Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- 1 Stowe and race
- 2 Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the south
- 3 Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the American Renaissance
- 4 Reading and children:Uncle Tom’s Cabin and The Pearl of Orr’s Island
- 5 Uncle Tom and Harriet Beecher Stowe in England
- 6 Staging black insurrection: Dred on stage
- 7 Stowe and regionalism
- 8 Stowe and the law
- 9 Harriet Beecher Stowe and the American reform tradition
- 10 Harriet Beecher Stowe and the dream of the great American novel
- 11 Stowe and the literature of social change
- 12 The afterlife of Uncle Tom’s Cabin
- Select bibliography
- Index
- Series List
2 - Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the south
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 May 2006
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- 1 Stowe and race
- 2 Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the south
- 3 Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the American Renaissance
- 4 Reading and children:Uncle Tom’s Cabin and The Pearl of Orr’s Island
- 5 Uncle Tom and Harriet Beecher Stowe in England
- 6 Staging black insurrection: Dred on stage
- 7 Stowe and regionalism
- 8 Stowe and the law
- 9 Harriet Beecher Stowe and the American reform tradition
- 10 Harriet Beecher Stowe and the dream of the great American novel
- 11 Stowe and the literature of social change
- 12 The afterlife of Uncle Tom’s Cabin
- Select bibliography
- Index
- Series List
Summary
“Read Uncle Tom’s Cabin again.”
These simple words are from Mary Boykin Chesnut's magisterial Diary of her life in South Carolina during the Civil War years, and they indicate that she has read Uncle Tom's Cabin at least once before. Chesnut frequently invokes Stowe's novel as a discursive foil for her typically positive observations about the institution of slavery, the slaves within it, and the south more generally. She writes, “Topsys I have known - but none that were beauties - or ill-used. Evas are mostly in the heaven of Mrs. Stowe's imagination. People can't love things dirty, ugly, repulsive, simply because they ought, but they can be good to them - at a distance.” Despite their great political differences, however, Stowe's imagination seems never far from Chesnut's, who concedes, in one of her most famous lines, that “Mrs. Stowe did not hit the sorest spot. She makes Legree a bachelor” (168).
Chesnut’s Diary provides an entry point into an analysis of southern responses to Uncle Tom’s Cabin. That they were deeply hostile comes as no surprise, although the negativity assumed particular discursive forms and strategies which will be the subject of this essay. That Stowe was a woman made the southern counter-assault more complicated in that several reviewers, especially men, felt the need to explain the vehemence of their critique of a novel written by a woman. In an especially rabid review, George Frederick Holmes begins by defending himself against the hypothetical accusation that he lacks chivalry: “the rule that everyone bearing the name and appearance of a lady, should receive the delicate gallantry and considerate tenderness which are due to a lady, is not absolutely without exception.”
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge Companion to Harriet Beecher Stowe , pp. 39 - 57Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004