Uncle Tom’s Cabin Worksheet
American Women Writers I
Winter 2007
Summary
The novel follows the lives of two slaves from one plantation, one who escapes from
slavery with her child, Eliza, and one who is sold down South, Uncle Tom. Their lives,
and those with whom their lives are entwined, are meant to reveal to the reader the
horrors of slavery. Uncle Tom’s Cabin was (and still is) a profoundly influential novel,
as evidenced by Abraham Lincoln’s comment upon meeting Stowe during the Civil War:
“So you’re the little woman who started this big war.” We continue to read Uncle Tom’s
Cabin today because it influenced generations of writers, and representations of women
and African Americans, for decades after the War, and because it embodies the complex
transformative potential of literature. We still struggle with the legacy of Uncle Tom’s
Cabin, in discussions of race and gender in America, and in thinking about how emotion
connects us across lines of difference. The novel also illuminates the rhetorical tools of
nineteenth century women writers who used writing to make political statements, and it is
therefore a very important touchstone for this course.
Uncle Tom:
Uncle Tom is sold from his home in slavery and we follow him to two homes in the deep
South. We meet the families who purchase him, and we see slavery, its horrors and its
profound and overreaching influence, through their eyes and his. Twentieth writers
derided Uncle Tom’s passivity, a critique which we will discuss in class, but as you are
reading try to discern what Stowe’s intention was in the way that she represented Tom.
Eliza:
Eliza’s story is closely entwined with that of her husband George, who also flees slavery,
and that of her son, whom she flees to protect. As you read, pay attention to how she is
offered as a model women by Stowe, and consider how this argument about her
femininity is connected to Stowe’s argument against slavery.
Characters of note in the novel
This novel is equally concerned with the lives Tom and Eliza touch on their journeys.
Characters of particular importance include:
The Shelby Family: Mr. Shelby, Mrs. Shelby, and young George Shelby.
Senator and Mrs. Bird
George, Eliza’s husband
The slave traders and catchers
The St. Clair family: St. Clare, Eva, Miss Ophelia, and Marie
Simon Legree (volume II)
Cassy (volume II)
As you read the novel, you should consider the following questions:
What are Stowe’s arguments against slavery?
How do her representations of women, gender relations, and African-Americans support
her argument against slavery?
Also, note repeated images and scenes in the novel, and consider how they contribute to
Stowe’s anti-slavery argument.
We will discuss these points in the first half of class. In the second half of class we will
work in small groups to consider the legacy that Uncle Tom’s Cabin left for women
writers after Stowe.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Begin with the reception of UTC—what a very important book it is, as an anti-slavery
document, and a model for how women can write, and what they can accomplish with
writing.
Swallow Barn and visions of slavery as a happy institution; see also pro-slavery
arguments based on religion and natural order.
What are Stowe’s arguments against slavery? How do they respond to this argument?
How do representations of women, gender, and race work to sustain her argument this
argument? What, ultimately, does she want from her readers? What political imperative
is encompassed in her phrase “feel right”?
Sentiment—why all of the tears, all of the death? Why is death so important to the larger
anti-slavery argument?
Melodrama—what is the role of coincidence in this novel and how is related to Stowe’s
anti-slavery argument? Melodrama is often opposed to realism—does this opposition
work in Uncle Tom’s Cabin?
Separate spheres—see Senator Bird and Mrs. Bird
What is the legacy of Uncle Tom’s Cabin?
Representations of Women
Representation of African Americans
Question of where African-Americans belong in the nation