Reader:  Audra Caldwell

Presentation:  Harriet Beecher Stowe  

Selections from Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Objective 2:

            To study the contemporaneous movement of “Romanticism,” the narrative genre of “romance,” and the related styles of the “gothic” and “the sublime”.

Pg 2512  The Martyr

“The savage words none of them reached that hear!—a higher voice there was saying, “Fear not them that kill the body, and, after that have no more that they can do.” Nerve and bone of that poor man’s body vibrated to those words, as if touched by the finger of God; and he felt the strength of a thousand souls in one. As he passed along, the trees and bushes, the huts of his servitude, the whole scene of his degradation, seemed to whirl by him as the landscape by the rushing car. His soul throbbed, --his home was in sight, --and the hour of release seemed at hand.”

This excerpt from Uncle Tom's Cabin shows several elements of Romanticism. The idea of the transcendence to a higher place or “home was in sight” shows a clear idea of reaching a destination from a great journey.

This excerpt also shows the Sublime. The idea of death by way of such a gruesome act is a very scary brutal idea to face, yet it is handled with such calmness and content, a beautiful aspect makes the idea of Uncle Tom’s death very sublime.

Why do you think Stowe wrote the scene of Uncle Tom’s death with a great deal of the Sublime present?