It took me far too long to read it but towards the end I cantered along and finished the book in the early hours of New Year's Eve. I am so glad that I took up the personal challenge of reading "Uncle Tom's Cabin". It was revelatory - not just in terms of shining a spotlight on some of the horrors of slavery in America's Deep South but also in the way it observes religious belief and the social mores of the mid-nineteenth century.
Unsurprisingly, the central character is an older slave known as Uncle Tom. He is civilised, dependable and kindly. His fervent religious belief allows him to tolerate trouble that might have broken lesser men. However, I found the book's title somewhat inappropriate for the "cabin" does not play a significant role. If I had been Harriet Beecher's Stowe's editor, I might have well suggested a more sardonic title plucked from America's Declaration of Independence. Something like "Created Equal" or "Our Sacred Honour".
The book's language is understandably quite formal and staid given the fact that it appeared in the mid-nineteenth century but I found it very accessible.
There are many moving passages and the author, in spite of her northern and Christian sensibilities, had clearly attempted to the best of her ability to present a true portrait of slavery. She met with Abraham Lincoln and it is often said that "Uncle Tom's Cabin" helped to launch and justify The American Civil War of 1861 to 1865.
Here's a small fragment of Mrs Beecher Stowe's writing:-
“Have not many of us, in the weary way of life, felt, in some hours, how far easier it were to die than to live?
The martyr, when faced even by a death of bodily anguish and horror, finds in the very terror of his doom a strong stimulant and tonic. There is a vivid excitement, a thrill and fervour, which may carry through any crisis of suffering that is the birth-hour of eternal glory and rest.
But to live, to wear on, day after day, of mean, bitter, low, harassing servitude, every nerve dampened and depressed, every power of feeling gradually smothered, this long and wasting heart-martyrdom, this slow, daily bleeding away of the inward life, drop by drop, hour after hour, this is the true searching test of what there may be in man or woman.”
I didn't realize that either.
ReplyDeleteWell there we are then Margaret.
DeleteWhen President Lincoln met the author during the Civil War he is supposed to have said,
ReplyDelete*So you are the little woman who wrote the book that who started this great war !*
A gross simplification, this is the copy on the back of my Oxford paperback edition, with a beautiful cover showing a young African woman, painted by Neville Lewis.
I wish you could upload this image and show the girl's face on your post, Neil.
Certainly many Union soldiers carried a copy of the novel in their kitbag, though a century later the book was stigmatised, with good reason, by Negroes; and Uncle Tom, a black man in the novel, was a hated term.
Can a whole class be convicted as racists and abusers?
White Americans during Reconstruction who demanded Segregation can be convicted of such evil. See *The Story Behind the Green Book* YouTube.
Can a social class be characterised as sick or diseased in their ideas? Yes.
Following your post on Gaugin, I looked at online data on the French writer Gabriel Matzneff, who confessed without shame to being a serial paedophile.
Online articles reveal that Matzneff was supported by leading French intellectuals. Until recently France had no law protecting minors.
French intellectuals, media figures, celebrities and publishers defended Matzneff's right to abuse and violate a 'consenting' child.
Parents were told they had no rights in the matter.
Slavery is seen now as evil incarnate, but France had no problem until recently with child abuse.
I shall read *Uncle Tom's Cabin* again but my copy of Matzneff's French language Journal (1953-1962) published by Folio is fit only for the dustbin.
He is now living in Italy and will probably escape prosecution.
Haggerty
Matzneff should be brought to justice like a war criminal. To ruin the life of a single child is monstrous. I will look out for that illustration.
DeleteOne of my sisters works for an NGO and has taken seminars on child sex abuse.
DeleteShe told me last night that there was no Age of Consent in France until recently, and that for decades France refused all calls for legislation.
Catherine Deneuve supported a senior French politician who settled out of court after raping a chambermaid in a New York hotel.
The postbellum South must have been a very strange place.
Alfred Kazin visited it in the 1930s and met Southern academics and gentleman journalists. Segregation haunted white people as James Baldwin observed.
See Kazin's autobiography *New York Jew* a compelling read.
Flannery O'Connor declined the chance to meet James Baldwin when he visited Georgia in 1959.
She said she would meet him in New York but not in her home State.
Google the two writers and you will find a New Yorker essay and others.
Ta-Nehisi Coates is an American writer to watch. Read his essays.
Haggerty
Our teacher read Uncle Tom's Cabin to us in school. Teachers read to us every day after lunch. so now I guess it's time for me to read Uncle Tom's Cabin.
ReplyDeleteI guess your school room in Esk was a bit like a cabin.
DeleteI came down here to tell you the abraham Lincoln anecdote. A very inspiring follow up would be to read something on Frederick Douglass. I live in a part of the country that provided stops on the underground railroad. My in-laws house had a hiding place.
ReplyDeleteThat is as they say - awesome Debby.
DeleteI tried to reread Uncle Tom's Cabin a few years ago, or was it Huckleberry Finn. Whatever, while I enjoyed both when I was young, I found whichever unreadable and very boring. The tarring and feathering rather interested me when I was young. I have no memory of what I thought about slavery aside from it being historical. I guess I would have thought nothing to do my life. How wrong I was.
ReplyDelete"Uncle Tom's Cabin" isn't the easiest book to tackle. I am glad I read it at the age I am at.
DeleteThere is no such thing as an 'Innocent Age' we are all guilty of some misdemeanour. haven't read the book so can't comment on it but remember the Brer Rabbit controversy.
ReplyDeleteThe Brer Rabbit issue was quite complicated I believe. I can't say that I understand what went on but I know that the story had its roots in Africa.
DeleteLike Andrew, I read Uncle Tom's Cabin when I was young. Recently I picked it up and read a few passages to see if I should read it again and was not impressed by the simplistic, one-dimensional character portrayals. But I appreciated it back then.
ReplyDeleteYes. It had its faults but the main thrust of this book was very admirable.
DeleteShe sounds very preachy, although if ever there was a subject that needed preaching then this was it. A book I might try to read .
ReplyDeleteIt helped to turn the tide.
DeleteHarriet Beecher Stowe lived part of her later life in Jacksonville, Fla., near where my brother lives. Her name pops up all over the place in his neighborhood. I've never read "Uncle Tom's Cabin" but I have it on my bucket list, so hopefully one of these days. Stowe's editors and publishers probably wanted to give it a fairly benign title to entice those who might be put off by something more stridently abolitionist. Publishers are all about marketing and book sales, and I imagine that was true even then!
ReplyDeleteGood point Steve. Your guess is probably spot on. I just wish that the cabin had had more significance.
DeleteI know I read it well into adulthood at some point when I realized I'd never read it in my youth, and I seem to recall borrowing it from the library, so it would be before my Kindle days. I checked my reading list that I have kept on my computer since 2002, and found that I read it in 2007 (and in English). Went to the big A website and found that I've also downloaded it years ago as free Kindle book, and because of that I was now offered to also buy it as audio book for as little as $2.49. So I may end up reviving my vague memories of details by listening.
ReplyDeleteThere are so many books to read aren't there DT? We will never get through them all.
DeleteI've never read this! Your excellent post makes me realize it's never too late to add it to my TBR pile.
ReplyDeleteAll Americans should read it. It's part of your heritage.
DeleteI'm ashamed to say I have never read Uncle Tom's Cabin. I feel that I must.
ReplyDeleteI must also thank you for your excellent blog.
After an unexpectedly difficultly December - as much logistical as anything - I'm finally catching up on some of my favourites to wish their authors a happy new year and say thanks for reading and commenting on mine. Yours has been a new find for me this year - and an especially excellent one - I look forward to reading more.
Meanwhile, I hope next year brings us better times and plenty of words (and pictures) to inspire and entertain.
Best wishes
Mark
Kind words Mark - thank you! My head has now grown so big that I can't get out of this study! Happy New Year Sir!
DeleteAlthough I don't remember much about it (I was possibly too young when I read it) my parents provided lots of books to us as older children. That was one as were Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn and many others. I think the titles you suggested would have spelt instant death to the book by the way.
ReplyDelete