The Representation of Race in Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin

Seminar paper from the year 1997 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: very good, University of Münster (English Seminar), language: English, abstract: Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, which was first published in book form in 1852, is a work with a unique history of reception. In the nineteenth century it sold more copies than any book in the world except the Bible and became 'the most cussed and discussed book of its time' 1. While in the 1850s slavery opponents hailed Stowe's novel as 'the greatest weapon ever brought to bear in the abolitionist battle' 2, it was a hundred years later exposed to immense criticism, especially on the part of the blacks. Like Edmund Wilson reports, 'it was still possible at the beginning of this century for a South Carolina teacher to make his pupils hold up their right hands and swear that they would never read Uncle Tom' 3. This research paper is intended to focus on why the reactions to this novel were so contradictory. After going into the general ideas of 'race' at Stowe's time, it will give an account of which attitudes towards this topic the writer herself expresses in Uncle Tom's Cabin and how these reply to the view of her contemporaries. This leads to the question whether one might, as it has often been the case, reproach Stowe for being a racist and whether her novel should still be discussed in today's classroom. 1 Langston Huges, quoted in Richard Yarborough, 'Strategies of Black Characterization in Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Early Afro-American Novel,' New Essays on Uncle Tom's Cabin, ed. Eric. J. Sundquist (Cambridge, 1986), 57. 2 Yarborough, 68 3 Yarborough, 66