The Character Analysis of Uncle Toms cabin 《汤姆叔叔的小屋

The Character Analysis of Uncle

Tom’s cabin

《汤姆叔叔的小屋》中的人物分析

Contents

Abstract (1)

Key Words (1)

I. The motivation and significance of choosing this title (2)

Ⅱ.The family background the authoress (3)

Ⅲ.Background on Uncle Tom's Cabi n (5)

Ⅳ.Short Summary of Uncle Tom's Cabin (6)

Ⅴ.The character analysis (8)

i. Tom (8)

ii. Little Eva (8)

iii. Sambo&Qimbo (9)

iv. Eliza (9)

Ⅵ.The Bible gives a great influence upon the character (10)

Ⅶ.Something about Mrs. Stowe’s Solution to Slavery (12)

Ⅷ.Conclusion (14)

Reference (15)

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摘要：本文作者从圣经原型的角度出发，试图分析《汤姆叔叔的小屋》中的一系列人物形象，比如汤姆叔叔、小伊娃、萨姆波和昆波以及几位虔诚的理想基督教徒母亲，重点分析了本文的主人公汤姆对黑人，白人及对生死的态度。认为汤姆与圣经中的耶稣有着极其相似的经历，从而进一步揭示这部小说中的宗教理念。反对奴隶制精神与基督教精神和谐地并存在这本著作中，已经有许多文章对此著作中所体现的废奴精神以及男女平等主义作过评论。因此，这篇论文主要是针对此著作中所体现的基督教精神作一探讨。并且，本文探讨了斯托夫人解决奴隶制的办法，认为用宗教感化的方式不可能解决奴隶制。本文作者希望这篇论文对读者能从新的角度来欣赏这本经典著作有所帮助。

关键词：圣经原型人物形象基督教理念

Abstract: The author of this thesis attempts to analyze various characters, such as Uncle Tom, little Eva, Sambo and Qimbo and some pious, ideal Christian in Uncle Tom’s Cabin in terms of Biblical archetype. The analysis emphasizes on Tom’s attitudes toward Blacks, Whites and his attitude towards death. I try to reveal the Christianity in this novel. The protagonist of the novel Tom shares a similar experience and temperament with Jesus Christ. Anti-slavery spirit and the spirit of Christianity co-exist quite harmoniously in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Many articles have been written to discuss the anti-slavery spirit or feminism in it. However, this thesis will mainly focus on Christianity in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. This thesis also probes into Mrs. Stowe’s solution to the institution of slavery. I found that the solution to slavery shouldn’t depend on the way of moving the White by religion belief. I hope this thesis will be of any help to readers to appreciate this classic novel in a new way.

Key Words: Biblical archetype ,character ,Christianity

The Character Analysis of Uncle Tom’s cabin

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I. The motivation and significance of choosing this title

It’s commonly agreed that Uncle Tom’s Cabin is an anti-slavery novel. Yet, anti-slavery spirit is not contradictory or incompatible with spirit of Christianity. In fact, they co-exist quite harmoniously in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Feminism is also quite evident in this book. Many articles have been written to discuss the anti-slavery spirit or feminism in it. However, this thesis will mainly focus on Christianity in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. In this thesis, I attempt to analyze various characters, such as Uncle Tom, little Eva, and some pious, ideal Christian believers. I try to reveal the Christianity in this novel, and to probe into Mrs. Stowe’s solution to the institution of slavery.

I hope this thesis will be of any help to Chinese readers to appreciate this classic novel in a new way.

I found this book very hard to start with. I think the reason for this was possibly that Harriet Beecher Stowe uses a lot of references to the Bible and does seem to preach a lot. I found the sermons a bit off-putting, and I often needed a break from the book. There is no other story line to provide relief from the subjects of racism and Christianity, so it made the book quite hard going. In 1852, when this novel was first published, I can imagine that it would have had a huge impact on Christian Americans and spread the abolitionist message far around the country, but for my reading it now, I found it harder to imagine society attitude at that time. It is also hard to imagine the reactions the book would have provoked in 1852, as there is no black slavery today. However, I still feel the book has relevance to racism and Christian attitudes today. I think it might have helped if I had spent some time reading about the events around 1852 in America to understand the background of the novel more. It is a powerful book and it was written to be controversial and motivate America to abolish slavery. To do this it follows the lives of several black slaves throughout the novel. Many incidents in the novel were based on real observation. I think it is a successful book as it opened my eyes to see how cruel slavery really was. I was amazed at the difference in attitudes of the slave owners towards their slaves in the novel- Augustine St Clare being so indulgent of his slaves and the contrast of Simon Legree treating them like dogs, and refusing to believe they were human. Harriet Beecher Stowe uses Christian ideas of heaven and souls to persuade her readers that the black slaves were indeed people. She also uses the religious character of Uncle Tom to infer that many Negroes were more religious than their masters (a factor that must have been very important at the time the book was written). Stowe also uses conversations between characters to explore Christian attitudes towards slavery- how parts of the bible can be misused to support slavery when the whole of the bible could not possibly be seen to support the trade. She also explores attitudes towards the education of slaves and people’s opinions on the way they should be treated.

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It is well known that western literature is based on two pillars--the Greek culture and the Hebrew culture. In the Hebrew culture, there is a book, namely, the Bible that accumulates its rich cultural heritage. Most western authors are influenced by those two literary origins consciously or unconsciously. They, without doubt, also influenced Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896), a nineteenth century American female writer. Yet, with her strong religious background, she tended to be influenced deeper by the latter than by the former. Born into a family of religion, Harriet’s father, Lyman Beecher was one of America’s most celebrated clergymen and the principal spokesman for Calvinism in the nineteenth century; her mother, was a woman of prayer who died when Harriet was four years old; her brother, Henry Ward Beecher, was the best known pulpit orator of his times. In 1836, she was married to Calvin Stowe, a Biblical scholar. In a word, Harriet Beecher Stowe was bred, and lived all her life at the atmosphere of Christianity that inevitably influenced her masterpiece Uncle Tom’s Ca bin.

In fact, all the characters in Uncle Tom’s Cabin can be put into four categories: perfect Christians, imperfect Christians, half-Christians and non-Christians. Tom and Eva are those rare real Christians or perfect Christians who really live up to the principles of the Bible. Imperfect Christians include those like Mrs. Shelby and Miss Ophelia etc. They believe God, but their selfishness or hypocrisy prevents them from being good Christians. For example, Mrs. Shelby rationalizes her actions by ‘gild(ing) it over’ with ‘kindness and care’ (P.33). She is angry about her husband’s sale of Tom and Harris because she doesn’t know how she can ever hold up her head again among them (P.32). Miss Ophelia, though has missionary zeal, dares not to be tough to Topsy, the slave girl she is reforming for she still has the sense of white superiority at the bottom of her heart. There are also some half-Christians or going-to-be Christians, such as St. Clare and George Harris. St. Clare is always skeptical towards religion and doesn’t believe God until his daughters and his own deaths. Harris is another example. He is rebellious at first, but when his family reunion comes to a reality, he becomes more content and comes nearer to God. While Simon Legree is a typical example of non-Christian whose tough nature refuse to be touched by any good word. He doesn’t repent even at his last minute. This kind of categorizing might be oversimplifying. Yet, this is a pattern that I found in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. So in this sense, Uncle Tom’s Cabin is a book soaked with spirit of Christianity.

II. The family background of the authoress

Harriet Beecher Stowe was born in Litchfield, Connecticut and brought up with puritanical strictness. She had one sister and six brothers. Her father, Lyman Beecher, was a controversial Calvinist preacher. When Stowe was four, her aunt, Harriet Foote, deeply influenced Stowe's thinking, especially with her strong belief in culture. Samuel Foote, her uncle, encouraged her to

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read works of Lord Byron and Sir Walter Scott. When Stowe was eleven years old, she entered the seminary at Hartford, Connecticut, kept by her elder sister, Catherine. The school had advanced curriculum and she learned languages, natural and mechanical science, composition, ethics, logic, mathematics: subjects that were generally taught to male students. Four years later she was employed as an assistant teacher. Her father married again and became the president of Lane Theological Seminary. Catherine and Harriet founded a new seminary, the Western Female Institute. With her sister, Stowe wrote a children's geography book. In 1834 Stowe began her literary career when she won a prize contest of the Western Monthly Magazine, and soon Stowe was a regular contributor of stories and essays. Her first book, The Mayflower, first appeared in 1843.

In 1836 Stowe married Calvin Ellis Stowe, a professor at her father's theological seminary. He was a widower; his late wife had been Stowe's friend. The early years of their marriage were marked by poverty. Over the next fourteen years Stowe had seven children. In 1850 Calvin Stowe was offered a professorship at Bowdoin, and the family moved to Brunswick, Maine. In Cincinnati Stowe had come in contact with fugitive slaves. She learned about life in the South from her own visits there and saw how cruel slavery was. In addition, the Fugitive Slave Law, passed by Congress in 1850, arose much protest - giving shelter or assistance to an escaped slave became a crime. And finally a personal tragedy, the death of her infant Samuel from cholera, led Stowe to compose her famous novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin. It was first published in the anti-slavery newspaper The National Era, from June 1851 to April 1852, and later in book form. The story was to some extent based on both true events and the life of Josiah Henson. "I could not control the story, the Lord himself wrote it," Stowe once said. "I was but an instrument in His hands and to Him should be given all the praise." When Abraham Lincoln met Stowe he joked, "So you're the little woman who wrote the book that started this Great War." The novel was smuggled into Russia in Yiddish to evade the Czarist censor. It also remained enormously popular after the Revolution.

Stowe's popularity opened her doors to the national literary magazines. She started to publish her writings in The Atlantic Monthly and later in Independent and in Christian Union. For some time she was the most celebrated woman writer in The Atlantic Monthly and in the New England literary clubs. In 1853, 1856, and 1859 Stowe made journeys to Europe and became friends with George Eliot, Elisabeth Barrett Browning, and Lady Byron. However, the British public opinion turned against her when she charged Lord Byron with incestuous relations with his half-sister. In Lady Byron Vindicated (1870) she accused Lord Byron in the writing. Both the magazine Atlantic, where the text first appeared, and Stowe, suffered.

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In Stowe's appeal, we hear echoes of the two main themes of Uncle Tom's Cabin: motherhood and Christian duty. She asks mothers to not allow more families to be broken apart, as were Tom and Eliza's. She also tells Christians that they have a duty to educate slaves. Indeed, Stowe is preaching to her readers, and her words evoke images of punishment upon the judgment day. Stowe wants her readers to feel that time is short before they are punished for the sin of allowing slavery to exist; Stowe demands nothing short of immediate action, that is, complete and full abolition of the brutal institution of slavery. Stowe uses several generalizations about black people that are very racialized. Though some of the things she attributed to blacks were positive, any kind of broad canvas of attributes to one race is misleading and wrong, it's called stereotyping.

The emphasis on Christianity may have been effective in changing some people's minds about slavery, but slavery was also enforced using religion as well. Also, Stowe seems to think that slaves were only good if they were very Christian, not taking into account that slaves already had their own religions and moral base while in Africa.

III. Background on Uncle Tom's Cabin

Harriet Beecher Stowe is considered by many to have written the most influential American novel in history. Indeed, Uncle Tom's Cabin was the first social protest novel published in the United States. In analyses of Uncle Tom's Cabin, many critics feel that Stowe's writing was deeply influenced by the fact that her father, husband, and brothers were all ministers. Because she was a woman and therefore could not preach, Stowe let her Christianity inspire her first, most important and influential novel. Stowe was also inspired by her personal experience with the antislavery movement during her childhood on the northern side of the Ohio River, a border between slave states and freedom. With the urging of her sister-in-law, Stowe decided to use her writing skills to further the abolitionist, or anti-slavery, cause. Thus, Uncle Tom's Cabin was born.

It began as a series of stories throughout 1851-52 for the National Era, a Washington abolitionist newspaper. Upon its publication in 1852 by the Boston publishing company Jewett, Uncle Tom's Cabin became so popular that it sold more copies than any book before that with the acception of the Bible. Stowe toured the United States and Europe to speak against slavery and wrote A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin a year later, in 1853, to provide documentation of the truth upon which her novel is based.

Today, Uncle Tom's Cabin is valued because it raises still pertinent issues of racism in the United States, as well as inspiriting feminist thought on the role of women and the conjunction of race and sex. Some criticize the novel, however, for being racist because of its sentimental and stereotypical characterizations of slaves. The triumph of the novel is not that it shows the widespread experience of slavery in the South, but rather that it portrays the personal tragedies the

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system caused. So too, Uncle Tom's Cabin challenged Northerners to end their hypocrisy and recognize their participation in the propagation of slavery. Moreover, it argued that slaves were not property, but human beings with emotions like those of the readers. For this reason, Stowe chose to portray intimate stories to show the harm being done to inpidual humans. To the modern reader, Uncle Tom's Cabin may appear over-sentimental and preachy, but Stowe wanted to inspire a strong emotional reaction of indignation in her readers.

IV. Short Summary of Uncle Tom's Cabin:

Uncle Tom's Cabin, described by Stowe herself as a "series of sketches" depicting the human cruelty of slavery, opens with a description of Arthur Shelby's Kentucky plantation during the antebellum period. Although Shelby is not characterized as a cruel master, he has nevertheless incurred serious debts- prompting him sell some slaves to avoid financial ruin. Mr. Haley, the slave trader, purchases Uncle Tom, Shelby's loyal servant since childhood, and five-year-old Harry, a beautiful and talented child who sings, dances and mimes. Shelby regrets taking the child away from his mother, Eliza, as much as he regrets betraying Uncle Tom's faithfulness. Eliza overhears Mrs. Shelby, a very religious woman, protesting her husband's decision, and decides to flee the plantation with her son. George, her husband from a neighboring plantation, has already left for Canada via the "underground railroad," a secret network of people who usher runaway slaves to freedom in the North. Eliza plans to do the same, and tries to convince Uncle Tom to save himself and come with her. Uncle Tom, however, must remain loyal to his master, despite his betrayal and the risk of death at the cruel hands of a new master, and does not accompany Eliza on her journey to the Ohio River.

Haley searches for Eliza in vain, for she is spurred on by fear of losing her child and reaches the river quickly. Amazingly, Eliza crosses the river by jumping from one ice flow to the next. Upon reaching the shore in Ohio, Mr. Symmes, a man who has observed her brave feat, listens to her story. Fortunately, Symmes hates slave traders and thus takes Eliza and Harry to the house of Senator Bird, where they receive food and lodging. Ironically, Bird has just voted for a bill prohibiting aid to fugitive slaves, but the Senator is very moved by Eliza's story. He thus changes his convictions and takes the runaways to a Quaker settlement, where they stay with the Halliday family. Coincidentally, Eliza's husband George has sought refuge in this very community, and the young family is reunited. The Quakers help the family board a ship for Canada before Haley's hired slave hunters, Loker and Marks, can capture them.

After the hunt for Eliza and Harry fails, Haley returns to Shelby's to collect the other half of his purchase, Uncle Tom. The slaves at the plantation are very mournful, but Tom remains placid and tries to read his Bible for comfort. On the steamboat to New Orleans, where Tom is to be sold,

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Tom befriends an angelic little girl, "Little Eva" St. Clare. Uncle Tom saves the five-year-old beauty from drowning, and she convinces her father to buy Tom for her own family. Tom finds life on the St. Clare plantation agreeable, for although he is head coachman he spends most of his time with Little Eva. The love and goodness of which she constantly speaks influences those around her, convincing people of their inner value and that of the people around them. Eva even manages to convince the impish slave girl Topsy that she deserves to be loved, and touches the heart of her stern aunt, Miss Ophelia, who has traveled from Vermont to manage the plantation because Mrs. St. Clare is a hypochondriac.

Tom's contentment does not last, however, because Eva soon falls ill. Dying, she asks that all the slaves surround her bedside, where she gives each of them a golden lock of hair and tells them they must be Christian so that they can see each other in heaven. Eva implores Mr. St. Clare to free Tom after her death. Mr. St. Clare is so distraught by her death, however, that he never legally frees Tom before he himself is killed trying to mediate a barroom scuffle. Mrs. St. Clare sells the slaves to settle her husband's debts, and the deplorable Simon Legree purchases Tom. Legree is a drunkard who beats his slaves brutally. Only one of his slaves, Cassy, defies her master by threatening to do voodoo on him. Cassy tries to help Uncle Tom, but he is a pacifist and will not resist the terrible beatings Legree inflicts upon him.

Mr. Shelby, in the meantime, has been tracking Tom down, and arrives at the Legree plantation one day. By this time, however, Tom is very near death. Once Tom is dead and buried, Shelby takes a steamboat to Kentucky, where he meets Cassy and another slave from Legree's, Emmeline, who are fleeing the plantation. The three then meet Emily de Thoux, who is George Harris's sister, and discover that Cassy is the mother of Eliza. Once in Kentucky, Shelby frees his slaves. Cassy, Emmeline, and Emily travel to Canada where they are reunited with Eliza and George. The Harris family and Cassy eventually travel to Liberia to found a freedom colony for ex-slaves. The novel ends with a chapter summarizing the lesson learned from these "sketches" of experiences with slavery: that slavery is indeed a very cruel and evil institution that should be abolished.

In the concluding chapter we hear Stowe's own unadulterated voice on the issue of slavery. The most convincing argument she makes is that her narrative is not fiction, but rather she and her abolitionist comrades have witnessed "the separate incidents that compose the narrative." Uncle Tom, thus, is a symbol for the sufferings of all the slaves under the brutality and injustice inherent to the system.

V．The character analysis

i. Tom

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Tom is faithful to God and man. Facing his third cruel master Simon Degree’s threatening and flogging, he doesn’t give up his faith in God and insists that his soul belongs to Him, not to him, though he bought him with twelve hundred dollars. Tom is also very faithful to man, such as his first and third masters who give him all their property to manage. Once, Mr. Shelby let him to go to Cincinnati alone to do business for him, Tom doesn’t run away, instead, he comes back because he thinks, ‘Ah, master trusted me, and I couldn’t!’ (P.4). Just as he himself asks Mr. Shelby, “… have I ever broke word to you, or go contrary to you, ’specially since I was a Christian?” (P.53). St. Clare, a careless master, who gives Tom a bill without looking at it, trusts Tom so much that ‘Tom had every facility and temptation to dishonesty’, yet ‘nothing but an impregnable simplicity of nature, strengthened by Christian faith, could have kept him from it’ (P.189).

Tom’s another distinctive characteristic is forgiveness, which is so extraordinary that it’s almost pine, and which we can see in Jesus Christ. Jesus forgives those who persecute him for he prays, “Father, forgive them, or they know not what they do’’. Tom also forgives his third cruel master Legree and Legree’s two overseers who harshly flogged him by saying, ‘I forgive ye, with all my soul!’ (P.384) Tom is submissive and obedient but only to God and according to his conscience. When Jesus is facing his immediate bitter death, he prays in the Mount of Olives, ‘‘…yet, not my will but yours be done’’. Tom says similar words, ‘‘The Lord’s will be done!’’ (P.299) When he learns he will be sold to the south after the unexpected death of St. Clare. Yet his obedience is not to everyone. For example, once Legree requires Tom to flog a weak slave woman, Tom refuses, saying, ‘‘…but this yer thing I can’t feel it right to do; and mas’r, I never shall do it-never!’’ (P.336) So his obedience is no blind. He only obeys what he believes right.

ii. Little Eva

Another image, radiating with spiritual luster, is Evangeline St. Clare, namely, the ‘little Eva’. The name ‘Evangeline’ definitely promotes the idea and image of angel. In appearance, she resembles an earthly angel-beautiful, always dressed in white. In spirit, she is full of love, like a good guardian angel. Once her father asks her which way she likes best to live as they do at her uncle’s up in Vermont, or to have a house full of servants, as they do. Eva answers that their way is the pleasantest because ‘it makes so many more people round you to love’ (P.172). The reason she asks her Papa to buy Tom is ‘to make him happy’ (P.140). When she hears the story of Prue, she doesn’t want to go out in her new carriage again for the terrible story ‘sink(s) into her heart’ (P.203). In her eyes, there are many puzzling things, such as why Prue is so unhappy, why Tom should be separated from his wife and children, why no one loves that black little girl, Topsy. What she only knows and does is to love all the people around her. Just as her name ‘Evangeline’

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suggests, she is an evangelist to everyone. She shares the Gospel with all her father’s plantation slaves as well as questioning her own father’s faith. This action by Eva saves many lost sou ls and gives them hope. It also prompts the soul-searching and self-reevaluation in her father. When dying, she gives every slave servant in her house a lock of fair golden hair, asking him or her to be Christians, so that they could see each other in heaven. Eva is delicate and dies early, which “dramatize the fact that she does not belong to the world. This is especially evident when the angel is a child, like Stowe’s Eva.”

Through the eyes of the angelic child Mrs. Stowe exposed the evils of the institution of slavery. Eva asks her father to free the slaves after her death. Mrs. Stowe called on people to do as or more than the child does.

iii. Sambo&Qimbo

Sambo and Qimbo, Simon Legree’s two cruel henchmen, are obviously the images of the two criminals taken from the Bible who are crucified at the same time beside Jesus Christ when we see their roles in the process of Tom’s death. With the command of Legree, these two flog Tom near to the point of death. Yet, Tom’s forgiveness, patience and fortitude even moves these two villainous men, and they ask him who Jesus is that’s been standin’ by him so, all this night (P.384). Then, Tom introduces Jesus Christ to them, and they are converted immediately. In the Bible, one criminal is also moved by Jesus and believes him, and his soul is saved at that moment. In fact, these two overseers take two different archetypes from the Bible, the one who flog Jesus Christ and the other who is saved through Jesus. So, Sambo and Qimbo possess two different roles at the same time.

iv. Eliza

The above four images-Tom, Eva, Sambo and Qimbo–are easy to find their respective archetypes in the Bible. Another more indirect one is Eliza who is like Israelites running away from Egypt where they are slaves to Canaan where they will ha ve a new free happy life. Eliza’s running is guided by God all the way, as Israelites are guided by God who appears ‘in the pillars of cloud and fire’. Israelites’ passing through the Red Sea which ‘was turned into dry land by strong east wind’ is a miracle. So is Eliza’s escape through jumping from one ice flow to another, which can’t be done without the ‘strength such as God gives only to the desperate’ (P.57). If we say the Ohio River is like the Red Sea, then the lake between America and Canada is like the river Jordan that lies between terrible wilderness and wonderful Canaan. I call the Ohio River the Red Sea, not the the river Jordan, because Eliza still has to endure many pains after her crossing of the Ohio River, just like Israelites still have to suffer much in the wilderness. While after crossing the lake, the land of freedom--Canada waits for her and her families. Eliza is an intriguing character.

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She is submissive to her master and mistress, yet her child’s imminent danger and her desire for her child’s freedom and well-being overrides her loyalty to them. Israelites betray Pharaoh for they also long for freedom and well-being.

VI. The Bible gives a great influence upon the character:

The protagonist of this novel Tom is obviously influenced a lot by Bible. This great book contains a wealth of truth for the earnest searcher. It answers every question that one may ask regarding the meaning of human existence and what our world is all about. We may approach the Bible with such problems as, what is the origin and final disposition of evil? Why does God not destroy all pain, sorrow, sickness and death? One may ask, why am I here? Where did I come from, and where am I going?

The Bible has answers to all these questions, so we invite you to remain with us as we study the Bible step by step, and discover the harmony of the truths God has hidden in the Bible. We now read a passage from Phil. 2:5-11.

"Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation, taking the form of a servant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled himself, and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. Therefore God has also highly exalted Him, and given Him the name, which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. "

Uncle Tom's Cabin contains at least 71 quotations from or direct allusions to the King James Version of the Bible. Most often it is the narrator who establishes connections between the story and what most readers in the contemporary audience would have referred to as "the Book"; eight chapter epigraphs, for example, are scriptural texts. Among the characters, the one that most often cites scripture is (not surprisingly) Tom. It may surprise some, however, that the character who evokes or quotes the Bible the second most often is Augustine St. Clare.

These references occur in 31 of the novel's 45 chapters. Chapter 27--right after Eva's death--contains the most, Chapter 12--in which several people cite scripture both to defend and attack slavery--the second most, and Chapter 38--in which Tom wins his "victory" at Legree's--the third most.

This part of the archive contains the complete texts of all the chapters from the various Bible books that Stowe uses as points of reference. The first table below allows you to see, by novel chapters, how the allusions appear in the novel's text; the second will take you, by books, to the

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biblical source.

Thirteen songs are sung in Uncle Tom's Cabin, all but one -- the Latin hymn from Mozart's Requiem that St. Clare sings -- sung by slaves. All but one of those -- the "rowdy song" that Legree demands the slaves sing on their way to his plantation -- are religious. Stowe's own religious affiliation, as the daughter, sister and wife of ministers, was with the Congregational Church, but for the hymns and spirituals in the novel she drew mainly from the Methodist and camp-meeting forms of Christianity she identifies with African Americans. Eight of those songs are available here, in playable arrangements intended to reflect both the traditional words and music, and the versions Stowe included in the novel.

Tom is the Christ figure with black skin. His experience is quite similar to that of Jesus Christ. When Tom’s first master, Mr. Shelby sells Tom to the coarse slave-dealer in financial straits, he betrays the loyalty of his most loyal slave since boyhood. His apostle Judas who is prompted by his avarice for money sells Jesus. So they are all betrayed and sold by the ones who are close to them. While he struggles with his faith, as Jesus does in the last hours of his life when he says, ‘my God, why have you forsaken me?’, he never loses his simple faith. Tom’s death scene also has striking likeness with that of Jesus Christ. Tom is flogged near to death, so is Jesus before his crucifixion. When Jesus dies, there are two criminals crucified together with him, one of who believes Jesus is Messiah and is saved at the very moment and spot. Sambo and Qimbo, D egree’s two cruel overseers who in every sense are equal to criminals, are moved by Tom’s Christian fortitude and patience and are converted at the very moment and spot. Jesus is crucified to redeem sinners while Tom dies for the two runaway slaves, Cassy and Emmeline. They are all innocent, but all die for others. In essence, they all die for their faith and religious devotion. In fact, Tom dies as a ‘martyr’, which is revealed by the title of chapter forty. Tom is not only similar in his experience to Jesus Christ. More important, his temperament is like that of Jesus Christ. He is loving, faithful, forgiving and obedient. Tom is full of love for his neighbors, blacks and whites. While he is at St.Clare’s home, he meets that pitiful, wretched old slave Pru e whose only left child is starved to death because she devotes all her time to tend her mistress and loses her milk, yet her mistress refuses to buy milk for her baby. Tom offers to carry her basket for her and sends the Gospel to her. Just as when Jesus sees sinners, he pities them, helps them, cures them and tells them ‘the good news’. Tom not only loves his fellow slaves, but white people. When he sees his second young handsome flighty master St Clare go to those wining parties, Tom goes down on his kne es and pleads with him not to attend those revelries again by quoting from the Bible, ‘it biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder’. His love comes to full display when he says on his deathbed to his first young master George Shelby: “…Give my love to mas’r, and dear good

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missis-and everybody in the place! Ye don’t know. ’Pears like I loves’em all! I loves every creature’, every what! -It’s nothing but love…”. Here, Tom is the incarnation of love, just like Jesus is identified with love.

Christ's character has ever been perfect. The perfection here must refer to the knowledge of the inhabitants of the universe. Regarding God's attributes. They had known His power, holiness, wisdom, righteousness and love, but now on the cross for the first time they saw that God is most capable of suffering. Not only is it true that "in all their affliction He was afflicted," but also that "the chastisement for our peace was upon Him…". The universe saw the truth that in this ruthless warfare with Satan, God is the greatest victim and makes the greatest sacrifice. His image is rounded out in its perfection and glory.on the cross of Christ.

VII. Something about Mrs. Stowe’s Solution to Slavery

I think that this book did a good job of telling white people in the North and South at the time about some of the horrors of slavery, but I think it was too focused on Christianity and Stowe had a very racialized view of black people. The emphasis on Christianity may have been effective in changing some people's minds about slavery, but slavery was also enforced using religion as well. Also, Stowe seems to think that slaves were only good if they were very Christian, not taking into account that slaves already had their own religions and moral base while in Africa.

Stowe uses several generalizations about black people that are very racialized. Though some of the things she attributed to blacks were positive, any kind of broad canvas of attributes to one race is misleading and wrong, it's called stereotyping.

Stowe wrote this book to defend her novel against one of the most wide-spread complaints that pro-slavery critics lodged against it -- that as an account of slavery Uncle Tom's Cabin was wholly false, or at least wildly exaggerated. Thus The Key is organized around that defensive project, taking up her major characters one at a time, for example, to cite real life equivalents to them. At the same time, defending her novel led her to mount a more aggressive attack on slavery in the South than the novel itself had. In the novel she works hard to be sympathetic to white southerners as well as black slaves; here, her prose seems much angrier, both morally and rhetorically more contemptuous. One explanation for this sharper tone could be the novel's reception in the South, where no one seems to have appreciated her attempt to be fair. Stowe was probably unprepared for the South's shrill rejection of the book.

The Key is prickly, dense book, with none of the readability of Uncle Tom's Cabin. When it first came out, it was also a best seller, though it's likely many bought it without understanding its nature. It's also a kind of fiction. Although it claims to be about the sources Stowe consulted while

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writing the novel, for example, she read many of the works cited here only after the novel was published.

After the publication of this book, it arouses great reverberation in contemporary society. Now, let’s come to the question of Mrs. Stowe’s way of solving slavery. ‘So you are the little woman who started this Great War!’ Abraham Lincoln is said to have remarked when meeting Harriet Beecher Stowe for the first time in the White House. When in a small hotel George Harris says to Mr. Wilson, ‘I’ll fight for my liberty to the last breath I breath. You say your fathers did i t; if it was right for them, it is right for me’ (P.106), it seems that the author Mrs. Stowe herself agreed with George. Then does this mean Mrs. Stowe advocated slaves to fight for their freedom through violence? Or the aim of her writing the book was to spark the Civil War? We are almost temped to say ‘yes’ to both questions with the two ‘evidences’ cited above if we do not exam the whole book thoroughly. First, let’s not forget that Mrs. Stowe herself was a devout Christian who wouldn’t advocate any for m of violence. Second, we should notice that Mr. Wilson advised Harris he’d better not shoot (P.106). Third, we should also notice that Mr. Simeon, the fervent Quaker, regards fighting with flesh as a temptation though he believes Harris has the right to do it. In fact, Harris himself would rather ‘…be let alone-to go peacefully out of it [America]’(P.106). So, in the case of George Harris, Mrs. Stowe only advocated limited passive resistance when the law of sacred family bond was violated by the system of slavery. But on the whole, she held with the view of nonviolent resistance. To be specific, she praised slaves’ spiritual and moral victory over slavery which can be seen from her most carefully portrayed protagonist Tom, a pious, submissive Christian, who was her ideal black. Moreover, for Mrs. Stowe, the solution to slavery lied mainly in the white, not in the black, which, of course, is rather absurd. By informing her white fellowmen of the evils of slavery, she wanted the Southern slave owners to free slaves voluntarily through Christian love, just as George Shelby does. Of course, this childish, utopian idea can’t come to true for the economy of South is based on the slavery system. Those plantation owners couldn’t give up their property voluntarily, co uld they? She also wanted Northerners, especially the Church of the North to shoulder the responsibility of educating those future freed men. It is clearly shown in the Concluding Remarks, which goes like this, ‘…receive them to the educating advantages of Christian republican society and schools…’(P.412). So she didn’t praise violent way of liberating slaves and didn’t intend to spark the war between the South and the North, rather, she gave her readers her own solution to this problem. But her way of liberating slaves and saving the Union failed when the Civil War broke out.

VIII. Conclusion:

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The religiosity of the story and its dubious conclusion, in which most of the survivors disappear back to Africa to become missionaries, contributed to a shift of attitude. 'Uncle Tom' was used pejoratively, meaning white paternalism and black passivity, undue subservience to white people on the part of black people. When modernist critics argued, that literature should not aim to effect social change, Stowe's novel was far from their fields of interest. However, in the 1970s ,Uncle Tom's Cabin, with its strong female characters, started to attract the attention of feminist critics. Stowe's radical Christian vision, based on matriarchal values, found now defenders. Tom's passivity was compared to Gandhi's strategy of peaceful resistance. I think that this book did a good job of telling white people in the North and South at the time about some of the horrors of slavery, but I think it was too focused on Christianity and Stowe had a very racialized view of black people.

Although America is a multi-nationality country, the Christianity did give a great influence upon people’s life and the culture of the nation. Being a country that most citizens are Christi ans, the religion has its own power. Now it has already passed one hundred and fifty years after this great book published. After countless generations of struggle, “Black is beautiful!” has became a loud voice echoing the modern American society. Today in USA, no matter how much the whites may hate and fear the blacks, they are careful not to say in public places. And more and more blacks are stepping into middle-class. Maybe this is the situation Mrs. Stowe expected to see. If one wants to change the present situation of the society, he should change people’s mind first; if one wants to change people’s mind, he should put hand to common religion belief. Mrs. Stowe set about from her own experience in the contemporary society and fully utilized the Christianity doctrine of universal love. In this way, she tried to persuade the people all around America, that the blacks and the Whites enjoy equal rights in social economic area. This is the very purpose of this book, using strong religion color to push forward the development of the society.

To sum up,Christianity played a very important role in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s wring which inevitably influenced greatly the portraiture of characters in Uncle Tom’s Cabin and also Mrs. Stowe’s own solution to slavery. I n this thesis, I intend to interpret Uncle Tom’s Cabin in the light of Christianity rather than anti-slavery and feminism to show a new outlook of it.Christianity is an indispensable part of western cultures and an important element in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, yet most Chinese readers are not familiar with it.

Most of us who have read this book will agree that Tom, an almost perfect, immaculate character without any human weakness is too good to exist in real life. So the portrait of Uncle Tom tends to be rather pale. Besides, the image of Tom is a stereotype with typical African features, typical African American accent and supposed typical good disposition of that race. Thus,

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Tom is more a representative of a kind of person rather than an inpidual. This kind of person can easily be influenced by their religion belief. In the society the author described, some people can use violence to control the slave’s personal liberty. But the slaves enjoy total freedom in their mental world; no one has the ability to intervene it. Here, we needn’t to talk about whether religion itself should be abandoned or not. What we must be sure is that it plays an essential part in some people’s life. We should treat it properly.

References:

[1] Holy Bible (New Revised Standard Version, Chinese Union Version), Mark, chapter 15, verse, 34. China Christian Council. Quotations from the Bible in the following thesis are to this version.

[2] Harriet Beecher Stowe. Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Hertfounshire: Wordsword Edition Limited Cumberland House, 1995. P.387. The following citations from the same book will be marked with pagination in the parentheses in the text.

[3] Springer Marlene. What Manner of Woman. New York: New York University Press, 1977. P.213

[4] Springer Marlene. What Manner of Woman. New York: New York University Press, 1977. P.229

[5] Bibliography Hough, Craham. An Essay on Criticism. New York: W.W.Norton&Company, Inc.,1966.

[6] Lauter, Paul. The Heath Anthology of American Literature, Volume 1. Toronto: D.C.Heath andCompany, 1990.

[7] McMichael, George. Anthology of American Literature, second edition, Volume 2. London: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc.

[8] Perkins, and Bradley, and Beattly, and Long. The American Tradition in Literature, seventh edition, Volume 1. McGraw-Hill Publishing Company, 1976.

[9] Rubinstein, Annette T. American Literature Root and Flower, Volume 1. Beijing: Foreign Langue and Research Press, 1988.

[10] Springer Marlene. What Manner of Woman. New York: New York University Press, 1977.

[11] Stowe, Harri et Beecher. Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Hertfounshire: Wordsword Edition Limited Cumberland House, 1995.

[12] Perkins, Barbara, and Worhol, Robyn, and Perkins, George. Women’s Work, an Anthology of American Literature. McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1994

[13] 斯陀夫人著，杨晔译，《汤姆大叔的小屋》。中国和平出版社，新世纪出版社，1999。

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