Heather Childs
Dr. Hanrahan
Capstone Paper
4-18-12
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“Time, Race, and Equality”
Tom Robinson in Harper Lee’s 1960 novel To Kill a Mockingbird is a modern version of
Uncle Tom in Uncle Tom’s Cabin published by Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1852. Both Toms are
loyal, honest men who do everything they can to help white folks. Tom Robinson is accused of
raping Mayella, convicted, and then sent to prison where he is shot while trying to escape. Uncle
Tom is beaten because he will not flog an old slave lady. Tom Robinson and Uncle Tom are
both betrayed by people they trust. Tom Robinson is betrayed by Mayella and Uncle Tom is
betrayed by the Shelbys and the St. Clares. Both Toms are examples of a specific racial
archetype: the innocent, subservient, and suffering African-American male. Yet despite these
similarities, there are clear differences between the characters—and their reception from critics.
Critics have treated these two works differently, often rejecting the racial politics of Uncle Tom’s
Cabin while embracing To Kill a Mockingbird, in part because while Stowe focuses on equality
based on religion, Lee bases her claims for equality on law and justice. Finally, both books are
also written from different points of view. Uncle Tom’s Cabin is written from the view of Stowe
while To Kill A Mockingbird is written from the view of a child (Scout).
Uncle Tom and Tom Robinson are, in their author’s minds, loyal, honest, and good
Christian men who do everything right that is within their power. Those who know them have
nothing but good things to say about them. Mr. Shelby, while trying to sell Uncle Tom to Haley
says that, “Tom is an uncommon fellow; […] steady, honest, capable, manages my whole farm
like a clock” (Stowe 2). He also tells Haley that, “Tom is a good, steady, sensible, pious fellow”
(Stowe 2). Haley in turn, when trying to sell Uncle Tom to St. Clare says, that Tom is the “most
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humble, prayin, pious crittur ye ever did see. Why, he’s been called a preacher in them parts he
came from” (Stowe 136). Uncle Tom is so trustworthy that Mr. Shelby sent him to “bring home
five hundred dollars” (Stowe 2) and instead of taking the money and running away to Canada, he
returned home with all of it. Stowe notes that Uncle “Tom had every facility and temptation to
dishonesty; and nothing but an impregnable simplicity of nature, strengthened by Christian faith,
could have kept him from it. But, to that nature, the very unbounded trust reposed in him was
bond and seal for the most scrupulous accuracy” (Stowe 186). Uncle Tom is so selfless, he tells
Aunt Chloe, “If I must be sold, or all the people on the place, and everything go to rack, why, let
me be sold. I s’pose I can b’ar it as well as any on’em” (Stowe 36).
Lee describes Tom Robinson in similar ways. Reverend Sykes says to his congregation,
“You all know of Brother Tom Robinson’s trouble. He has been a faithful member of First
Purchase since he was a boy” (Lee 120-121). Atticus says that Tom is, “a member of
Calpurnia’s church, and Cal knows his family well. She says they’re clean-living folks” (Lee
75). Scout remarks, “He seemed to be a respectable Negro, and a respectable Negro would never
go up into somebody’s yard of his own volition” (Lee 192).
Both Toms are betrayed by people who they have done nothing but good for. Uncle Tom
is first betrayed by the Shelbys, and is sold by Mr. Shelby to pay off his debts. Mrs. Shelby is
against her husband’s decision but there is nothing she can do to prevent it. In her unhappiness
with her husband’s decision to sell Tom she says, “I’ll be no accomplice or help in this cruel
business. I’ll go see poor old Tom, God help him, in his distress! They shall see, at any rate, that
their mistress can feel for and with them” (Stowe 32). Stowe shows that there are good people
who want to do what’s right but they fail in taking action and just use their words. Then, Uncle
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Tom is betrayed by St. Clare when he dies before making Uncle Tom a free man. Mr. Legree is
a cruel man who treats all his slaves worse than animals and does not offer them hope.
Similarly, Tom Robinson is betrayed by Mayella. He helps her just to be nice and takes no
money from her but he is accused of raping and beating her. While Tom is being questioned by
Atticus, Scout thinks, “Tom Robinson was probably the only person who was decent to her
[Mayella]” (Lee 192). Not only is he accused but he is also convicted when it is obvious that
there is no way he could have done what he is being blamed for.
What these connections show us, then, is that both Uncle Tom and Tom Robinson
embody the common racial archetype of the obedient, subservient black man. They are both
innocents who were ruined by selfish/evil people. In To Kill A Mockingbird they call these
innocent people who do nothing wrong mockingbirds. Miss Maudie explains, “Mockingbirds
don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t
nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to
kill a mockingbird” (Lee 90). Tom Robinson and Uncle Tom both “sing their hearts out for”
people who treat them like less then they are. Stowe writes that, “Tom, … had, to the full, the
gentle, domestic heart, which, woe for them! has been a peculiar characteristic of his unhappy
race” (Stowe 85). Both Toms, no matter how nice and how good they are, will never be treated
the way they should. St. Clare says of African Americans that they are, “debased, uneducated,
indolent, provoking, -- put, without any sort of terms or conditions, entirely into the hands of
such people as the majority in our world are; people who have neither consideration nor selfcontrol” (Stowe 201).
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Ultimately both Uncle Tom and Tom Robinson are killed, victims of an unjust system
that judges by skin color rather than character. Uncle Tom’s faith and the promises that are made
to him about being free never come to anything and he is beaten to death by Mr. Legree.
Similarly, Calpurnia explains that Tom Robinson gave up hope when they took him to prison.
Tom told Atticus that there was no saving him now. Tom decides to try to escape from jail but
he is shot and killed. He knows that he will never be proven innocent so he decides to escape or
die trying. Atticus says that, “Tom was tired of white men’s chances and preferred to take his
own” (Lee 235-236). Both Toms had to rely on white men and they all failed them.
Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin in the hopes that people would see how
unchristian it is to treat African Americans differently when Christianity makes everyone equal.
In other words, Stowe’s primary argument for abolition was a Christian one. Theodore R. Hovet
writes, “Stowe believed that when Americans were awakened to the sin of slavery, they would
voluntarily abolish the institution” (535). Hovet’s emphasis on “sin”, a religious label, is
significant, because in those terms slavery is wrong whether you believe it is a “sin” or
unfairness. Stowe, along with other Christian abolitionists, believed that slavery was wrong
because when Jesus died on the cross he did away with the old covenant (the ten
commandments), which made people slaves to the law and instituted the “voluntary decision of
man ‘to love’ Christ because of the qualities He displayed” (Hovet 539). Therefore, Stowe
believed that, “slavery violate[d] the spirit of the new covenant because it is based on force
rather then love” (Hovet 539). Stowe believed that it was America’s duty to save “all mankind
from tyranny” (Hovet 540). The last paragraph of Uncle Tom’s Cabin illustrates Stowe’s beliefs:
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A day of grace is yet held out to us. Both North and South have been guilty before God;
and the Christian church has a heavy account to answer. Not by combining together, to
protect injustice and cruelty, and making a common capital of sin, is this Union to be
saved, -- but by repentance, justice and mercy; for, not surer is the eternal law by which
the millstone sinks in the ocean, than that stronger law, by which injustice and cruelty
should bring on nations the wrath of Almighty God! (Stowe 408).
Stowe in the above paragraph really emphasizes that if readers did nothing about slavery our
salvation was in jeopardy. Stowe lays blame not only on the North and the South for slavery but
also the “Christian Church.” In her eyes, an end to slavery meant freedom from “sins” and was
only possible through Christian “repentance, justice, and mercy.” Stowe feared that God would
send his wrath upon Americans if they continued the way they were. Therefore, as God fearing
Christian people, Stowe’s readers should realize that all people are equal and that making people
into slaves is unchristian and a sin.
Wildly popular in its day, by the 20th century, Uncle Tom’s Cabin fell out of favor with
critics who rejected its sentimentalism and problematic theology. Richard Yarborough claims
that, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin was the epicenter of a massive cultural phenomenon, the tremors of
which still affect the relationship of blacks and whites in the United States” (Levine 563).
Perhaps Stowe’s harshest critic is James Baldwin, who takes her to task for basing her arguments
for abolition on a flawed and racist view of Christianity. In “Everybody’s Protest Novel” he
writes, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin is a very bad novel, in its self-righteous, virtuous sentimentality”
(533). Baldwin says, “Sentimentality […] is the mark of dishonesty” (533). Baldwin writes that
Stowe, “was not so much a novelist as an impassioned pamphleteer; her book was not intended
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to do anything more than prove that slavery was wrong; was, in fact, perfectly horrible” (533).
Baldwin has a problem with Stowe’s characters, especially the alleged benevolent white
characters, and the subservient, suffering, slaves. Baldwin also claims that Uncle Tom, who is
the only true black man, “has been robbed of his humanity and divested of his sex” (535) and
that Uncle Tom’s “triumph is metaphysical, unearthly; since he is black, born without the light, it
is only through humility, the incessant mortification of the flesh, that he can enter into
communion with God or man” (535). Baldwin is also upset with the fact that Stowe writes
Uncle Tom’s Cabin in a way to scare people to be damned to Hell if they do not end slavery.
This damnation goes against the “New Covenant” that Stowe believes in, where people have a
choice (free will) in whether they follow God or go along with their own desires or wants.
Other critics have followed Baldwin’s lead, as shown in an essay by Robert S. Levine.
Many African Americans blame Stowe for the cultural consequences they have suffered because
of her sentimentalism and racialism (Levine 562). Donald Chaput laments, “the ‘irreparable
harm’ done by Stowe’s portrayal of Tom’s Christian resignation; and Addison Gayle Jr. argues
that the stereotypical portrayal of Tom and other slaves simply reinforced Southern views of
black inferiority and submissiveness” (Levine 562). Anne Moody wrote Coming of Age in
Mississippi in 1965. In this autobiography she refers to cowardly, submissive blacks as Uncle
Tom’s. Shortly after Moody enters high school she says, “I began to look upon Negro men as
cowards. I could not respect them for smiling in a white man’s face, addressing him as Mr. Soand- So, saying yessuh and nossuh” (136). Uncle Tom was the type of man that Moody would
have seen as a coward. When Moody goes to Natchez College, she works in the school cafeteria
and for a Miss Harris who she calls “the biggest Uncle Tom on campus” (240). In fact, Moody
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refers to several other people as Uncle Tom’s throughout the book. This way of referring to
people remains common even today, indicating just how much readers reject Stowe’s model of
an ideal black man.
Harper Lee, unlike Stowe, is praised for To Kill a Mockingbird and was given the 1961
Pulitzer Prize in fiction. One of the first reviews appeared in Time Magazine and was positive.
Scout, for instance is called, “fiction’s most appealing child since Carson McCuller’s Frankie”
(24). R. A. Dave in “The Mockingbird as Symbol” is the first to give To Kill a Mockingbird
serious consideration. Dave says, “the title hurts reader’s sensibility and creates an impression
that something beautiful is being bruised and broken” (49). Tom Robinson is the “beautiful”
person who is “bruised and broken.” According to Dave, the Alabama that Harper Lee writes
about, “presents a bleak picture of a narrow world torn by hatred, injustice, violence and cruelty,
and we lament to see ‘what man has made of man’” (Dave 51). Such admiration for Lee’s work
continues today as the book remains beloved and is frequently taught in schools around the
country.
A close examination of these reviews and criticisms show that the writers are moved by
Lee’s emphasis in law and justice. In Claudia Durst Johnson’s words, To Kill a Mockingbird
raises the issue of “the laws of the land and the laws that lie in ‘the secret court of men’s hearts’”
(71). Atticus makes the case for Tom Robinson that all men are equal in a court of law. Man’s
personal beliefs and prejudices should not hold sway for whether a person is accused of being
guilty or innocent. Lee’s novel “presents the argument that the forces that motivate society are
not consonant with the democratic ideals embedded in its legal system and that the disjunction
between the codes men and women profess and those they live by threatens to unravel individual
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lives as well as the social fabric” (Johnson 72). Lee provides a further example of such injustice
when Helen, Tom Robinson’s wife, cannot find a job, because of what her husband is accused of
doing. Tom did not rape Mayella, and yet just being accused of rape causes so much hardship
for his family. Once Tom is convicted and sent to jail, this prejudice will only get worse for his
family and many readers cry out for justice. In other words, Tom’s death in To Kill A
Mockingbird is not a release from his troubles but opens a new world of troubles for his family.
In contrast, Stowe’s Uncle Tom embraces death because it is where he’s been heading all along.
As he tells George Shelby, “Heaven is better then Kintuck” (381).
Lee’s emphasis on secular justice rather than religion is amplified by one of the novel’s
key characters, Atticus Finch, the lawyer. Atticus is appointed to represent Tom Robinson and
the town folk do not like that he is going to seriously defend him. Scout states, “The court
appointed Atticus to defend him. Atticus aimed to defend him. That’s what they didn’t like
about it. It was confusing” (Lee 163). Atticus knows the law and knows that everyone is entitled
and has the right for a chance to be proven guilty or innocent. Atticus proves Tom’s innocence
and that there is no way he could have raped Mayella, but he is declared guilty anyway. Even
though it is clear that Tom is innocent, as Judge Taylor said, “People generally see what they
look for, and hear what they listen for” (Lee 174). No matter what Atticus would have done,
Tom would still have been declared guilty, because he is black. Lee is showing how the legal
system and laws are not followed or given to everyone.
The decision to convict Tom Robinson is a biased decision based only on the fact that it
was a black man versus a white woman. Atticus says in his closing statement, “This case is as
simple as black and white” (Lee 203) and he is right. In Tom’s case it is neither probable or
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believable in what he is accused of doing. Mayella jumped Tom and put him in a real
predicament, “he would not have dared strike a white woman under any circumstances and
expect to live long, so he took the first opportunity to run – a sure sign of guilt” (Lee 195). Then,
when Mr. Gilmer is questioning him, Tom says he was helping Mayella with chores because,
“I felt right sorry for her, she seemed to try more’n the rest of’em ---‘
‘You felt sorry for her, you felt sorry for her?’ Mr. Gilmer seemed ready to rise to the
ceiling” (Lee 197).
How dare a black man feel sorry for a white woman! By Tom making that statement he was
implying that he ‘felt sorry” for someone who was “above” him. Atticus knows that statement
was a mistake on Tom’s part and says, “And so a quiet, respectable, humble Negro who had the
temerity to ‘feel sorry’ for a white woman has had to put his word against two white people’s”
(Lee 204). Atticus in his closing statement really stresses the point that the difference here is
black and white; he already knows what the outcome will be, but he wants to fully articulate that
the decision will be based on color, “black or white,” not “innocent or guilty.” As Atticus
explains, Tom’s guilt should not be based on the color of his skin because “some Negroes lie,
some Negroes are immoral, some Negro men are not to be trusted around women --- black or
white. But this is a truth that applies to the human race and to no particular race of men” (Lee
204). Atticus closes his statement by saying “there is one way in this country in which all men
are created equal […] That institution, gentlemen, is a court” (Lee 205). Atticus demands of the
jury to do their duty and send Tom home because he is an innocent man. Thus Atticus and Lee
both demand equality based on civil justice, in contrast to Stowe’s pleas based on religion.
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One final key difference that helps explain readers’ dramatically different responses to
the novels is their narrators. The narrator in Uncle Tom’s Cabin is an outside voice that is very
adult, certain, and preachy. Stowe’s narrator knows what she believes and is set in her ways; her
goal is to make the readers understand what they have done wrong and that it needs to be fixed.
The readers do not get attached to Stowe’s narrator because you do not get to know her; she is an
outside voice that puts in her beliefs and ideas when she feels it is necessary. Scout, on the other
hand, is a child who is trying to understand how people think and why people do and believe the
things they do. The readers get to know Scout and sympathize with her. Scout along with her
brother Jem, “begin to perceive the complexity of social codes and how the configuration of
relationships dictated by or set off by those codes fails or nurtures” (Johnson 75) the characters
in To Kill A Mockingbird, especially in the case of Tom Robinson. We see Tom Robinson
through Scout’s eyes and she sees him as “a respectable Negro” (Lee 192). Scout’s innocence
allows the reader a more clear and un-biased view of the trial and racism. Children have a way
of moving people’s hearts in a way that a preachy adult cannot.
In conclusion, the similarity between Uncle Tom and Tom Robinson is evident as both
embody the archetype of the suffering and innocent black man. Both Toms are African
Americans who are treated unfairly and end up getting killed. Uncle Tom is beaten to death for
not flogging a fellow slave and Tom Robinson is accused of beating and raping a girl who he
was actually treating with respect and went out of his way to help. Both Toms are also let down
by the law and white people. This comparison is important because Stowe and Lee’s novels
receive very different responses from their readers. Stowe’s focus on religion and slavery being
a “sin,” causes her modern readers to not take her seriously and many African Americans blame
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her for the way whites view them. Lee focuses on the law and how justice is not being shown to
those who are innocent and deserve it. Readers also want to listen and believe with Scout,
instead of following the preaching of Stowe’s narrator. Though these novels intend to achieve
the same goal, Lee’s novel is seen as the greater work and motivates readers to the point where
they want to help the Tom’s of the world and further proves that injustice and biased opinions
are wrong from every angle and point of view.
Works Cited
Baldwin, James. “Everybody’s Protest Novel.” Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Ed. Elizabeth Ammons.
New York: W.W. Norton & Company. 2010. 532-539. Print.
Dave, R. A. “The Mockingbird as Symbol.” Readings on Harper Lee To Kill a Mockingbird. Ed.
Terry O’Neill. California: Greenhaven Press, Inc. 2000. 49-51. Print.
Hovet, Theodore R. “The Revolution: Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Response to Slavery and the
Civil War.” New England Quarterly 47.4 (Dec. 1974): 535-549. JSTOR. Print. 2-142012.
Johnson, Claudia Durst. “The Law of the Land is not the Same as Moral Law.” Readings on
Harper Lee To Kill a Mockingbird. Ed. Terry O’Neill. California: Greenhaven Press, In.
2000. 71-83. Print.
Lee, Harper. To Kill A Mockingbird. New York: Warner Books, Inc. 1982. Print.
Levine, Roberts. “Uncle Tom’s Cabin in Frederick Douglass’ paper: An Analysis of Reception.”
Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Ed. Elizabeth Ammons. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
2010. 562-582. Print.
Moody, Anne. Coming of Age in Mississippi. New York: Delta Trade paperbacks. 2004. Print.
Stowe, Harriet Beecher., ed. Elizabeth Ammons: Uncle Tom’s Cabin. New York: W. W. Norton
& Company, 2010. Print.
Time Magazine. “To Kill a Mockingbird is a Wonderful First Novel.” Readings on Harper Lee
To Kill a Mockingbird. Ed. Terry O’Neill. California: Greenhaven Press, Inc. 2000. 2324. Print.