LITR 4232: American Renaissance
University of Houston-Clear Lake, spring 2003
Sample Student Research Project

Lisa Bailey
LITR 4232
Dr. White
April 19, 2003

 Renaissance Women: Harriet Beecher Stowe

            Female writers during the American Renaissance struggle for the recognition and credit that male writers have always received.  Many, as in the case of Harriet Beecher Stowe begin their careers writing to help support their households.  Some write as a way to voice their opinions in society, no matter what the response is.  Through a critical study of both the style and motivation of Harriet Beecher Stowe, she becomes a key literary figure of the American Renaissance, and her masterpiece, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, becomes an example of representative, classical, and popular literature.

            Harriet Beecher Stowe is a very strong woman.  She grows up around a family of ministers, being the sister of seven and the daughter of an eighth, giving her a strong moral background, and her sister and sister-in-law, being influential in the education of women, help her achieve formal training for her literary future.  She eventually becomes the most famous member of her large and illustrious family.  Her father tells her at an early age that if she were a boy, “’she would do more than any of them’” (Tompkins 2475).  She is then raised and educated as if she were another boy in the family.  She is sent to the female seminary in Hartford, founded by her sister Catherine, to learn and then to teach.  After moving to Cincinnati and meeting Calvin Stowe, her husband, she begins her life as a wife and mother of six.  It is during this time, around 1832, that she begins to write as a means of separating herself from the constant chaos of children and household chores.

            Her early sketches are published in magazines such as Godey’s Lady’s Book and the New York Evangelist which help pay for household furnishings as well as maintain Stowe’s sanity.  In 1834, she becomes familiar with the Underground Railroad and the abolitionist cause, and in 1845 she writes her first sketch on the subject of abolition, “adopting a position that was both dangerous and unfashionable” (2476).  Shortly after this the Stowes move to Maine where Calvin takes a position at Bowdoin College, and by the time they left for Maine, Harriet has published several short pieces, collected into a volume called The Mayflower.  Then, shortly after establishing their home in Maine, two events spark Stowe’s ambition for her most famous novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

            Shortly after the Compromise of 1850 and the launch of the Fugitive Slave Law, Stowe’s sister-in-law sends a letter claiming that “if she could write the way Harriet did she would ‘write something that [would] make this whole nation feel what an accursed thing slavery is’” (2476).  This letter brings a declaration from Stowe to write that very thing.  Not long after this Stowe has a vision in church “of a black slave being beaten to death” inspiring her to go home and write “the scene that would become the capstone of her great masterpiece” (2476).

            Uncle Tom’s Cabin becomes almost an instant success.  With the progression of her writing career, “her style became more literary and her subjects less directly concerned with religion and reform”, however the goal of her writing remains the edification of her readers (2476).  In every piece of literature Stowe writes she includes a moral to help teach and structure her readers.  It is because Uncle Tom’s Cabin is centered on such a strong moral belief, as is the topic of discussion throughout the entire country at the time that it stimulates such heated public opinion on both sides of the issue.  The book begins as a series of sketches to run in an anti-slavery newspaper called the National Era.  Due to its popularity, the length of its run is increased from fourteen weeks to ten months.  She informs the editor in a letter that in her series she intends to “’hold up in the most lifelike and graphic manner possible Slavery … There is no arguing with pictures, and everybody is impressed by them, whether they mean to be or not’” (2477).  Once it is published in book form, copies sell like wildfire with ten thousand copies in the first few days alone.  Once published, reviews of Stowe’s book begin to appear in newspapers across the country. 

Under the literary notices in the National Era, an unsigned review, probably by the editor, Gamaliel Bailey, states that Uncle Tom’s Cabin “was a noble effort—it is a splendid success” (Bailey 1).  He claims that “the work to us gives evidence of a greater power … its characters are strongly drawn, refreshingly peculiar and original, yet wondrously true to nature and to man a reader’s experience of life” (Bailey 1).  In the Liberator Review, another anti-slavery newspaper, a review written by William Lloyd Garrison claims “Mrs. Stowe has displayed rare descriptive powers, a familiar acquaintance with slavery under its best and worst phases”, and that the effect of a work such as this upon intelligent minds is “to awaken the strongest compassion for the oppressed and the utmost abhorrence of the system which grinds them to the dust” (Garrison 1).  Garrison further asks the public how the white population can be inspired by Christianity and the examples of earlier civilizations to fight back against their oppressors, yet expect the black population to “’be obedient to their masters,’ wait for a peaceful deliverance, and abstain for all insurrectionary movements” in the name of Christ (Garrison 2).  According to Garrison, two different populations of people are asked to act in two very opposite manners, both in the name of Christ.  In his article, his final question to his audience is “are there two Christs?” (Garrison 2).  Not all of the reviews of Stowe’s masterpiece, however, are positive. 

As public sentiments are roused on both sides of the slavery issue, newspapers in the South also run reviews of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. In Graham’s Magazine Review, George Graham complains that female agitators have begun the hobby of “an intense love of black folks, in fashionable novels!” (Graham 1).  He appears to speak for the entire South stating, “We hate this niggerism, and hope it may be done away with” (Graham 1).  He threatens, if faced with another Negro story, to “call our retainers together and arm them; … and go into the South to put down negrodom!” (Graham 1).  Though he agrees with values of religion, he believes that “with the negroes, religion is often a monomania—a feeling vehement from its narrowness, and existing mostly in expression (Graham 2).  In an issue of the Southern Literary Messenger Review, an unsigned review, probably by John R. Thompson, claims that Stowe “has volunteered officiously to intermeddle with things which concern her not—to libel and vilify a people from among whom have gone forth some of the noblest men that have adorned the race” (Thompson 1).  He further states “that she wished … to persuade us the horrible guilt of Slavery, and … teach us that our constitution and laws are repugnant to every sentiment of humanity” (Thompson 1).  Thompson wishes to be “understood as acting entirely on the defensive, when we proceed to expose the miserable misrepresentations of [Stowe’s] story” (Thompson 2).  Despite these mixed reviews of the times, Stowe’s novel continues to be popular reading, even today.

When Stowe first begins writing her book, she has no idea just how popular or influential it would be.  Her sole purpose in writing the book is to teach society how morally wrong slavery is.  Her strategy is to show the evils of slavery by using the most sacred values of her culture.  By reiterating the South’s views of blacks as things, rather than human beings with souls that can be saved, she exposes slavery as a sin.  According to Stowe, slavery “destroys not only the soul of the slave-owner, but the social fabric as well, for in separating wife from husband and parent from child, it destroys the institution on which human society rests” (Tompkins 2478).  This strategy within a well-written and powerful novel finally helps convince southern legislators of slavery’s evils.

As a literary text, Uncle Tom’s Cabin is considered a classic text as well as a popular text.  Its ability to continually teach new readers a moral lesson gives it a classical value.  However, its ability to continually sell so many copies is constantly held against it as a classic text.  This value, along with the fact that the text is written in language understandable to all readers, makes it an excellent popular novel.  “Its power to move millions of people” is a tremendous reason to include Uncle Tom’s Cabin in both the classical and popular literary canons (2478).

The fact that this text is written by a female writer is one of the main reasons to include it in the list of representative literature as well.  Not only does this book give voice to the opinions and emotions of a woman during the American Renaissance, it also speaks out against a very controversial issue among Americans of the period.  Though it is labeled “propaganda” by critics of its day, it remains one of “the most powerful book[s] ever written by an American …precisely because of its power” to make its readers question “the grounds on which some of our present ‘classics’ have been chosen” (2478).

It is a shame that female literary figures must struggle so hard to measure up, in the minds of critics, to their male counterparts.  Some of the most powerful and best-written works have female authors.  Harriet Beecher Stowe is just one of the many excellent women writers only just recently admitted into the classical literary canon.  Through an analysis of her past leading up to the creation of her most influential book, as well as the reaction to this book, we gain a clearer understanding of the author and her work.   It is easy to see why she as well as her writing is so emotional and popular among readers of her time as well as the present.

Works Cited

American Reviews: Graham’s Magazine Review.  University of Virginia. 12 April 2003 http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu:1852/utc/responses/reviews/rere25at.html

American Reviews: Liberator Review.  University of Virginia.  12 April 2003 http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu:1852/utc/responses/reviews/rere02at.html

American Reviews: Southern Literary Messenger Review.   University of Virginia. 12 April 2003       http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu:1852/utc/responses/reviews/rere24at.html

American Reviews: The National Era. University of Virginia. 12 April 2003 http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu.1852/utc/responses/reviews/rere01at.html

Tompkins, Jane.  “Harriet Beecher Stowe 1811 – 1896.”  The Heath Anthology of American Literature.  Ed. Paul Lauter.  Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2002.  2475 – 2478.