UTC - Background

Uncle Tom's Cabin has been assigned to countless high school and college students to read, study, and write about. The book tells the tale of Tom - an honest, hardworking, Christian slave - and his struggles with white slaveholders. I was recently appointed the task of reading this classic, along with some background material, and will soon have to write several essays on it. Harriet Beecher Stowe broke the traditional boundaries for women writers in the nineteenth century. Women didn't write about political subjects and they tended to use male pen-names. Her literature was not flawless but her ability to write in several forms of dialect excused her poor grammar. The south was repulsed by the accusations Stowe inferred. Southerners feared the utterly appalling truth about their system of governing slaves, so much so that they punished the inquisitive. The book was banned and anyone who possessed it was arrested. Despite the prohibitions in the South, Uncle Tom's Cabin gained extreme popularity in the northern US and throughout England. Stowe's tale of the abuses of slaveholders became the bestselling book of the nineteenth century, second only to the Bible. Impressive. To be continued...