Inventing Americas: 1800–1865 173instance, he makes what is called “his declaration of independence:” he is “a free
man” by natural right, he insists, and, as such, he has the right to defend his freedom,
by violence if necessary. In the course of the story, George and Eliza escape. They
stay at a Quaker settlement for a while, with their son Harry. Eventually, they set sail
from America. On board ship, both are miraculously reunited with their long-lost
mothers. They settle first in France, where George attends university for four years,
and then in Africa. “The desire and yearning of my soul is for an African nationality,”
George declares. “I want a people that shall have a tangible, separate existence of its
own.” The final gesture of one George, Shelby, in freeing his slaves, is in effect
counterpointed by the final gesture of another George, Harris, in seeking to establish
what he calls “a republic formed of picked men, who, by energy and self-educating
force, have ... individually raised themselves above a condition of slavery.” Both
appear to be founders of a new order.
“God wrote the book,” Stowe once said of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, “I took His dictation.”
Stowe was helped not only by divine intervention, though, or her sense of it, but by
her reading. There are various forms of discourse at work in the novel that reflect its
author’s active and informed engagement with the debate over slavery. Stowe was,
for example, well aware of the arguments for and against slavery. At one moment in
the St. Clare episode, she comprehensively rebuts every facet of the pro-slavery
argument; and, at another point, she has a family discuss the Fugitive Slave Law. The
story of the flight of George and Eliza Harris clearly recalls slave narratives; the novel
as a whole opens with a central situation in plantation fiction, the threatened loss of
the old plantation due to debt; and, true to the conventions of sentimental fiction,
there are miraculous coincidences, interminable deathbed scenes (notably, the death
of little Eva), and the customary address to the gentle reader. Characters out of tall
tales and frontier humor are introduced, like a comic black duo called Sam and
Andy; two rough slaveholders called Tom Luker and Marks recall the rogues of
Southwestern humor; various moments, such as when we are invited to enter Uncle
Tom’s Cabin for the first time, remind us of Stowe’s participation in the local color
tradition; and, along with scenes from provincial life, there are moments of pastoral
and antipastoral – respectively, the idyllic portrait of the St. Clare plantation and
detailed description of the dilapidated estate that Simon Legree owns. But Stowe
does not simply imitate, she innovates. So, this plantation novel centers, as its subtitle
indicates, not on the wealthy plantation owners but on “life among the lowly.” Its
hero is not some impoverished patriarch but a slave who gradually assumes the
stature of a Christ figure. And the object of this sentimental fiction is, as Stowe
declares in her preface, specifically moral and political: “to awaken sympathy and
feeling for the African race, as they exist among us.”
Those whose sympathy Stowe especially hoped to awaken were women: the
narrator constantly appeals to the possible experiences of the reader as a wife and
mother. In part, this is because she clearly sees the power of sympathy as a useful
political instrument and agent of conversion: several characters are, in fact, converted
to the antislavery cause when they are forced actively to witness suffering. And, in
part, it is also because the appeal relates to one of the fundamental arguments of theGGray_c02.indd 173ray_c 02 .indd 173 8 8/1/2011 7:54:42 AM/ 1 / 2011 7 : 54 : 42 AM