American Romanticism
Bruce Harvey

UNCLE TOM'S CABIN REVIEW

STOWE BIOGRAPHY:

--born 1811, died a few years before the end of the century

--her father was a renowned minister, so was her brother

--grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio

--slave territory on other side of Ohio river, in Kentucky

--her family, sympathetic to anti-slavery movement, knew about operations of underground railroad and helped hide escaped slaves upon occasion

--but she was not militantly involved; abolitionists still considered part of radical fringe of society

--bore 5 children in 7 years, so definitely knows about mothering and separation (one child died--remember letter in external website)

--wrote little literary pieces to supplement husband's meager income

--1850 great public furor over the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law, which meant runaways slaves had to be returned to their owners

--many formers slaves in Boston and other New England locations fled to Canada

--Stowe decides to write a polemical novel indicting the whole system of slavery

--she considered capitalist North, which condoned slavery, just as responsible

--said she was inspired by a vision, in church, of a saintly black man being mercilessly flogged and praying for his torturers as he died

--becomes the climax of UTC

--UTC published initially in an anti-slavery magazine serially

--in 40 weekly installments and then immediately in its entirety in 1852, a decade before the Civil War begins

--next to the Bible, probably the biggest best-seller of the 19^th century

--she became a celebrity and controversial

--really did help galvanize abolitionist movement and garner support for it

--according to legend, when Lincoln met her he said "so this is the little lady who started the Civil War"

--many pro-slavery novels written by Southerners in response

--about how happy Southern slaves were

--how rare harsh whippings were, etc. etc.

--about how, in fact, slavery was a benevolent institution because it rescued a childlike species from their benighted condition of African ignorance

--after the Civil War: the story had a long life in song and dramatic reproductions and sequels in which Uncle Tom "lives"

--but didn't make Stowe a lot of $$$, because of poorly written contracts with publishers

--wrote another anti-slavery novel, Dred in 1856 (about a slave rebellion), and lived past the Civil War and wrote several other novels with Northeast locations

--died when she was 84

CULTURAL-THEMATIC CONTEXT:

--all books/authors are a product, in a sense, of the cultural age they inhabit

--yet some capture the "popular imagination" more so than others

--the reason it was so popular in the 19th-century was that it yoked together three resonant aspects of popular ideology:

--1) most important political issue of the day:  slavery/racialist thought (outrage/voyeurism/paternalism)
--2) religious ethos: redemptive power of Christ's love/image of sacrifice
--3)  sanctity of home/maternal love/female aesthetic of sentimentalism

PROBLEM:

--if a combination of paternalism towards black, otherworldly emphasis on sainthood (Uncle Tom), and women as feelers rather than thinkers
--if a product of its age
--it may not speak to our age
--the things that made it so timely for its own age may be what keeps it from being timeless or timely for our age

LINK TO ROMANTICISM

 --Romanticism, at heart, about interior psychological or metaphysical freedom or what inhibits that freedom
--syllabus intentionally juxtaposes Douglass and Stowe, who write about political freedom: Douglass active; Stowe preaches passivity
--yet Stowe's vision is not all that far from Transcendentalism in some respects
--Emerson advocates freeing the mind/a state of mind rather than political action
--Stowe advocates changing the heart/ a state of feeling rather than political action
--Romanticism, abolitionism and other reform movements, along with evangelicalism/heart-Christianity
--all part of a larger post-18^th century trend towards embracing feeling or affective states of being
--Poe wants you to feel claustrophobic, or exhilarated, or dazed as a prelude to unknowable spiritual ecstasies
--Thoreau, would in the Spring passages, have you become exultant with a joy that could overcome death

ARE BELOW COMPLEX..............................OR.................................STEREOTYPES?

Households/ Aunt Chloe:           

Minor (decorative) black characters:

Eliza/Cassy:                                                                                       

Topsy:  

Uncle Tom/passive Africa:                                                                

St. Clare: 

Marie St. Clare 

Simon Legree:                                                                                   

WHY ARE THESE SCENES EFFECTIVE OR MEMORABLE (OR SHOULD THEY BE CRITIQUED?)

Eliza's escape/Rachel

Little Eva's apotheosis

Tom's death

Aunt Chloe learns of Tom's death