Investigate mid-19th-century American perspectives on motherhood and domestic life. Compare these viewpoints to Stowe's depiction of mothers and motherhood.

Examine authentic 19th-century slave narratives authored by both women and men. Reflect on how the experience of slavery differed between the sexes.

How had slavery become an economic necessity in the agricultural antebellum South? Why might slaveholders who felt sympathy for the slaves' situation have chosen not to free them?