Lesson 4: Women Characters and Readers
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Background or document linking women’s rights to abolition
Women as 19th century novel readers
Stowe’s women characters
1. Senator / Mrs. Byrd chapter
2. appeals to women over loss of children
3. have students find other examples
“The Negro Woman’s Appeal to Her White Sisters” (Am. Memory site)
See article on “The Rise of the Woman Author”
105: appealing to readers as mothers
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Senator / Mrs. Byrd chapter
1. refer back to Fug. Slave Act and Woman’s sphere, esp. letter from Susan
B. Anthony
2. LAW v MORALITY; MEN v WOMEN; PUBLIC v. PRIVATE
(real feelings/people v. abstractions p. 155, state v. private morality p.
156)
3. passage that might begin lesson: p. 143/144: “Now John…”
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After discussing this chapter, have students come up with other examples of
women characters’ positions on slavery; on Stowe’s expectations of her readers
How does Stowe imagine women changing slavery? Do / can women have a
public role here? In what ways?
How does Stowe both uphold and challenge 19th century gender roles? (Refer
back to “Women” materials in Lesson 1)
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Lesson 6: Religion in Uncle Tom’s Cabin
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UTC site’s exercise on biblical passages
Tom and Eva as Christians
“Dyin’ in the Fiel’”
Bible and Pilgrim’s Progress as other best-sellers (PP hypertext?)
Religion (afterlife) v. Politics (this life)
Critiques of UNCLE Tom
How Stowe used religion to further her argument, but how it also re-routed it
Literary terms: allegory, sentimental novel
“The Victory”: George Harris’s would be a different one. Which position does
Stowe take?
P. 79 on Uncle Tom’s inner life: “he ‘prayed right up’”
See pp 83-84
P. 84: Mrs. Shelby’s curse on slavery
85: pro-slavery minister’s sermon
436: “I’s so happy”
Compare “The Victory” to George and Eliza’s freedom “Liberty”. Both are
forms of freedom for Stowe. This connects to Lesson 9: Post-Slavery
(Some contemporary readers may be just as uncomfortable with religion in this
novel as Stowe’s contemporaries were uncomfortable with anti-slavery)
Lesson 8: The Illustrations (or posters / playbills / lithographs?)
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What parts get represented? What parts don’t? Why?
What kind of changes have been made from the novel?
Why is the pop-culture Uncle Tom so much older? (See the physical description
of Uncle Tom on p. 68)
Connect the popular culture characters to the character log activity in Lesson 3.
How slavery is represented in these images.
How does Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which was written to protest slavery, become a
way of showing slavery post-emancipation?
621-622: Stowe’s quote on the Fug. Sl. Act inspiring her to write – to “show
slavery” (Use this for Lesson 1 or Lesson 8 on illustrations.)
See Professor Railton’s “Suggestions for Using the Illustrations”
Lesson 9: After Slavery
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The Question of Post-Emancipation: what comes next?
How did Stowe imagine a post-slavery America?
How did Post-Slavery America imagine Uncle Tom’s Cabin?
Begin with text: George to Liberia, Uncle Tom dead…
TOPSY emancipated: we know she becomes a missionary, but as Railton argues
in his essay, we don’t see it
“I’s so wicked” – Topsy stays wicked in this song, is not converted by Eva
Terms: colonization, minstrelsy
Post-emancipation images from film/plays/playbills of slaves – looking back
Does Stowe offer a realistic program / vision for post-emancipation?
Then how do filmmakers, musicians, etc., do it for her?
What does this say about America and race in Stowe’s day and postemancipation?
So why was Uncle Tom’s Cabin so popular? Why were the film/movie/musical
spin-offs so popular? What did Uncle Tom’s Cabin DO for its white readers and
viewers: in Stowe’s day? In post-emancipation America?
452, 450: a lot of material to Northern readers re. Northern anxieties about
emancipation
Chapter entitled “Reunion”: shows most clearly that Ophelia stands in for
Northern readers --- what does Stowe hope to accomplish?
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Consider re-arranging Lessons 8 and 9. Begin with Stowe’s vision for post-emancipation
and the debates swirling around that, such as re. colonization. Possibly look at some of
the earlier pop-culture images / illustrations. This is the first part of the question: How
did Stowe imagine a post-emancipation America?
Then Lesson 9: After slavery: consider the second part of the question: How did postemancipation Americans imagine UTC?
Direct students and Teachers to Professor Railton’s “Suggestions for Teaching” on the
Lesson Plans page for more on pop culture.
See legal pad notes for more on Fugitive Slave Act, Lesson 5 on anti-slavery (the Stop
game), the characters activity in Lesson 3.
A twist on the characters activity: Stowe’s houses / homes
We know the results. Neither Stowe nor her 1850s readers did – so chapters like “Middle
Passage” would have probably felt more horrible and real to them
621-622: Stowe’s quote on the Fug. Sl. Act inspiring her to write – to “show slavery”
(Use this for Lesson 1 or Lesson 8 on illustrations.)