Uncle Tom's Cabin

The publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin created strong emotional reactions throughout the United States, and can be understood as contributing to the growing tensions between North and South over the...

The central lesson Harriet Beecher Stowe wanted readers to learn after reading Uncle Tom's Cabin was that slavery was an unjust and un-Christian institution. The latter part of this argument is...

Up until Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin, abolitionism was very much a minority pursuit. Even those personally repulsed by slavery and everything that it stood for found abolitionism...

The eNotes Study Guide contains many thousands of words about every aspect of Uncle Tom's Cabin. It even contains a chapter by chapter summary of the novel. Under "References" (see link below) the...

The first of Tom's masters is Mr. Shelby. He's quite a kind, good-hearted man on the whole. He trusts Tom with important plantation business and often sends him off to run errands far from home....

While Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe is often viewed as a factor that pushed the United States toward a Civil War over the issue of slavery, the impact of the novel has carried on more...

When Tom learns that Mr. Shelby is going to sell him to settle some debts, he is greatly grieved. It means he will be separated from his wife and young children, and from his familiar home. He...

Uncle Tom's Cabin is no piece of evidence or historical artifact. If all slave owners were typical of Simon Legree, slavery would not be profitable since most of the slaves would be incapable of...

St. Clare believes that slavery is a sick, evil system that degrades both slave and master. The slaves have to be kept in a state of degradation, he says, or they would rebel against the harsh way...

According to David S. Reynolds's Mightier than the Sword: Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Battle for America, Uncle Tom's Cabin sold 300,000 copies in the United States in its first year of publication...

George is in an especially despondent mood after the savage whipping he's just taken from his master. He's an exceptionally hard and diligent worker, but that cuts no ice with his master, a cruel,...

One of the ironies that runs throughout the novel is that although slave owners often use the Bible to justify slavery, in practice the institution is completely at odds with Christian love and...

The evils of slavery become most profound after Uncle Tom is sold to the evil Simon Legree. Tom and the other newly-purchased slaves can feel nothing but emptiness, dreariness, and foreboding as...

Stowe primarily contrasts slave owners, and this supports her anti-slavery theme. While in her time many people supported slavery by arguing that the majority of slaveowners were good to their...

I think the book would be a great supplement to a history class. It definitely would give students a perspective on thinking at the time. The book also has literary merit, and is not as simple as...

Uncle Tom's Cabin was an extraordinarily important novel in the nineteenth century. It was the best-selling novel of the century in both the United States and in Europe. Not only is it credited...

Simon Legree is the owner of a Louisiana plantation, Tom's last. Legree is greedy. He is evil and cruel. On his plantation he beats his slaves daily. They are not fed well. They are overworked. He...

There are two characters who resemble Jesus in Uncle Tom's Cabin, Tom and Eva. Like Jesus in Christian scriptures, Tom and Eva make the ultimate sacrifice, giving their lives to save others. While...

Uncle Tom's Cabin shows that even "kind" slaveowners had negative effects on the lives of their slaves and that slavery was a vile institution no matter how nice a slaveowner might seem. Uncle Tom...

The plot of George L. Aiken’s melodramatic play does not stray far from Harriet Beecher Stowe’s classic novel of social reform. It is in the presentation of the story where the plot of the stage...

There is a moral hierarchy among the three slave owners. The middling master is Tom's first, Arthur Shelby. He treats Tom and the other slaves kindly, but Shelby is also selfish and mismanages his...

Eliza's faith has made her an obedient slave to the good Mrs. Shelby. As Eliza puts it to George, who has decided to run away: "Well," said Eliza, mournfully, "I always thought that I must obey my...

George and Eliza were married by a minister and have a son together, who is named Harry. George and Eliza are both slaves, and they have different masters. Unfortunately, George's master, Mr....

At the very beginning of the book Mr. Shelby, an unusually kind slave owner, is in debt and planning to sell one of his slaves because he needs the money. At first he only plans to sell one slave,...

With most thesis statements, the intended purpose is to help your reader determine what you will be saying during the rest of your paper. For many papers, teachers advise that you have about three...

In Chapter XVII of Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin," Eliza becomes greatly concerned when she learns from Phineas that he has overheard a group of men talking about capturing George and...

The novel puts the blame squarely on the slave-owners themselves, but the root cause of slavery, to the Christian Stowe's mind, seems to be a lack of Christian love in the hearts of the...

The answer to this question can be found early in chapter one of Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe. Mr. Arthur Shelby owns a farm in Kentucky and, though he does own slaves, he treats them...

Within the framwork of the novel itself, the escape works quite simply by giving her freedom. It shows her personal desperation turned into an act of heroism and courage upon hearing the news that...

It is often said that when Abraham Lincoln met Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, he greeted her as "the little lady who began the big war." The story may be apocryphal, but...

Before considering whether or not one approves of Uncle Tom's actions, it is important to understand the history of Uncle Tom's Cabin. The novel was the blockbuster bestseller in the world (after...

St. Clare realizes that slavery is wrong, but he feels trapped by the institution. He is not a religious man, though he seems to want to experience faith, and similarly he fails to act on the...

Stowe portrays white Southerners, specifically slaveholders, in a variety of ways. On the one hand, there was Mr. Shelby, Uncle Tom's first owner, who sold him due to debt. Mr Shelby is a decent...

In some ways, Uncle Tom's Cabin was a reflection of a certain point of view at a certain time. Its author, Harriet Beecher Stowe, was an abolitionist, and she, like many other anti-slavery...

In Uncle Tom's Cabin, the inclusion of Christianity would, as Stowe knew, have a positive emotional influence on the audience for her novel. For this reason, the morally strongest characters are...

There are two possible approaches to psychoanalytic criticism of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. One uses the book as a way to analyse the psychology of the author and the other...

Eliza Harris is a slave woman owned by the Shelby family. She is Mrs. Shelby’s slave. Her husband, George Harris, is a slave on another plantation. It was very common for slave families to be...

"Mammy" in Stowe's work is actually Aunt Chloe, who is Tom's wife. She is his wife as well as the mother of his children. Like Tom, she is a slave, a part of a culture that renders her without...

We know that Uncle Tom is looked up to and respected by all the other slaves on Mr. Shelby's estate, first, because the narrator tells us this is the case. When, as readers, we are invited into...

To a large extent, characters like Augustine St. Clare represent the target audience of Stowe. A committed abolitionist, Stowe understands that her political objective of a world without slavery...

Chapter 13 of Uncle Tom's Cabin has a happy ending: George and Eliza are reunited. Eliza and Harry have been resting comfortably in the home of Simeon Halliday as they journey on toward freedom....

Uncle Tom's Cabin had a very profound effect on American history, as it convinced many moderate Americans that slavery was wrong by personalizing slavery and showing its effects on people. While...

The first thing to note is that to any reader of the period in which this book was written, the name Augustine St. Clare would immediately evoke St. Augustine of Hippo, one of the most famous...

I think that Stowe's fervor lies in a spiritual point of view. Stowe's background is devoutly evangelical and lies in the realm of social reform. Her fervor is geared towards the abolition of...

I have changed your question because it did not make sense to ask how the book itself suffered from slavery. Therefore I assume that you are asking how the character himself suffered. Uncle Tom...

In Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, Augustine St. Clare is Tom's third owner, a man who believes that slavery is morally and philosophically wrong but nevertheless relies on slavery to...

Not only is it possible, but it could be argued that few novels benefit from being studied in their historical context than Uncle Tom's Cabin. To fully imagine the impact of the book, we must...

Legree blames Tom for Cassy and Emmeline's escape, and suspects that Tom know about the women's plan. Legree sends for Tom in order to question him. He threatens to kill Tom if not provided with...

The popularity of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin helped galvanize the slavery abolition movement just prior to the Civil War. The novel focused on the impact of slavery on individuals,...

Marie St. Clare acts towards her slaves pretty much the same way as she does towards everyone else: selfishly and callously. A woman who barely even notices her own daughter's fatal illness is...