...
Introduction Uncle Tom’s Cabin, penned by Harriet Beecher Stowe, holds a notable position in American literature as a groundbreaking work that played a pivotal role in shaping public opinion on slavery in the mid-19th century. This essay aims to demonstrate the enduring importance of Uncle...
