The Sentimental Novel and Uncle Toms Cabin

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The Sentimental Novel and Uncle Toms Cabin

• English 441
• Dr. Roggenkamp

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1850s explosion of literary marketplace

• Fiction normalized as reading material of choice
• Spectacular boom of sentimental fiction fiction
  written largely by women, about women, for women

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American Sentimental Fiction

• Chief formula Home Jesus
• Overly emotional, unbelievable coincidences, tidy
  endings, marriage plots, inconceivable number of
  tears
• Saintly heroines overcome travails with help of
  religion
• Ultimate goals motherhood, morality, marriage
• Pious to a repulsive degree (F. L. Mott).
• Image Frontispiece, The Wide, Wide
  World, Susan Warner, 1850.

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Harriet Beecher Stowe

• 1811-1896
• Daughter of famous minister, sister of six
  ministers, wife of minister and college religion
  professor
• Mother of six young children in 1851
• Home and Jesus personified

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Motivation Fugitive Slave Law of 1850

• Part of Compromise of 1850 would territories be
  admitted to Union as free or slave?
• Made all people in all states party to de facto
  support of slavery
• Give food, shelter, assistance to fugitive slave
  1,000 fine and 6 months jail (21,000 today)

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Composition History

• Contract with Gamaliel Bailey, National Era (one
  of largest weekly newspapers of day)
• Expected 3-4 installment story
• Ended up 49 installments, June 1851 April 1852
• Difficulty of seeking out book publisher
• Readers role keep it coming!

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THE book that really mattered for
nineteenth-century readers

• (Image University of Virginia, UTC site)

• Made Stowe an early international megastar
• Sales 10,000 in first week 300,000 by end of
  1852 outsold only by Bibleeven bigger sensation
  in Great Britain
• Plays, songs (20 in 1852 alone), card games,
  puzzles, poems, print edition after edition, etc.
• Films 1902, one of first done 1927, most
  expensive silent film ever

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Anti-Uncle Tom Novels

• At least 27 published 1852-1860
• Happy slaves (servants) and benevolent,
  parental masters
• Aunt Phillis's Cabin or, Southern Life As It
  IsBy Mary Henderson Eastman Philadelphia
  Lippincott, Grambo Co, 1852
• Uncle Robin in His Cabin in Virginia, and Tom
  Without One in BostonBy J. W. Page Richmond J.
  W. Randolph, 1853

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African-American Response Mixed

• Many praised anti-slavery message
• Others Criticism of colonialization idea and
  of racist stereotypes
• Some see Tom as overly docile others read him as
  symbolically triumphant and powerful
• Read Stowe as Opheliaa woman distinctly
  uncomfortable with idea of racial equality

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Colonization

• Martin Cross, poem in Frederick Douglass Paper,
  March 25, 1853
• Talk not to me of colonizationFor Im a free
  man of this native landNot of Africas burning
  sun and sandWe hereby make our proclamationThat
  were opposed to emigrationThis is the land
  which gave us birthOur fathers graves are
  freedoms earth.

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A book that mattered . . .

• Power to shape story of African-American
  experience in minds of white readers / viewers
• Ultimate points saintliness of Little Eva
  faithfulness of Uncle Tom minstrelsy
• Uncle Tom becomes the stereotype Uncle Tom
  because of revisions of text
• Tom shows

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The Bottom Line

• Positively embroiled and embedded in whole web of
  literary, social, and cultural contexts
• Story told and retold through shifting contexts
  original newspaper text, book text, 1850s
  responses, continued responses today, countless
  other media (plays, songs, poems, films,
  advertisements, cookware, paper dolls, etc. etc.
  etc.)

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Uncle Tom Artifacts
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More Uncle Tom Artifacts
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More Uncle Tom Artifacts
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Tom in Advertising
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Tom in Advertising, 3
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Recommended Web Resources

• http//memory.loc.gov/ammem/today/jun05.html
• http//www.iath.virginia.edu/utc/sitemap.html