LaDonna Williams
LITR 5535 2002
Research Journal 

                                       The Complexity of Harriet Beecher Stowe

            While reviewing the class syllabus, I pondered what subject to research and then I came across the name, Harriet Beecher Stowe.  My decision was simple, I would pick Harriet Beecher Stowe and find out exactly what it is that I do not like about her.  After all, she is the Northerner who wrote the book, Uncles Tom’s Cabin, and deeply imbedded into my Southern unconsciousness I know that I am not supposed to like her.  Maybe that is why I have never read anything written by her until this course.  Somewhere in my previous learning, I was introduced to Stowe and decided that it was my duty as a Southern not to be taken in by Northern propaganda.  As I soon found out, there is more to Harriet B. Stowe than the novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

                                    “You must be a literary woman.  It is so written

                                    in the book of fate.  Make all you calculations

                                    accordingly.  Get a good stack of health and brush

                                    up your mind.  Drop the E out of your name.  It only

                                    encumbers it and stops the flow and euphony, and

                                    write yourself only and always, Harriet Beecher Stowe,

                                    which is a name euphonious, flowing and full of

                                    meaning; and my word for it, you husband will lift

                                    up his head in the gate, and your children will rise up

                                    and call you blessed.”

                                                                        Calvin Ellis Stowe, April 30, 1842[i]

Ms. Stowe took her husband’s advice and soon blossomed into an extremely powerful writer.  I found my task more difficult. I could research all the criticism (Southern and others) regarding Stowe and the writing of Uncle Tom’s Cabin and my mission would be complete.  I would have ammunition to defend my “Anti-Stowe” view.  However, as I began reading my compilation of research, I found that Ms. Stowe was a multidimensional person.  Although Uncle Tom’s Cabin is a cornerstone of American Literature, to associate Ms. Stowe with that one novel would be negating the importance of her body of literary work.  I would like to review several of my sources and conclude my journal with varies types of extended research that could be done in order to create an elaborated essay on Harriet Beecher Stowe. 

            I began my evaluation with The Oxford Harriet Beecher Stowe Reader.  It is within this source that I found Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and I immediately turned to Chapter XL., The Martyr, and began reading.  I was completely memorized by the intensity of this woman’s writing.  The reader is captured within moments of viewing the written page. It is as if she can touch your very soul with her writing.  Her strategy of developing Tom as a Christ like figure was brilliant.  As a practicing Christian, I can say that the most intense time of my Christian life is the time period in which the Crucifixion and Resurrection are remembered.  Now, I understand one reason this novel had so much appeal to the 1852 audience.  The “Beecher Bible” addresses everyone who professes to be a Christian. Within her writing technique, she demands that God fearing people everywhere take a stand against slavery.

            I wanted to continue reading but I had to resolve the fact that there is more substance to Harriet Beecher Stowe than I originally believed; so I moved forward with my research.  The Oxford Reader is a wonderful piece in which to explore  a variety of Ms. Stowe’s works.  The book contains a chronology and introduction that is helpful in understanding the divisions of the book.  The book is divided into three sections, Early Essays and Sketches, Antislavery Writings and Domestic Culture and Politics.  This division is important when trying to narrow one’s research topic down to a palatable size.  This book is an essential read in order to comprehend the depth of Ms. Stowe’s literary career. 

            A suggested reading in The Oxford Reader is Harriet Beecher Stowe A Life by Joan D. Hedrick, which I had in my possession.  The layout of this book is great because Ms. Hedrick takes short periods of Stowe’s life and divides these periods into twenty-seven short spans of time.  Therefore, the reader can breakdown Ms. Stowe’s life into individual increments and this format aids in the search for specific information.  For Example, if a person wanted background information on Ms. Stowe in the years prior to the publishing of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the reader could turn to Chapter Eighteen. “A Rush of Mighty Wind: 1850-1851.”  In this chapter the reader learns of Harriet’s reaction to the passing of the Fugitive Slave Law(1850).  Harriet, who had been writing articles for the National Era was encouraged by her sister, Isabella Beecher to “write something that would make this whole nation feel what an accursed thing slavery is.”[ii]  Other ingredients are added and the reader can comprehend Ms. Stowe’s stage in life and her rationale for wanting to write Uncle Tom’s Cabin. 

            The next selection that I found intriguing is The Stowe Debate, Rhetorical Strategies in Uncle Tom’s Cabin.  This work is a collection of twelve essays that discuss the style used to write Uncle Tom’s Cabin.  The book is divided into four sections, each debating a different rhetorical strategy used by Ms. Stowe.  The divisions are as follows: Language and Discourse in Stowe’s Writing: Approaches to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Domesticity and Sentimentality as Discourse in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Religious Rhetoric and Biblical Influences on Stowe, and Race and Slavery in Uncle Tom’s Cabin.  This collection of essays neatly organizes four diverse ways of examining the novel. The introduction states that the essays are grouped according to “the topography set out by Stowe in organizing her masterpiece.”[iii]  Within each of these divisions a students could find a pathway to develop an essay.  However, I am using this collection of essays to prove the depths of Ms. Stowe’s writing which will be discussed in my conclusion.

            I thought I had found the ammunition I would need to argue my uneducated point about Stowe’s misguided intentions in a collection of essays and articles entitled Haunted Bodies: Gender and Southern Texts.  However, what I found is Southern novelists struggling to rewrite individual novels to include the domestic sphere of importance or defend the patriarchal order that was in place in the South and elsewhere.  Two novels, Swallow Barn(1832), written by John Pendleton Kennedy, and Recollections of a Southern Matron(1838), written by Caroline Gilman are reissued in 1851 and 1852.  Mr. Kennedy revises Swallow Barn and tries to create a more compassionate slave holder.  He also creates a world where the girls are educated entirely at home.  He is assuming that the domestic sphere needs to be totally separate from the business sphere which is outside the home.  Although trying to show his understanding of domestic issues facing women, Kennedy reveals his male dominated view of the South.  Gilman refashions the context of her novel by including a shorter work, Recollections of a New England Bride and Housekeeper.  The Southern matron and the New England bride are pitted against each other to show how difficult the domestic sphere is to maintain outside the South.  In New England, the bride is constantly being interrupted by outside influences and is unable to maintain a household.  While the Southern matron, who is separated from outside influences, remains a solid matriarchal figure.[iv]

            Two Southern authors that wrote in reaction to the publishing of Uncle Tom’s Cabin are William Gilmore Simms and Caroline Hentz.  Mr. Simms writes Woodcraft about an old soldier, Porgy, returning home after the Revolutionary War.  Porgy comes home to see everything had been torched by enemy soldiers, not unlike what will happen in the Civil War.  Porgy is ineffective as a central character and Simms strays away from any form of a domestic solution to counter the patriarchal system.  However, he does create a strong widow who stands up for her rights and refuses to marry Porgy.. He created the ideal planter in the Widow Eveleigh..  Mr. Simms was trying to add a feminine element to the South’s patriarchal dominated society.  On the other hand, Ms. Hentz gives her plantation owner qualities attributed to both genders.  A Renaissance Man who can manage the plantation, give fatherly advice to his daughter, and help his wife with the house.  Hentz wanted to counter act the wonderful Christ like qualities Tom possesses and she is willing to introduce a slave insurrection to prove how violent and animalistic slaves can act.  In doing this she is threatening to dispel the notion of a secure, serene plantation system.[v] 

            I see both of these approaches, in combating Ms. Stowe’s work, acts of desperation. A person should not have to revise his/her novel in order to justify a way of life.  Also, a person should not have to deviate from his/her own creative influences in order to defend the truly undefendable.  Yes, slavery is wrong but we need not condemn a whole society for something that has been a learned behavior.  I believe Southern novels should stand on their own merits.  Slavery was a way of life in the South and it is important we preserve the literature that came out of that time period.  However, it is just as important that we understand, that because of Ms Stowe many Southern writers began rethinking their way of life.

            In conclusion, Harriet Beecher Stowe was a woman with many dimensions that helped influence her writing.  She is an enigma among literary scholars due to the fact of her complexity.  If one was going to write a biography on Harriet Beecher Stowe that would be seem fairly easy.  Include facts about her life and discuss some of her major works as an author, but she was much more than a woman author from a famous family.  She was a woman who struggled with her religion and we can see this quality in her body of work.  She was a woman who struggled with death and the sorrow that comes with motherhood and we see this quality in her body of work.  She was a woman who struggled with the domestic reality that existed in America and we  see this conflict in her body work.  She was a woman that was deeply concerned about the inequality of the races and we see this affect in her body of work.

            She was such a presence in the literary world that she has taken on mythological like qualities.  For every source that explains a certain event in her life, there is another source that will repute it.  For example, in my research I found one source telling the infamous encounter with President Lincoln in which he said, “So, you’re the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war.”[vi]  Yet, I have come across other sources who doubt the validity of that meeting.  Some scholars tell the story of her vision while attending church of Uncle Tom’s death, while other works say she can not exactly remember how the thought of Uncle Tom came to her.[vii]  Then we must deal with Lady Byron Vindicated: A History of the Byron Controversy, from Its Beginning in 1816 to the Present Time(1870).  Harriet believed so strongly in exposing the truth that she was willing to risk her literary career by raising issues of incest and adultery against one of the most Romantic figures of her time, Lord Byron.  Issues that proper ladies did not discuss, much less publish for the entire world to read.  What a heroine!  No, I did not narrow down my view and that is my point.  When you are unaware that the subject you are dealing with is such a diverse human being, you expose yourself to different components of the person who was Harriet Beecher Stowe, in order to appreciate her overwhelming complexity.  So much information exists about her because she is still a fascinating writer.  What makes her so fascinating is all the elements that she was able to incorporate into her writing.  In my eyes, she was a defender of the people and that has made my search invaluable.