When discussing Uncle Tom's Cabin in relation to the American Renaissance, it is customary - or perhaps obligatory - to marshal the differences between Stowe's great work and the masterpieces, say, of Hawthorne and Melville, a move that invariably begins with the same enumeration but proceeds to radically polarized conclusions. The male-authored classics of the 1850s, goes the argument, are marked by philosophical probing, stylistic density, subtle characterization, and self-reflexive irony. Stowe's novel, on the other hand, is stocked with two-dimensional characters, written in a straightforward, undistinguished prose, and rife with sentimental situations intended to reduce readers to tears rather than taxing their intellects. Having established this contrast, the critic, depending on his or her perspective, then construes the undeniable differences as either a tribute to Stowe's political agenda or a reproof of her aesthetic shortcomings. The second judgment, more common a generation ago, would pronounce the author of Uncle Tom's Cabin an effective agitator but an infinitely less accomplished writer than her contemporaries. The first judgment, now pretty much the standard one, acclaims her as a novelist of “sentimental power” who sought not textual complexity but societal change, and whose narrative was supremely calculated to achieve that objective.