Uncle Tom's Cabin Essay

Nineteenth century America was a patriarchal society; women barely had any rights, most, if not all, of them were domestic housewives, and their opinions on political and legal matters did not count for anything. This was the society that Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote for when she wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin. To regular Americans it seemed that women have no power but Stowe projects the positive light on women. The novel portrayed women as loving mothers and wives that try to do the right thing, for example, the women characters, such as Eliza and Mrs. Bird, in the novel were all against slavery and attempted to do something about it. Stowe also uses sentimentalism, feminine morality, and Christian values in Uncle Tom’s Cabin that eventually persuaded
There are many quotes and sayings out there saying “there is not greater than a mother’s love” or “a mother’s love is like nothing else in the world”. A mother always would want to keep her child safe more than anymore and that love the mother has for her child can allow her to accomplish anything. Here in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, it proves those quotes and more; when Eliza figures out that she is almost caught by Mr. Haley, the slave trader, she takes a leap faith literally, leaps across the ice on the Ohio River “Right on behind they came; and, nerved with strength such as God gives only to the desperate, with one wild cry and flying. It was a desperate leap—impossible to anything but madness and despair” (64). Stowe writes that this leap is impossible unless the people are crazy or deeply sad. Even when she is the brink of being captured she gains this all powerful courage that made her leap. Her courage comes from the love she has for Harry. This maternal sentiment shouts to the mothers reading this book and making them ponder on the fact that Eliza would not have to do any of this if she was not a slave. This is how Stowe uses sentimental literature to gain that sentiment from mothers reading the text and pushing them to idealize a world without slavery, a world where mothers can be with their children no matter their