1038 stowe, Harriet Beecher
head, it wouldn’t do no good neither,—I’s nothin’ but
a nigger, no ways!” Pressed by Eva as to whether she
could feel love, Topsy says no: “Couldn’t be nothin’
but a nigger, if I was ever so good. If I could be
skinned, and come white, I’d try then.” And later,
“There can’t nobody love niggers, and niggers can’t
do nothin’! I don’t care.”
Such insight into the psychological impact of
racism, along with the spiritual powers she invests in
Tom, argue for Stowe’s liberal views on race. How-
ever, the novel’s conclusion suggests an opposite
view. While the lighter-skinned characters, George
and Eliza Harris, along with their family, do find
freedom in Canada, they cannot remain American.
Instead, they are “colonized,” returning to Africa as
missionaries. In other words, while blacks should
certainly be free from the oppression of slavery,
whether they can live alongside whites is another
matter altogether. This speaks as much to the con-
fusing politics of abolition and the larger anxieties
of the time over whether different races could mix
as it does to Stowe’s own views on race. Ultimately,
Stowe’s racial views are ambiguous, but they also
accurately reflects the churning debate over race in
the antebellum period.
Roger Hecht
reLIGIon in Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Primarily known as an abolitionist novel, Uncle Tom’s
Cabin is at heart a religious tract. Stowe’s principal
argument against slavery is that it is anti-Christian
and that the reason slavery exists in America is that
the country has failed to live up to its Christian
ideals. Readers should approach the novel with an
understanding of the fierce debate raging over the
meaning of Christianity in a slaveholding context.
Slavery’s apologists scoured the Bible for historical
and theological justification for the system, while
abolitionists looked to the example of Jesus’ life
to support their antislavery efforts. In Uncle Tom’s
Cabin, Stowe exposes the repugnant reality of slav-
ery, its physical, emotional, and sexual violence, by
contrasting it against acts of loving, selfless Chris-
tian devotion. Those characters who demonstrate
kindness, sympathy, and self-sacrifice represent the
best in Christianity, while slavery’s supporters are at
best corrupters of Christianity and at worst godless.
The Christian ethos is best represented by two
characters: Tom and Evangelina (Eva) St. Clare.
Both characters’ faith allows them to resist the deg-
radations of slavery, and they both become martyrs
through loving, Christ-like behavior. Evangelina’s
faith enables her to resists slavery’s power to mor-
ally corrupt the slaveholder. Unlike her narcissistic
mother, who is unreasonably demanding and cruel
to her slaves, Eva exhibits a pure, unprejudiced
kindness to all the slaves in her household. She
upbraids her cousin for cruelly beating his servant,
and she secretly teaches her mother’s slave to read.
Most significantly, Eva brings calmness to the
incorrigible Topsy through Christian love: “Oh
Topsy, poor child, I love you! . . . I love you because
you haven’t had any father, or mother, or friends,
because you have been a poor abused child.” Later
she adds, “[D]on’t you know that Jesus loves all
alike? He is just as willing to love you, as me. He
loves you just as I do,—only more, because He is
better.” Eva’s love not only comforts Topsy, it leads
her to become a Christian. Evangelina is able to do
this because she is “willing to do as Christ did, call
them to us, and put our hands on them.” Evangelina’s
subsequent death results from the way slavery taxed
her soul even as she stood up to it spiritually.
Tom, too, is a Christian martyr. His oft-noted
passivity is not a sign of weakness but of moral
strength. Tom’s devotion to Mr. Shelby manifests, in
part, because he is “pious,” having “got religion at a
camp meeting.” Tom leads informal prayer meetings
in his own cabin and carries a Bible wherever he
goes. In his first act of martyrdom, Tom refuses to
run away with Eliza, knowing that the safety of the
other slaves on the plantation depends on his sale:
“If I must be sold, or all the people on the place, and
everything go to rack, why, let me be sold. I s’pose
I can b’ar it as well as any on ’em. . . . Mas’r always
found me on the spot—he always will.” Tom feels
great compassion for others’ suffering, and his com-
passion is evenhanded; he is just as concerned for
the spiritual well-being of old, abused Prue as he is
for that of his master, Augustine St. Clare.
Tom’s second martyrdom comes at the hand of
the atheist slave owner Simon Legree, who is threat-
ened by Tom’s faith as a challenge to his own power:
“I’m your church now! You understand,—you’ve got