LITR 5535 American Romanticism UHCL 2005 sample student research project

LITR 5535: American Romanticism

Sample Student Research Project 2006

Leigh Ann Moore

Monday, November 20, 2006

Mothers in Uncle Tom’s Cabin

“Mother is the name for God on the lips
and in the hearts of little children."
-- William Makepeace Thackeray

Throughout slave literature, scenes of domestic life abound. This shift in focus from traditional literature of the public sphere to that of the private sphere enables the reader to encounter family in a more intimate way. Family and motherhood are crucial elements in slave literature. These elements are both discussed directly and referred to as an idea. Frederick Douglass, in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, and American Slave, Written by Himself, talks about mothers and slaves; he said, “My mother and I were separated when I was but an infant—… For what this separation is done, I do not know, unless it be to hinder the development of the child’s affection toward its mother, and to blunt and destroy the natural affection of the mother for the child” (Douglass 942). This idea of separating families, specifically mothers from their children, runs throughout slave literature. Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or Life among the Lowly, by Harriet Beecher Stowe, uses this practice to its fullest. Throughout Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Stowe presents the reader with character after character, either mothers or those impacted by mothers, to influence the reader emotionally. Stowe’s purpose in her narrative is to educate her reader to the abuses of slavery. Stowe uses mothers who are slaves, mothers who are slaveholders, mothers who are outside the system of slavery, and finally alternative mother representatives. In using this variety of mothers, Stowe is able to paint a picture of an ideal of universal motherhood. Through these mothers, Stowe advocates mothers and females to work for social change, both in the domestic sphere and out, making it the moral duty of Christian mothers to oppose slavery. Using these motherly characters, along with Christian images, Stowe draws the reader into the characters’ lives, making each step, each abuse, and each heartbreak felt by the reader. Uncle Tom’s Cabin uses mothers and the idea of motherhood to engage the reader in the struggle of slavery.

In Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Stowe is able to draw mothers’ interests by replacing the master-slave relationship with the mother-child relationship. Gillian Brown, in “Domestic Individualism: Imagining Self,” states that, “Stowe replaces the master-slave relation with the benign proprietorship of mother-child, transferring the ownership of slaves to the mothers of America. … In Stowe’s matriarchal society, slaves are synonymous with children because they lack title to themselves and need abolitionist guardianship—which is to say, maternal aid” (Brown 50). By making each slave a child of every mother, Stowe is able to tap into the maternal passion for safeguarding her children, both physically and spiritually. This appeal to mothers is made stronger when talking about the separation of mother and child. In “Heroines in Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” Elizabeth Ammons contends, “these cruelly severed ties between mothers and children recur throughout Stowe’s expose’ of slavery for several reasons: to stir Abolitionist passion within parents in Stowe’s audience… and – most important – to dramatize the root evil of slavery: the displacement of life-giving maternal values by a profit-hungry masculine ethic that regards human beings as marketable commodities” (Ammons 167). Stowe shows all white men to be responsible for slavery because they are the ones with the political and public power. Women, mothers, on the other hand, show the cost of slavery. Stowe addresses women, specifically mothers, in the form of domestic fiction, a popular form of literature in the nineteenth century.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin does not follow the usual plot of domestic fiction of the nineteenth century; fiction “was to strengthen the ego of its female consumers” (Bardes 10). Instead, Stowe uses it as an educational tool and to explore ways in which women can exercise their power to alter current public situations. Women are challenged to act upon their moral conscience and step outside the domestic sphere of influence. Ammons states that for Stowe, “true womanliness—means unshakable allegiance to the Christian virtues of faith, hope, charity, mercy, and self-sacrifice; purity in body and mind; ethical dependence more on emotion than on reason; submission to mundane authority except when it violates higher laws; and protection of the home as a sacred and inviolable institution” (Ammons, Heroines 164). Stowe represents these ideals of motherhood through her characters in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Stowe uses mothers, black and white, to work against slavery for social change. From the first scene in the book where Mr. Shelby is selling Harry, Eliza’s son, Stowe shows the power in the hands of white men and the legal powerlessness and moral virtue in the hands of the women, both black and white and both mothers. This theme pervades situations throughout the story, appealing to white women readers to see a connection between themselves and the slave mothers in the south.

The opening scene where little Harry has been sold shows the reader the first representation of mothers. Both Mrs. Shelby and Chloe (Tom’s wife) conspire to delay the trader, Haley, from following Eliza after she has absconded with her son. Although Mrs. Shelby has no legal power to overrule her husband’s decision to sell both Harry and Tom, she does exercise her influence and encourages the other slaves to interfere with and delay the trader’s search. Chloe, who is the cook, exercises her power in the kitchen to delay the search for a long time by a variety of mishaps that postpone the meal. Mrs. Shelby, a white woman slave owner, although having no legal authority, exercises her power over the domestic sphere of her home. She uses the influence she has, not to get her ultimate desired result, but to obtain a better outcome than her husband has planned. Chloe, a slave, is able to use her influence in her duties, to help delay action by the slave trader. Combined, these two mothers enable Eliza to get away with her son. The shining example of motherhood in this scene though is Eliza, a slave. Eliza leaves in the dead of night, walking, with her son to keep him from being taken from her. Stowe refers to Eliza’s flight with her son and addresses the readers directly, “If it were your Harry, mother, or your Willie, that were going to be torn from you by a brutal trader, to-morrow morning, -if you had seen the man, and heard that the papers were signed and delivered, and you had only from twelve o’clock till morning to make good your escape, - how fast could you walk” (Stowe 48)? By addressing the readers directly, specifically the mothers, Stowe is pulling the reader into Eliza’s plight. Stowe is putting the reader, the mother, into Eliza’s shoes. Eliza is preserving her family, her child, at all costs. In using Eliza’s self-sacrificing act, Stowe is representing one of the many characteristics of motherhood. By using this particular aspect of motherhood, mothers could relate to this slave mother as a mother and, at the same time, tear down a barrier that existed about the feelings toward slaves. This barrier existed in the myth that blacks did not feel emotion the same as whites and therefore these heinous acts were not bad; Ammons contends that Stowe uses these scenes to “assert the humanity of the black race” (Ammons, Heroines 167). Pictures like this allow the reader to further relate to Eliza; the color of Eliza’s skin disappears and is unimportant. Now Eliza is just a mother trying to save her child.

The feeling of desperation to save a child is one to which any mother can relate. Stowe also uses the depression and emotional distress a mother feels at the loss of a child, whether by death or loss to slavery. In presenting the young girl who is auctioned off with her child and set upon the boat with Tom, Stowe is again showing us the anguish of the slave mother. The trader, Haley, sells her child unbeknownst to her. After her evening of torment at the loss of her child, the mother jumps into the river. Again, Stowe addresses the reader directly, “Patience! Patience! Ye whose hearts swell indignant at the wrongs like these. Not one throb of anguish, not one tear of the oppressed, is forgotten by the Man of Sorrows, the Lord of Glory. … for sure as he is God, ‘the year of his redeemed shall come’” (Stowe 129). Stowe here not only appeals to mothers who would be afraid for their children, but also implies that God is against the institution of slavery and that nothing that happens to those oppressed is beyond his notice. This introduction of Christianity against the idea of slavery is a powerful one considering, up to this point, many Christians were using scripture as a way to defend slavery. Readers are introduced to many characters that embody Christian virtues and, by following these moral precepts, these mothers break the political laws of man.

Eliza makes her journey across the Ohio River to the house of Senator and Mrs. Bird. While the Senator has just voted to pass the Fugitive Slave Law, Mrs. Bird is expressing her disappointment the he would assist in passing this law. The Senator explains that slavery is a matter for public debate and should not enter the private, domestic sphere. Mrs. Bird responds, “Now, John, I don’t know anything about politics, but I can read my Bible; and there I see that I must feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and comfort the desolate; and that Bible I mean to follow” (Stowe 77). Again, Stowe has appealed to mothers based on Christian virtues and obeying a higher law. Stowe has suggested expanding the debate from only the public sphere to include the domestic sphere, therefore including women. Even after Senator Bird’s discussion with his wife, his true revelation comes when he sees Eliza. Eliza’s form and demeanor, protecting her son, her appearance, and her tale of jumping onto the ice, convinces Senator Bird of the problems with the Fugitive Slave Law. When presented with empirical evidence (Eliza in his kitchen with her son Harry), Senator Bird cannot help but have the compassion and Christian giving spirit embodied by his wife. Mrs. Bird, as a mother, is presented as knowing this without needing proof. Again, Stowe is portraying women as morally superior, recognizing the honorable action well before the men. Even though Senator Bird takes action, readers who are mothers relate to the compassion felt by Mrs. Bird as she packs some of her deceased child’s clothing for Harry and works to fix a dress for Eliza. These personal touches, unmistakably those of a mother, bring the reader into the character of both Eliza and Mrs. Bird. Mothers feel a connection both to Eliza, as a mother protecting her child, and to Mrs. Bird, doing those domestic tasks with love to provide for others. Stowe uses these very different mothers to connect with different strata within northern society to usher in a change.

Along the Underground Railroad, the reader meets Rachel Halliday. She constitutes yet another kind of mother, closer to the idea of ideal motherhood. Rachel Halliday is representative of the whole Quaker community; she is the picture of domestic tranquility but with tremendous influence and Christian love. The narrator, describing Rachel Halliday, states, “for twenty years or more, nothing but loving words, and gentle moralities, and motherly loving-kindness, had come from that chair;-headaches and heartaches innumerable had been cured there,-difficulties, spiritual and temporal, solved there,-all by one good, loving woman, God bless her!” (Stowe 132). This description of Halliday is very close to the above description by Ammons of Stowe’s definition of true womanliness. Rachel Halliday not only embodies these characteristics, but also leads the Quaker community in displaying these ideals. Although technically, the men are leading the community, it is Rachel’s lead that everyone follows. Men are portrayed as doing very domestic tasks, alongside the women. The Quaker community is representative of a large family, with Rachel at its head. Stowe uses Rachel as an ideal illustration of motherhood. When talking with Eliza after she arrives at the Quaker settlement, Rachel questions, “And what’ll thee do, when thee gets there? The must think about that, my daughter” (Stowe 132). In this one statement, Rachel has crossed bloodlines and racial lines to include Eliza, a runaway slave, into her family. Not only can women readers, especially mothers, see themselves in the character of Rachel, but also now they can safely see themselves welcoming runaway slaves into their midst. At the same time, as Rachel represents motherly Christian love, Stowe is telling the readers that it is their Christian duty to help runaway slaves. Joy Jordan-Lake, in Whitewashing Uncle Tom’s Cabin: Nineteenth Century Women Novelists Respond to Stowe, contends that “Rachel Halliday’s form of comfort extends beyond mere caresses: in harboring fugitives, a patently illegal act by 1850, she provides material, emotional, and physical comfort for the oppressed at the risk of her own safety” (Jordan-Lake 44). This idealization of a mother who offers comfort while breaking the law becomes a model for readers who are mothers. She demonstrates unfailing acceptance and care of all of God’s creatures.

Eva St. Clare, although a child, is an alternative mother form, exhibiting true Christian love and care for all people. Stowe uses Eva to represent true legal powerlessness; Eva is twice removed being a child and a girl. Yet, through the character of Eva, Stowe shows the battle over slavery encapsulated in one family. Eva’s mother, Marie St. Clare (Stowe’s main representative of a poor mother) is characteristic of the south; her aunt Ophelia speaks for the north and the marginally free states. Marie is Stowe’s departure from the depiction of good mothers; Ammons contends that Marie “is abominable because she will not think and feel like a mother. She behaves instead, in the terms of this novel, like a man: ruthless, greedy, self-centered, cruel” (Ammons, Stowe’s Dream 165). Marie is in favor of slavery to support her way of life; she is unconcerned with anything else. Ophelia, from a border state, is used to help influence northerners who feel that slavery does not affect them. During the course of the novel, Ophelia attempts to overcome her prejudices and practice what she espouses. With these types of motherly influences, Eva is a child, mother, Christ –type. Eva obtains her motherly affection from Mammy, a slave, and her ‘fatherly’ guidance from Tom, another slave. Within this influence, Eva embodies Christian love. Eva takes a stand on the issue of slavery against her mother. Eva is not concerned with tradition or what, by law, is forbidden for the slaves, such as education; she is only interested in obeying a higher law. Eva, at one point, is talking about the misery of the slaves on the boat and says, “I would be glad to die, if my dying could stop all this misery. I would die for them” (Stowe 274). This motherly impulse of self-sacrifice, along with the obvious Christian overtones, shows Eva as one of Stowe’s strongest mother figures. Ammons contends that, “Stowe creates a girl and names her for Eve as a prefigure of Christ because she believes, as is everywhere obvious in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, that the Savior’s love is that of woman, especially mothers” (Ammons, Heroines 169). Stowe, again, ties together motherly and Christian love in one character. Although Eva is a child, she has the compassion and mature faith of a grown up; in many instances, she is more mature in her actions than any of her immediate relatives (her mother Maria, Ophelia, and her father Augustine St. Clare). Her care about the treatment and eternal life of those around her monopolizes her time. Even in death, Eva is focusing on what will become of those around her.

Eva’s death scene is one that exemplifies motherly instruction. Even in death, Eva is concerned about the future of her family and friends. She instructs them about their future; “Listen to what I say. I want to speak to you about your souls. . . Many of you, I am afraid, are very careless. You are thinking only about this world.” Then, Eva says, “There isn’t one of you that hasn’t always been very kind to me; and I want to give you something that, when you look at, you shall always remember me. I’m going to give all of you a curl of my hair; and, when you look at it, think that I loved you and am gone to heaven, and that I want to see you all there” (Stowe 287-288). Stowe’s portrayal of Eva is indicative of motherly concern; that of a parent who will no longer be close by to counsel those around her. Throughout Eva’s short life, and especially in her death, she has exemplified Stowe’s definition of motherhood and womanliness: faith, hope, charity, love, preservation of the family, and commitment to a higher law. These characteristics, even though she is not a mother, make her an extraordinary example of motherhood. Stowe’s final maternal character is Tom. The reader meets Tom early in the novel after he has been sold. When speaking to his previous master’s son, the narrator describes him as “speaking in a voice as tender as a woman’s” (Stowe 99). Tom exhibits many feminine characteristics from the first meeting. Tom is openly emotional about being sold and leaving his children; “Sobs, heavy, hoarse, and loud, shook the chair, and great tears fell through his fingers on the floor” (Stowe 38) and “Tom, who had, to the full, the gentle, domestic heart, which, woe for them! Has been a peculiar characteristic of his unhappy race, got up and walked silently to look at his children” (Stowe 91). This focus on his children, and not himself, when he has been sold is a maternal characteristic. Tom goes quietly with the slave trader, leaving his family. He does not run away like Eliza because he knows that other slaves will have to take his place and he does not want to disappoint Mr. Shelby, who he says has been a good master. Again, Tom is concerned with everyone but himself. Jordan-Lake points out that:

Even Tom, though male and physically powerful, becomes, in Stowe’s paradigm, a feminine-identified Christ figure who prioritizes relationships with the divine and other human beings over his own freedom, who exemplifies nurture and gentleness, who unashamedly weeps, and who embraces weakness over strength to the point of death to secure the “salvation,” physical and spiritual, of others. (Jordan-Lake 29)

This continual focus on self-sacrifice, nurture, and Christian virtue makes Tom a powerful maternal figure. Stowe repeatedly puts Tom in situations where he is confronted with appalling behavior all around him; Tom is always gentle, nurturing, pious, and self-sacrificing. These are all maternal characteristics. Eva and Tom meet on the boat on the Mississippi. When Eva falls into the water, Tom, without thinking, dives in after her. It is almost as if they are both baptized into this world together. The two characters are then intertwined. Both are mother types and both are Christ types. Although both die, their deaths are very different. Eva’s death is one of dying of compassion and concern. Tom’s death is that of self-sacrifice in a very physically painful way. Even after Legree has beaten Tom to death, Tom has pity on Legree: “Tom opened his eyes, and looked upon his master. ‘Ye poor miserable critter!’ he said, ‘there an’t no more ye can do! I forgive ye, with all my soul!’” (Stowe 410). His final sacrifice was made so that another slave could get away. In the end, he forgives Legree and the other slaves that helped Legree beat him so severely. To the end, he is witnessing to them, imparting the wisdom that he has. Tom’s death echoes the story of the crucifixion in Christian theology: Tom’s beating, death, and forgiveness of others before he dies. Although Tom was male, he embodies all the characteristics of womanliness and motherhood. His continual care of others and self-sacrifice makes him one of Stowe’s most powerful mother figures.

Women, specifically mothers and mother types, in Uncle Tom’s Cabin are portrayed as possessing a Christian giving spirit and compassion beyond the male characters. Women are concerned with following Christian directives and preserving the family. Stowe’s parallel of family unity with national unity contributes to the strength of the description of slavery. This connection contributes to Uncle Tom’s Cabin’s far reaching influence. This echoes the sentiment of Sarah Margaret Fuller in “Woman in the Nineteenth Century.” Fuller compares the forces breaking up the union with the forces breaking up the family through a conversation with a trader; the trader states, “Is it not enough … that you have done all you could to break up the national union, and thus destroy the prosperity of our country, but now you must be trying to break up family union” (Fuller 1635). The idea of equating the breaking up of the national union with the breaking up of the family is a powerful one at this time. Fuller and Stowe are presenting the same sentiment in different ways but to the same end, political and domestic change. Both champion women in different ways, Fuller by championing women’s rights, Stowe by empowering them with domestic moral authority. While presenting mothers as morally superior, Stowe presents the idea that morality should not only exist in the private domestic sphere, but the feminine virtues of morality should be included in the public domain. Stowe insists that the public domain has been brought into the private sphere by bringing the economic reality of slavery into the home, therefore, making it the business of the private domain. In crossing this boundary, domestic morality should apply. Stowe has repeatedly described slavery as an attack upon the family and home. Arthur Riss point out in “Racial Essentialism and Family Values in Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” that by doing this, “Stowe is able to make the family into the bridge by which the reader can ‘cross over to the inner world’ of the slave” (Riss 525). By using motherhood and family as her base, Stowe is able to bring the indifferent bystander into action to abolish slavery. Jean Fagan Yellin, in “Doing it Herself: Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Woman’s Role in the Slavery Crisis,” contends, “Stowe’s female Christians act successfully against slavery without walking out of their own front doors” (Yellin 73). Stowe’s appeal to women is that they have the ability to combat slavery within their own sphere of influence. Women are powerful wherever they are. This is shown by the variety of mothers and action that takes place within the novel. Jordan-Lake points out that:

In Uncle Tom’s Cabin, mother-savior figures effect actual change, both physical and spiritual. Eliza liberates herself and her son; the Quaker women assist fugitives to freedom; Mrs. Bird rebels against convention, federal law, and her senator husband’s authority in order to protect fleeing slaves; Eva transforms individuals’ spiritual health and sense of justice. (Jordan-Lake 61)

Stowe gives the reader example after example of ways mothers and mother-types have power to influence people around them. Like much of the slave literature, Stowe puts an emphasis on family structure and unity. By emphasizing slavery as an attack on the family unit, Stowe is able to build a cohesive bond with her mother readers, appealing to their sense of moral values and Christian virtue. Stowe paints pictures that enable readers to see slave characters as people, as human beings, and as someone they would help. The pictures show scenes that readers can insert themselves into and occupy the space of Eliza, Mrs. Bird, Eva, or Tom. Stowe uses characteristics of motherhood to appeal to all mothers giving them new children, the slaves. Stowe is hoping the mothers will listen to the “better angels of our nature” (Lincoln).

Works Cited

Ammons, Elizabeth. “Heroines in Uncle Tom’s Cabin” in American Literature, Vol. 49, No. 2. (May 1977), Duke University Press.

Ammons, Elizabeth. “Stowe’s Dream of the Mother-Savior: Uncle Tom’s Cabin and American Women Writers Before the 1920’s” in New Essays on Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Ed. Eric J. Sundquist. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.

Bardes, Barbara and Suzanne Gossett. Declaration of Independence: Women and Political Power in Nineteenth-Century American Fiction. New Brunswick and London: Rutgers University Press. 1990.

Brown, Gillian. “Domestic Individualism: Imagining Self in Nineteenth-Century America” Berkeley, California: University of California Press. 1990. in A Routledge Literary Sourcebook on Harriett Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. New York and London: Routledge Taylor and Frances Group. 2004.

Douglass, Frederick. “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself” in The Norton Anthology of American Literature: Shorter Sixth Edition. Ed. Nina Baym. New York and London: W. W. Norton & Company. 2003.

Fuller, Sarah Margaret. “Women in the Nineteenth Century” in The Heath Anthology of American Literature: Volume One Fourth Edition. Ed. Paul Lauter. New York and Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. 2002.

Jordan-Lake, Joy. Whitewashing Uncle Tom’s Cabin: Nineteenth-Century Women Novelists Respond to Stowe. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press. 2005.

Lincoln, Abraham. First Inaugural Address. U. S. Inaugural Addresses. 1989. http://www.bartleby.com retrieved 11/16/2006.

Riss, Arthur. “Racial Essentialism and Family Values in Uncle Tom’s Cabin” in American Quarterly, Vol. 46, No. 4. (Dec. 1994). The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Stowe, Harriet Beecher. Uncle Tom’s Cabin. New York: Bantam Books. 1981.

Thackeray, William Makepeace. http://www.webmomz.com/quotes-about-motherhood.shtml retrieved 11/6/06.

Yellin, Jean Fagan. “Doing It Herself: Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Woman’s Role in the Slavery Crisis” in New Essays on Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Ed. Eric J. Sundquist. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.