Book review - Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Stowe
This came in a compendium of American Classics along with "Twelve Years a Slave", which is impossible to review as it is substantially true. About all you can say is "I am so sorry that happened to you mate, I can't believe people thought that was remotely OK".
Uncle Tom's Cabin is fiction, although based on a number of real people's stories. Like Huckleberry Finn, it is a book written in burning anger against the slave trade (it is sometimes credited with starting the US Civil War, and certain espoused the complete abolition of slavery in 1852, before it was a mainstream opinion) which would seem kind of racist if written today. There are quite a lot of interjections on the nature of the "African race" which, though positive stereotyping, are a bit uncomfortable.
Something I learned: the derogatory term "Uncle Tom" comes not from this book but from many attempts, in plays and derivative works, to make the central character less threatening to the worldview of white society. Tom the original character is a strong and admirable pacifist and stoic.
The first half of the book is pretty good, working as plot as well as propaganda (it has some zingers, like the observation in response to a statement of Anglo-Saxon superiority: "they have a fair measure of Anglo-Saxon blood themselves by now"). It spends a lot of time with relatively humane slave owners, illustrating that even the most well-meaning ownership is still quite wrong. Owners can fall into poverty, owners can die suddenly and meaninglessly, and even in the best scenario families are broken up for no good reason. It also attempts to address the question "what would we do with all these uneducated, often brutalised people if we did emancipate them?" with a certain amount of thought; Miss Ophelia, the prudish northerner who gets over her ingrained prejudice and teaches a slave girl to read, is a good character.
The second half gets rather overwrought and religious. There is a sweet white girl who dies of tuberculosis imploring for Tom to have liberty, apparently just to throw extra emotional manipulation into the mix. There are successful escape attempts and family reunions (yay!) and an allegorical Christian death. There are some wonderfully angry-sad slave women, Cassy in particular. There is the now-slightly-crazy-sounding idea of establishing a new, strong nation of ex-slaves in Liberia. There are appeals to Christianity on every level.
All in all this was not an enjoyable read but worth persevering with.
After this I am much indebted to Catherine who introduced me to Saga Comics, which I have been reading like a woman addicted to something much harder. How have I never discovered these before? They have my new contender for "deep quote from unlikely source"*: "Never worry what other people think of you, because no one ever thinks of you".
*Previous favourites: "all knowledge is worth having" and "that which yields is not always weak".
Uncle Tom's Cabin is fiction, although based on a number of real people's stories. Like Huckleberry Finn, it is a book written in burning anger against the slave trade (it is sometimes credited with starting the US Civil War, and certain espoused the complete abolition of slavery in 1852, before it was a mainstream opinion) which would seem kind of racist if written today. There are quite a lot of interjections on the nature of the "African race" which, though positive stereotyping, are a bit uncomfortable.
Something I learned: the derogatory term "Uncle Tom" comes not from this book but from many attempts, in plays and derivative works, to make the central character less threatening to the worldview of white society. Tom the original character is a strong and admirable pacifist and stoic.
The first half of the book is pretty good, working as plot as well as propaganda (it has some zingers, like the observation in response to a statement of Anglo-Saxon superiority: "they have a fair measure of Anglo-Saxon blood themselves by now"). It spends a lot of time with relatively humane slave owners, illustrating that even the most well-meaning ownership is still quite wrong. Owners can fall into poverty, owners can die suddenly and meaninglessly, and even in the best scenario families are broken up for no good reason. It also attempts to address the question "what would we do with all these uneducated, often brutalised people if we did emancipate them?" with a certain amount of thought; Miss Ophelia, the prudish northerner who gets over her ingrained prejudice and teaches a slave girl to read, is a good character.
The second half gets rather overwrought and religious. There is a sweet white girl who dies of tuberculosis imploring for Tom to have liberty, apparently just to throw extra emotional manipulation into the mix. There are successful escape attempts and family reunions (yay!) and an allegorical Christian death. There are some wonderfully angry-sad slave women, Cassy in particular. There is the now-slightly-crazy-sounding idea of establishing a new, strong nation of ex-slaves in Liberia. There are appeals to Christianity on every level.
All in all this was not an enjoyable read but worth persevering with.
After this I am much indebted to Catherine who introduced me to Saga Comics, which I have been reading like a woman addicted to something much harder. How have I never discovered these before? They have my new contender for "deep quote from unlikely source"*: "Never worry what other people think of you, because no one ever thinks of you".
*Previous favourites: "all knowledge is worth having" and "that which yields is not always weak".