Essay: Uncle Tom's Cabin

            UncleTom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe is on my reading list of most influential novels in American History.  It has been given credit for having caused the American Civil War.  I was curious as to how a single novel could have such a profound effect.  After reading “The Jungle”, which I discuss in a separate entry,  I was curious as to how Uncle Tom’s Cabin was more successful than St.Clair’s novel published a fifty years later.    Here I explore how a single novel is given credit for starting a war, and why one book was more successful than the other. 

             

            The Facts:  How a book might have caused a war

            In the 1850s the country was divided through economic differences.  The North functioned with factories and cheap wages for foreign workers, while The South functioned with farms and free labor  from slaves.  This was just the way things were.  Many people in the northern states, political or not were known to give shelter and aid to slaves who for one reason or another had escaped to the territories of the slave states into the sanctuary of the free states. 

            No doubt this frustrated many plantation owners in the border slave states.  Slaves were very expensive after all.  In a time when fifty cents could buy a meal, a healthy slave in good working condition could be worth five hundred dollars or more.  This is probably what led to the  Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. This dictated that any runaway slave caught in the free states was to be returned to his owner immediately.   As a result any runaway looking to guarantee his freedom had to now make it all the way to Canada. 

       Harrette Beecher Stowe was already an established author and vocal abolitionist by the time the act was up for a vote.  She’d befriended runaway slaves and participated in conversations with no doubt hundreds of people over the fairness of treating slaves like sub-humans.  The Act of 1850 drove Stowe to write Uncle Tom’s Cabin – based off the all the stories and encounters Stowe had witnessed personally in some way. Originally, the stories of Tom and Eliza and everyone they encountered were published in short installments in abolitionist newspapers all over the country. They detailed the different reasons slaves had for running away.  They showed how kind masters sometimes had no choice but to treat their slaves like property instead of human beings, and how it’s the inhumanity of cruel masters created a cycle of mistrust and mistreatment causing human beings to behave like animals.  Stowe’s story brought the taboo topic of slave ownership into a nationwide controversial conversation.  Though shouting match maybe more appropriate.    

           Nine years after Uncle Tom’s Cabin was published the country was boiling hot over the issues surrounding slavery.   The south felt their rights, their economy and their way of living were at stake.  Abraham Lincoln ran for office on the anti-slavery platform anyway.  When Lincoln won the election in November 1860 with only 40% of the vote the South began to pull away starting with South Carolina.  By March seven states had seceded and were forming the Confederate States of America.  

            When they met, Lincoln was heard referring to Harriett Beecher Stowe as “the little lady who caused the great war.”

      The Question of Effectiveness:  Uncle Tom’s Cabin vs. The Jungle

            Ultimately, slavery was abolished in 1864 and Stowe died knowing her goal had been reached.  Upton St.Clair would tread a similar path, but only a fraction of his novel was giving the attention it deserved.  St.Clair died still fighting for the issues he believed in hoping future generations would carry on his cause.  What made Stowe’s novel more effective than St. Clair’s? 

            I discussed The Jungle in an earlier post and pointed out how even though St. Clair’s depictions of the conditions in the factories during the 1900s triggered the creation of the Food and Drug Administration, the book’s other issues (housing scandles, women’s health, sexual harassments, health care, child care, education, the conditions of the poor ect.) were largely ignored.

            Both stories sought to enlighten the public topic they’d choose to over look, and force great social change.

            Both stories took from real life to create character-based plots situated around events the authors had in some way personally experienced.  The characters were therefore relatable, even to a modern audience.  Both stories were gripping page turners. And both stories had heavy moral themes.   

            One complaint about Uncle Tom’s Cabin was that Stowe introduced too many characters to make her point.  But in my opinion each character, and every conversation told showed some angle of the story she wanted to tell.   

            I can’t personally relate to the plight of slaves and slavery, having never been or met one myself, after reading this I understood how frustrating it must have been to feel so helpless (both on behalf of slaves and masters who tried to be good and do the right thing) these people of the past must have felt.  Stowe illustrated very well how powerless it must be to not even own the children you’ve created or the cloths that cover you. 

            But the Jungle was a story I could directly relate too even in this day and age.  St Clair was shouting about the atrocities of the wealthy over the poor, and the unstable financial foundations our nation was growing, on 23 years before the Great Depression.  And yet this book is still relevant today. 

            So where did Stowe go right?  Where did St. Clair went wrong?

I speculate three main differences.

             Popular Religion vs. Unpopular Politics

            St Clair was a socialist. During his time Socialism was a kin to communism in the eyes of most Americans.   The heavy handed socialist tilt the book takes near the end of the story likely turned loyal readers away from what was otherwise a riveting novel. 

            Stowe was a Christian, and so was about ninety percent of her American readership. Stowe scattered Christian ideals throughout Uncle Tom’s Cabin.  The Shelby family taught their slaves how to be good Christians and assured them that doing so would make like easier on them.  Their son was teaching Uncle Tom how to read the Bible for himself when he was sold off their plantation. 

            The book reads almost like gospel throughout, where the Lord’s favor falls on those who repent and give themselves over to Christ.  Uncle Tom, with the hardships that he gradually endures becomes almost Jesus himself, changing hearts as he is moved from place to place.   Through conversations with white people in her book Stowe addresses the Christian morals of her readers, questioning how they can call themselves the children of God and turn a blind eye to the plight of their brothers and sisters in Christ. 

            The story actually helped me to understand how African peoples were brought to be such strong devout Christians.  Though the story become very preachy in parts Stowe keeps her story moving - un-like St. Clair who brings the plot to a near stand-still once the topic of Socialism is introduced. 

          Focus on one topic verses Focus on the system as a whole. 

            As I mentioned St. Clair attempted to tackle every area of working class reform he could think of.  The story was breath taking, dramatic, descriptive, and at times enraging. Every facet of Jurgis’s life was affected by the greed and carelessness of the upper-class.  The Jungle called for reform in health care, housing, labor, food and drug administration, unemployment benefits and so on.  While these were all good points his goal was to change them all at once.  That heavy handed objective may have been a little over ambitious. 

            Stowe had one focus: end slavery, slavery is wrong, and all 350 pages of Uncle Tom’s Cabin pushed for just that.  She showed slavery from the point of the view of the indebt master who wants to be a good Christian but must pedal in human lives to survive; the nice but short sighted master who hasn’t considered the fate of those under his care, the cruel lonely man who wants nothing more than to make others submit so he can feel in control, as well as well as house slaves, the field slaves; the runaways; the loyal slaves; the overseers; and those in the free states who don’t believe the issue was any of their business.  She touched on every area to dive home a single ideal.  

       Stowe, like St. Clair, had a talent for creating relatable characters in her books.  Therefore her tackling one focus from multiple angles, rather than multiple points from one angle as St. Clair had done, insured everyone who read her book found a character that spoke directly to them. 

        Know your Audience

        The Jungle was written during a time with racial and social classism was common, accepted, and normal.  But the book called for an audience who feel sympathy for a low wage earner from a foreign country.  Many of the people who would sympathize with Jurgis at this time probably couldn’t even read the story themselves, and even if they could they were not in a position to do anything about it.  Those who could wouldn’t have cared very much.  They would not have considered that the things this poor Lithuanian man was going through had much to do with them. 

      I believe this is why St. Clair’s graphic depiction of what was going on in the factories where food is made for consumption by all the classes, was the only part of his book at gained the reaction he wanted.   The rest of his book was pure entertainment, not a fog horn warning of the Great Depression that it was meant to be. 

            Stowe knew her audience better.  She aimed for the people who could do something about the situation of slavery.  Uncle Tom’s Cabin was a book meant to speak to tight lipped whites of the free states who knew slavery was wrong but didn’t want to talk about it, and the nice Masters of the slave states who actually saw their slaves as human beings but lacked the foresight to consider the future of their property.  She told the story of pretty, Christian slaves who were honest and hard working while also showing, as by comparison, what had become of the poor mis-treated retches in the Deep South under cruel hands.  She played on their heavy Christian values made them question their own mortality. 

            In comparison had Stowe done as St.Clair would later do, she would have written only from the perspective of the unfortunate slaves who were sold from good families in the north to cruel plantations in the south.  Her story would have fallen on hard hearts, and would have appealed only to those slaves who could not read it. 

            St. Clair would have been better off making his main character into an Upper-class English man who due to corruptions in the government slips into the lower middle class bracket is unable to climb back up again due to basic failures system that prevent the poor for having fair competitive chances.  

            And they all lived happily ever after . . .

            A good ending can make or break any story.  Though many modern writers and readers will scoff at me for mentioning this, Americans historically love happy endings.  Even if a story has an unhappy ending we crave at the very least closure, where everything is wrapped up nice and neat.

            St Clair misses the mark on both ends.  In “The Jungle” we watch Jurgis go from a happy, healthy, family man with goals and dreams to a poor, lonely retch.  The women are taking care of him.  He still can’t find decent work, and now he’s devout disciple of the church of socialism.  To American readers this is not a pleasant image to close out the book with it therefore has not point at all.  Socialism doesn’t make Jurgis’s live better.  All it does is give him a tool with which fight with, and a club to be a part of.  Perhaps, St. Clair would have had better results by showing how Jurgis’s over health had and standing in life was improved by Socialist programs – which granted would have been difficult since no such programs existed at the time.

            At the end of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, despite the necessity of the martyr, a majority of characters find happiness. After hearing the story of so many mothers ripped from their babes, an entire family is restored and live free.  Stowe even furthers her point that these good Christian people had to leave their homes in America in order to find happiness elsewhere in the world. These endings leave the reader feeling good, but still understanding the plight of the rest of the unfortunates is still real and serious.  They make people want to retell the story to others.  

        Conclusion

        Stowie’s book was better received because it used a theme her audience could accept, and she only tried to solve one problem at a time.  She didn’t try to tackle everything that was wrong with the economics of slavery, only that slavery was an unnecessary evil that threatened to the souls of every Christian in the country.  Also she didn’t write her book to entertain the slaves; she wrote it to educate the slave owners and free thinkers.  And lastly, despite the horrors of slavery her book presented she still brought it to a satisfying and pleasant ending, which is just good politics for an American writer. 

            So if one wants to push for great change in a story, pick a focus, use a theme the majority can accept, and aim for the readers who can do something about it.    Also don’t forget to leave an ending that is memorable and satisfying.