Uncle Tom's Cabin
July 4th 2007 05:50
Image: africanamerican.com
During my recent travels I was able to devour the latest of what seems to be a long line of American slavery novels by reading Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe. In fact, it occurred to me that the period of American slavery could well be a genre on its own! But then, what better way of chronicling a country’s social behaviour than through its fiction. A good friend once said to me, “To truly study a country’s people, you must read their fiction.”
I’d have to agree.
Now, as with many of these novels, Stowe’s classic character Uncle Tom is based on the real thing – one Josiah Henson. There is plenty of information on Henson and Stowe through the internet, particularly that Lincoln himself credits Stowe and her book for being a catalyst of the Civil War. The book sold 300,000 copies in the first year (1852) and the next year she wrote The Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, in which she documents the realities on which her book was based, refuting critics who argued that it was inauthentic.
All that said - what about the book itself? Well I loved it. It is, I believe authentic to its time with a formal dialogue that helps to set the period. It also brings to the fore front a condition of slavery that is not often dealt with in novels – that being, the kind master. Uncle Tom has the dubious pleasure of being owned by two very kind families in his life time, but unfortunately these conditions for a slave are never guaranteed. For the truth stands that when financial burdens hit, quite often it is the slaves that are the first to go. And not always to the nicest of places. Then there is the death of a master. If assets must be sold, again it was slaves to go - quite often under the hammer and to the highest bidder, regardless of reputation or history of cruelty. And as with the human population itself, for every kind master there would be a cruel, indifferent, lazy, insensitive or fool of one to match them.
Which brings us to another conundrum. Were not those who kept slaves, yet treated them with respect and kindness creating something even worse? Were they not, by simply owning slaves, supporting a system that allows anyone (Caucasian of course) to own another person (black of course)? Slave owners were not given psychological testing or even measured with a niceness meter – it was all measured on the mighty dollar.
A great read, and the lesson ... well, we all know it –
Being treated with kindness and respect is something we all look for in other people – freedom is something we are entitled to as a person.
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Comment by tlcorbin-raginravensview
Coffee Quip
It's a great story and reflects the bias and attitudes of the period.
Raven