Another book review: Uncle Tom's Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe
Well one of the benefits of forced inactivity is that you can get round to reading some books, even some old ones. This is the oldest one I have read this year. First published in 1852, and the lovely UK volume I was reading came out in 1895. It was a huge hit, both in the US and in the UK, and it is quite likely that it was the best-selling novel in the world in the 19th century, outselling Dickens, Twain, Eliot, Tolstoy and Balzac by a very large margin.
(warning: spoilers in the following two paragraphs)
The small number of you who have not heard of it deserve a precis: It is an explicitly anti-slavery and abolitionist novel written by a long-time abolitionist who thought it might help the cause (it did!). The plot features two different slaves, Uncle Tom and Eliza, who initially work on the same estate, for the benign though disorganised Shelbys, and because of Mr Shelby's speculations putting him at financial risk from a slave-trader who can bankrupt him, Tom is sold and Eliza's child is going to be sold too. Eliza overhears and goes on the run with her child. Tom, a very honest and sober Christian, knows that if he runs another slave will be sold in his place so he goes placidly to his fate. Over the rest of the book we see a variety of good and bad slave owners (some of them very bad like Legree, some of them endearing and open like St Clare) but in the end Eliza escapes by the skin of her teeth to free Canada and Tom, taking his fate and becoming more and more Christian, is ground down and eventually killed.
The drama and conversations in the slave-owners houses show - which was Beecher Stowe's point - that even if there are good owners, the system itself cannot be right because bankruptcy, death or disaster will throw their slaves onto a bad master, because they are treated by the law as assets, and nothing more.
There are particular evils that she focuses on in the book. The fact that slave's children are simply another asset to be sold by the owner at their will is contrasted sharply with the expectation of her readers that their own children are always theirs to love and protect. She also shows, through the character of particularly bad and degraded slaves that the system is calculated to produce a vicious character in many slaves themselves, because there is neither protection, nor hope of change, nor even hope of defending yourself against dishonesty, as a negro statement was never considered by the laws of Southern states.
She is even very fair in allowing all the pro-slavery arguments of its defenders and not mocking them but showing how they fail in the reality of the world. The argument that life is comfortable and well-provided for slaves on 'good' estates is shown to be no benefit because fate can deliver you to a bailiff the next day. The argument that African slaves are 'unable' to manage themselves is countered not just be plenty of examples of those who rise and thrive in freedom but by the observation that the very system of slavery works hard against the abilities that slaves need to prosper in the world, but that this is the system's fault, not the slave's.
She even puts into the mouth of one of her characters the comparison with the working class in England (very communist here really), saying that they are as much slaves to their masters as the plantation slaves are. And there is truth in it, but it still doesn't mean you should not fight both legal slavery and employer/worker slavery.
So should you read it? If you have some spare days I'd say yes. It has long passages of religious enthusiasm both from the author and from characters, but no more than the run of Victorian novels. It has a rattling plot and a good range of characters, many of whom are satisfyingly imperfect. You may find Uncle Tom himself a bit too sweet for your taste, but he needs to be for the author's purpose. Go on, give it a go.
And if you would like a musical and more 'felt' take on slavery, watch this song 'At the purchaser's option' by Rhiannon Giddens. Ads will intrude, but do read the handbill.
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