Uncle Tom’s Cabin 1035of Medusa’s snakes.” The phallic snakes suggest a
monstrous masculine femininity, a woman who has
usurped the active sexuality of a man. The com-
parison also points to the debilitating effect that
the expression of female sexuality has on the men.
Indeed, the sexualized female vampires cast a spell
on them, turning the men to stone, as it were. The
male characters become passive slaves, hypnotized
by the women’s erotic charms. They even become
feminized, as suggested when a reclining Arthur
awaits a kiss from a female vampire, closing his eyes
in “languorous ecstacy.” This feminization can also
be seen in the hysteria of the men. Van Helsing
gives way to a “regular fit of hysterics . . . just as a
woman does,” and Arthur grows “quite hysterical” as
he cries like a “baby” on Mina’s maternal shoulder. In
each case, the women’s sexual empowerment comes
at the cost of the men’s masculinity. The men lose
their power, autonomy, and authority as the women
gain theirs, revealing how interdependent notions of
masculinity and femininity are.
Not surprisingly, the killing of the female vam-
pires comes across as a ruthless reinstating of a
heroic, patriarchal masculinity. For instance, when
Arthur kills the monstrous Lucy, he appears as the
“figure of Thor,” driving “deeper and deeper the
mercy-bearing stake, whilst the blood from the
pierced heart welled and spurted up around it.”
Apparent in Arthur’s face is a sense of “high duty,”
and the entire proceeding gives great “courage” to
Dr. Seward and the other men. Once a distraught
man, Arthur now recovers his masculinity, for him-
self and for the others. The violence of the action,
moreover, seems symptomatic of male frustration,
as if Arthur is gratified at this opportunity to take
vengeance on the woman who had undermined
his masculinity. Indeed, the action of killing Lucy
is a heavy-handed, symbolic rendering of sex. In
this case, however, the man is in control while the
woman is passive. The whole proceeding suggests
a violent and vengeful reassertion of the power of
patriarchy. It also suggests an attempt to extinguish
female sexuality, as evidenced by the fact that, once
dead, Lucy’s “unequalled sweetness and purity”
returns.
Mina’s purity is also compromised, but Van Hel-
sing and the others save her by killing Dracula. With
the threat of female sexuality removed, the novel
briefly shows Mina and Jonathan Harker seven years
later, now happily married and the proud parents of
a boy. In this way, Stoker again reveals his central
preoccupation: keeping female sexuality contained
within the Victorian institution of marriage.
Mitchell R. LewisSTowE, HarriET bEECHEr Uncle
Tom’s Cabin (1852)
Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin: or,
Life Among the Lowly (the book’s original subtitle), is
arguably the most important American novel of the
19th century. Its impact can be measured by the fact
that it was the century’s first literary blockbuster,
selling more than 300,000 copies in its first year
and 2 million copies by the end of the decade in
the United States alone. While Abraham Lincoln’s
famous comment to Stowe (“Is this the little woman
who made this great war?”) overstates the novel’s
impact, Uncle Tom’s Cabin undeniably galvanized
antislavery feeling in the North. The novel was uni-
versally vilified by southern slaveholders and gener-
ated nearly three dozen novels defending slavery and
its supporting institutions. None of these “anti-Tom”
novels had the political, moral, or artistic weight of
Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
Stowe (1811–96) wrote her novel in response
to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1849, which obligated
northern authorities to capture and return escaped
slaves to bondage. The novel follows the different
paths of two slaves from the same Kentucky planta-
tion. Eliza Harris flees to the North to save her child
from slave traders. Tom is sold away from his wife
and children to cover his owner’s debts. Alternating
between Tom’s journey and Eliza’s, the novel wit-
nesses the physical, psychological, and moral toll
slavery imposes on slaves and slave owners alike.
Yet Uncle Tom’s Cabin does not merely indulge in
brutality; through extensive dialogues, it engages
and takes to task all of the economic, political, and
moral arguments evoked to defend slavery. In the
end, Uncle Tom’s Cabin is about the power of Chris-
tian salvation and sacrifice as the means to eliminate
slavery and its injustices.
Roger Hecht