From: Gossett, Thomas F. UNCLE TOM'S CABIN AND AMERICAN CULTURE, 1985.
02-06-94 Gossett 10_191.007 Gossett, Thomas F. UNCLE TOM'S CABIN AND AMERICAN CULTURE. Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1985. 444, n. 46: W.E.B. Du Bois: Aptheker, Book Reviews, pp. 17-18; said nothing about Uncle Tom or the other black characters in the novel. ...."His own conception of the innate traits of the black characters was different from that of Stowe, but he did share at least some of her ideas on this subject. "This race has the greatest gifts of God, laughter. It dances and sings; it is humble; it longs to learn; it loves men; it loves women. It is frankly, baldly, deliciously human in an artificial and hypocritical land.." DUSK of DAWN, 1940, p. 148 48: IV Stowe in Cincinnati 49: wrote Calvin in 1842: "Now by the grace of God I am resolved to come home [writing from Buffalo] & live for God. It is time to prepare to die -- the lamp has not long to burn --the hour is flying -- all things are sliding away & eternity is coming. Will you dear husbandjoing with ime in simplicity earnestness to live a new life ... [?] Shy look at it [?] -- Life is half gone! What have we done? We are both of us no longer young[.] We both of us have already the sentence of death in our members-- the grey hair will never become black again but the black hair will become grey. ..." wants them to give themselves to Christ wholly; "to KNOW him, the power of his death the fellowship of his sufferings...." 31 at the time Calvin often wrote her of his melancholy, HBS wrote sister-in-law: "I read the letter and poke it into the stove, and proceed. ..." December 17, 1850 to Mrs. George Beecher; 51-52: 1844 letter to Calvin re: temptations facing men viz other women: had heard a sermon of her brother's (ironically Henry Ward Beecher) on the unexpected falls among high places in the church and the need of prayers." presentment came over her and she wrote Calvin: "I thought of all my brothers and of you -- and could it be, that as I am gifted with amost horribly vivid imagination, in a moment imagined --nay saw as ina vision all the distress and despair that would follow a fall on your part. I felt weak and sick -- I took a book and lay down on the bed, but it pursued me like a nightmare -- and something seemed to ask if your husband [was?] any better SEEMING than so and so! -- I looked in the galss and my face which since spring has been something of the palest was so haggard that it frightened me. The illusion lasted a whole forenoon and then evaporated like a poinonous mist --but God knows how I pity those heart wrung women -- wives worse than widows, who are called to lament that the grave has NOT covered their husbands-- the father of their children ... what terrible temptations lie in the wake of your sex -- till now I never realized it-- for tho I did love you with an almost insane love before I married you I never knew yet or felt the pulsation which showed me that I could be tempted in that way -- there never was a moment when I felt anything by which you could have drawn me astray -- for I loved you as Inow love God -- and can concieve of no higher lover -- and as I have no jealousy, -- the most beautiful woman in the world could not make me jealous as long as she only DAZZLED THE SENSES -- but not to look or think too freely on womankind. If your sex would guard the outworks of THOUGHT, you would never fall and when so dizzying so astounding are the advanages which Satan scarce is implying a doubt to say "be cautious".... " 19 July 1844 to Calvin, Schelisinger Library, Harvard. "Some biographers and critics of Stowe have argued that she developed a sympathy for slaves because she was, in a real sense, a slave herself -- a slave to family cares, household chores, and ill health." 54-55: argues that HBS had a strong NE bias and that blaming NE'drs for their views on slavery was a 'stratagem' 62-63: suggests that she comes to slavery late; did not experience much of the reality of plantation life; 63: suggests that Catherine made UTC possible by giving a year of her life in Brunswick ME "to help manage the hosuehold while Stowe was engaged in composition. Stowe, though busy enough, would still have time to nurture her indignation, sort out her memories, and write the novel." 64: V Stowe's Ideas of Race 65: argues that her "black characters frequently represent the vagaries of human character much more than they do racist theory." "As a writer, Stowe worked on a deeper level when whe was creating characters than when whe was enunciating principles." 69-70: comments on southern italians- cruelty of Neopolitans 78: in 1858 after drowning of a son, becomes a spiritualist 82: sees differences in northern and southern Europeans, perhaps drawn from her reading of Madame de Stael's Corinne, 1807, novel. belief in phrenology: uses Minister's Wooing, 1859 as source: contrasts slave trader whose physical features including his round head "showed a preponderance of the animal and burtal over the intellectual and spiritual," with Dr. Hopkins whose head indicates that he "is capable of subtle refinements of argument and exalted ideas of morals." "This is no doubt a prejudiced way of looking at people, but not racism." 83: Alexander Kinmont, public lectures in Cincinnati, winter of 1837-38; HBS and he "shared that it is the inherent meekness of the blacks which gives them a special talent for religion." Blacks have a higher mission on earth than whites; would take civilization to new heights of affection and of gentleness; 86: It is this perception of blacks as gentle, submissive, etc. that eventually leads to the rejection of UTC and HBS altogether, especially among blacks, but among some whites too. Comes after WW II. 87: VI The Writing of Uncle Tom's Cabin 88: fugitive slave law: took matter out of courts; placed in hands of commissioners who were paid more in fees ($10) to send a slave back to freedom than if set free; no appeal to the courts; higher fee seemed a bribe to anti-slavery forces; cost of extra paperwork to South; cites Stanley W. Campbell, The Slave Catchers: Enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law, 1850-1860, 1970, p. 3-25. 89: earlier essay, August 1850, Freeman's Dream: A Parable; "Compared with this crude effort, UTC would be a masterpiece of persuasion. There would be horror and indignation in it too, but these qualities would be expressed in such a way as to make the reader more likely to feel them himself." 90: in same letter that she tells Calvin she will write the thing, she deplores the Boston clergymen who refused to speak out against the Fugitive Slave law: "I wish Father would come to Boston and preach on the Fugitive Slave law as he once [in Litchfield when she was a child] preached on the slave trade. ... Mrs. Judge Reeves [sister of Aaron Burr?] was crying in one pew and I in another. I wish some Martin Luther would arise to set this community right." 12/1850 while Calvin was still in Cincinnati. 90-91: life in Brunswick: "Overhead is the school room, in the next room the dining room, and the girls practice there two hours a day; & if I lock my door and like down some one is sure to be at it before a half hour is through." worries about expenses: "God shall enable us to come thro notwithstanding, but I don't want to feel obliged to work as hard every year as I have this -- I can earn two hundred by writing but I don't want to feel that I MUST write a piece for some paper." tells Calvin that she is thinking of writing for the National Era on the "capabilities of liberated blacks to take care of themselves" and wants facts from Calvin; 93: suggests that HBS was "possessed with a prolonged spell of religious hysteria" that may have extended back to when she wrote UTC, although he finds no evidence of that at the time 94: "she thought God was guiding her pen." 96: "Though UTC often has a strongly emotional tone, it is not messianic. What gives the novel its continuing power is cheifly that the characters in it are reognizable as human beings reacting in complex ways to their experience. It is directe against slavery and not against the white South, and it concedes the North's complicity in guilt." also conceds that many white southerners try to alleviate cruelty, etc. "Most important of all, the novel is directed to the nation, not alone to the North." 97: quotes painter letter to G. Bailey, orig of which is lost; exists only in typescript at Boston Public Library. 9 March 1851: "Up to this year I have always felt that I had no particular call to meddle with this subject, and I dread to expose even my own mind to the full force of its exciting power. But I feel now that the timne is come when even a woman or a child who can speak a word for freedom and humanity is bound to speak. ... My vocation is simply that of a PAINTER, and my object will be to hold up in the most lifelike and graphic manner possible Slavery, its reverses, changes, and the negro character which I have had ample opportunity for studying. There is no arguing with PICTURES, and everybody is impressed by them, whether they mean to be or not." clearly did not know how long the story would be; disparages the notion that she felt at the time that it was inspiration, written by, God 98: major source of strength is humor: mostly related to black characters; suggests racism present, but contest that there is more that 99: "For their [the blacks] ignorance, they can scarely be blamed. The reader does not finish reading UTC with the conviction that the black characters in it are inherently stupid." still has power still is believable "In the passion of her moral argument, Stowe does not lose sight of the major task of a novelist -- to conjure up a world, a fictional world but one which is believable." because it was powerful novel, "antislavery became a powerful cause." 100: UTC pt I discussion of the two plots; relationship of white to black, esp. differences between mullatto and all black; suggests that there is no love story? that two plots unknown in a novel until Tolstoy, Anna Karenina cabin is a stroke of genius, symbolize loss of family, home under slavery 108: compares Josiah Henson with Uncle Tom; Henson, b. slave in MD, 1789; 110: notes that HBS wrote a preface for a english edition printed in Germany in which she seems ambivalent about the ability of blacks without white blood to be able to survive free; 111: did she think blacks especially fitted for menial labor? Chloe as cook? 112: shrewdness of Sam reading what his mistress really wanted: Eliza to escape 112: notes that Cassy first appears as a character in Richard Hildreth's novel The Slave, 1836; standard anti-slavery fiction 114: suggests Stowe knew women would be more likely to read her novel than men 116: suggest that Stowe hoped to be read in the South and to convert through the persuasiveness of her stories; slavery would end in a great act of National repentance 117: HBS worried about negative reaction among anti-slavery leaders; 118: interesting contrast between Mrs. Bird and Mrs. Shelby; one can resist and the other cannot 119: does not fully understand the communicative power of what HBS is writing about or through Mrs. Bird. Is she not making fun of men and telling women that they know and she knows even if male readers and male characters in the novel do not. review gentle Mrs. Bird. Mrs. Bird does know more about politics, does know how to control her husband, but is constrained from custom and the accepted notions of the role of women to let everyone except the women readers know it. 120: analysis of Tom Loker, Mr. Marks the lawyer, and Haley, mentions Lucy but not her self-destruction; value of a religious slave; 122: clergymen- 124: biblical defense of slaver- HBS in KEY argues that there is a qualitative difference between OT slavery and American slavery; that it is more like extended family; 126: "part of the power of the antislavery message in UTC was that it did not ask the religiously orthodox to forsake belief in the infallibity of the Bible. 127: VIII UTC, Part II 128: says Legree was born and raised in Vermont [where in UTC does it say that? 185: XI reaction in the South to UTC 187: accdg to Lydia Maria Child, Senator James A. Pearce? of Maryland praised UTC in a conversation with someone. Child quotes him re: sale of Tom by Shelby: "Here's a writer who knows how to sympathize with the South. I could fall down at the feet of that woman. She knows how to feel for a man when he is obliged to sell a good honest slave." Letters of Lydia Maria Child, 1884, p. 68-70. 189: John R. Thompson in the Southern Literary Messenger, critic, but writes: "Possessed of a happy faculty of description, an easy and natural style, an uncommon command of pathos and considerable dramatic skill whe might have done much to enrich the literature of America, and to gladden and elevate her fellow beings." Instead she had "volunteered officiously to intermeddle with things which concern her not -- to libel ... a people from among whom have gone forth some of the noblest men that have adorned the race -- top foment hearburnings and unappeaseable hatred between brethren of a common country." Oct 1852, 18, p. 630 (n. 7, p. 427) [Southern criticism centered on HBS being obsessed with sex, not knowing her place as a woman] 197: George Frederick Holmes in the Southern Literary Messenger said that the murder of Uncle Tom was "an outrage with every Southern man would reprobate with ndignant scorn -- and punish by the summary application of Lynchlaw, which mayh be sometimes profitable applied." n. 22 206: "A frequent charge against UNCLE TOM"S CABIN among southern critics was that it subtly advocated racial intermarriage and amalgamation." Mary H. Eastman's AUNT PHILLIS"S CABIN "would rather MY children and negroes were educated at different schools, being utterly opposed amalgamation, root and branch." n. 42 210: William Gilmore Simms: "Nothing but a convulsion which shall shake the country to its center, can now arrest them. WE must be prepared for this -- prepared to engatge in the final issue whenever the Fedceral Gvoernment falls into the hands of our assailants. Pride, prejudice, hate, vanity, the love of power, the phrensies of fanaticism, are all combined against us." 1853. 211: notes Samuel Green, and source for his info: Theodore Tilton, "Out of Jail. The Black Man who was Imprisoned for Reading UTC," Liberator, 4 July 1862." also McCray biog, 1889, p. 106 for story of severed ear of black man sent to HBS, but intercepted by Calvin before she saw it. argues that after two years (and an angry reaction to the KEY) South apparently lapsed "into what was meant to be a dignified silence"
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