"Cliff Notes - Uncle Tom's Cabin" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cliff Notes)

Uncle Tom's Cabin changed Harriet Beecher Stowe's life. Although she had negotiated a poor royalty arrangement, she earned $10,000, enough money to live comfortably. She traveled frequently to Europe, where both she and her book were highly esteemed. Nothing else she wrote attained the popularity of Uncle Tom's Cabin. Although she completed a fine novel about life in New England, The Minister's Wooing (1859), the noted critic Edmund Wilson had a point when he wrote, "If there is something to be said for the author's claim that Uncle Tom's Cabin was written by God, it is evident that the nine novels which followed it were produced without divine intervention by Harriet Beecher Stowe herself." After her husband's death, Stowe returned to Hartford, Connecticut, where her house today is open to visitors. She died there in 1896.


^^^^^^^^^^UNCLE TOM'S CABIN: THE PLOT

Mr. Shelby, a kindly Kentucky plantation owner, is forced by debt to sell two of his slaves to an unsavory trader named Haley. Uncle Tom, the religious and good-hearted manager of the plantation, understands why he must be sold. He says good-bye to his wife, Aunt Chloe, and their children, and leaves with Haley for the slave market in New Orleans. The other slave marked for sale is Harry, a four-year-old. His mother, Mrs. Shelby's servant, Eliza, overhears the news and runs away with the little boy. She makes her way to the Ohio River, the boundary with the free state of Ohio. The early spring ice is breaking up, and she crosses the river with her son in her arms by jumping from cake to cake.

In Ohio, Eliza is sheltered by a series of kind people. At a Quaker settlement, she is reunited with her husband, George Harris. George's master abused him even though George was intelligent and hard-working, and he had decided to escape. The recent passage of the Fugitive Slave Law required citizens of free states to help return runaway slaves to their owners. George and Eliza find friends who are willing to help runaway slaves in spite of the new law. But they would not be safe, even in the North. In fact, they are followed by Marks and Loker, slave-catchers in partnership with the trader, Haley. With Marks and Loker in hot pursuit, the Quakers drive George, Eliza, and their son toward Sandusky, so that they can catch a ferry for Canada, where slavery is forbidden and American laws do not apply.

Meanwhile, Uncle Tom is headed down the river, deeper into slavery. On the boat, he makes friends with Evangeline St. Clare--little Eva--a beautiful and religious white child. After Tom rescues little Eva from near-drowning, Eva's father, Augustine St. Clare, buys him. St. Clare is charming and intelligent, an indulgent master, and life in the household is carefree. Its other white members include Marie St. Clare, Augustine's selfish, whiny wife, and Ophelia, his cousin from Vermont. Ophelia has just moved to New Orleans, and she and Augustine argue long and hard about slavery, he defending it, she opposing it.

Augustine buys Topsy for Ophelia to raise in order to test her theories about education. Topsy is bright and energetic but has no sense of right and wrong. Ophelia is almost ready to give up on her when little Eva shows her how to reach Topsy. Tom and Eva study the Bible together and share a belief in a loving God. But Eva becomes ill and dies. Her death, and her example, transform the lives of many of the people around her. Even her father becomes more religious. Unfortunately he is accidentally killed before he can fulfill his promise to Eva to free Tom, and Tom is sold again.

This time Tom is not so lucky. He is bought by Simon Legree, who owns an isolated plantation on the Red River. Legree is cruel and sadistic, and his plantation is a living hell for his slaves. They are worked so hard they have no time to think or feel, and Legree sets them against each other. Missing are the family ties of the Shelby plantation in Kentucky or the gaiety of the St. Clare household in New Orleans. Tom almost loses his faith in God, but recovers it and continues his work among the other slaves. He becomes friends with Cassy, a good but despairing woman who has been Legree's mistress. Cassy arranges for her and Emmeline, the girl Legree has chosen as his next mistress, to escape, and she urges Tom to join them. He will not, but he allows himself to be savagely beaten by Legree rather than reveal what he knows about the women's whereabouts.

The Shelby's son, George, arrives at Legree's plantation to rescue Tom, but it is too late. Tom is dying. George confronts Legree and knocks him down. He buries Tom, and swears on his grave that he will do everything he can to end slavery.

On his way back to Kentucky, George Shelby meets Madame de Thoux, who turns out to be George Harris' sister. It is also discovered that Cassy, who is on the same boat, is Eliza's mother. George Shelby goes home and frees his slaves, telling them they owe their freedom to Uncle Tom. Madame de Thoux, Cassy, and Emmeline continue on to Montreal, where George Harris and Eliza are now living with Harry and their baby daughter. The reunited family moves to France, where George attends the university, and then to Africa, where he believes he can do the most good for his people.


Uncle Tom's Cabin has many characters. The following discussion groups them by the geographical area they're principally associated with in the novel.

^^^^^^^^^^UNCLE TOM'S CABIN: UNCLE TOM

Uncle Tom manages the Shelby plantation. Strong, intelligent, capable, good, and kind, he is the most heroic figure in the novel that bears his name. The list of Tom's virtues is endless. He is a good father to his own children, especially the baby, Polly, and also nurtures the children of his masters, George Shelby and Eva St. Clare. From Stowe's description of his voice, "tender as a woman's," and his "gentle, domestic heart," you might almost suspect that he is a woman disguised as a muscular black man.

Tom's most important characteristic, from Stowe's point of view, is his Christian faith. The Bible--which George Shelby has taught him to read--is alive for him, and he makes it live for the people around him. He preaches at the service in his native Kentucky. And he makes the people he encounters, black and white--Prue, Augustine St. Clare, Cassy--feel and believe in the love of Jesus. Tom doesn't just talk about religion, he lives it. Through his example, and then by his death, he makes converts.

Religion is very simple for Tom. It means loving all of God's creatures and serving God by helping them. Tom feels real compassion for others, as he demonstrates when St. Clare drinks too much. He is always willing to help--by jumping into the Mississippi to save Eva or by putting cotton in Lucy's bag. Tom also feels responsible for other people. He refuses to escape from the Shelby plantation with Eliza, because he knows that his sale will make it possible for Mr. Shelby to keep running it, and to save the other slaves. He will not escape from Legree's plantation with Cassy and Emmeline because he feels that he has work among the slaves there, and he dies rather than betray them to Legree. God has given Tom an extraordinary ability. He can forgive the evil done to him, even by the beastly Legree. His self-sacrificing love for others has been called motherly. It has also been called truly Christian.

Many readers feel that the character of Uncle Tom seems too good to be true. For black readers especially, Uncle Tom has become a symbol of black accommodation and defeat. During the civil rights movement of the 1960s, blacks who were seen as too cautious, too unwilling to alienate whites, were called "Uncle Toms." The most famous attack on the character of Uncle Tom came from a black novelist and intellectual, James Baldwin. Writing in 1949, Baldwin deplored the fact that "Tom,... [Stowe's] only black man, has been robbed of his humanity and divested of his sex."

Many modern readers agree with Baldwin. Others argue that you have to see Tom in Stowe's terms, not our own. For her, Tom was a hero, and his decision to suffer rather than to fight or flee was not the result of cowardice but his only moral choice. Stowe believed--and frequently announced in the novel--that blacks were morally superior to whites, and that their acceptance of their oppression would earn them a place in heaven.

The debate over the character of Uncle Tom resembles in some ways the evolution of the American civil rights movement that began in the 1950s. During the movement's early days, civil rights leaders adopted a moral tone. Demonstrators knelt in prayer while they were attacked by police with dogs or hoses. The idea was to demonstrate the kind of moral superiority and forgiveness that Uncle Tom showed Simon Legree. As time passed, however, some people in the civil rights movement found the religious stance demeaning. Black people, they said, had to fight back when they were attacked. They must meet violence with violence. In the aftermath of the movement--and as black people make greater strides in American society--black power has come to mean much more than just spiritual nobility.

^^^^^^^^^^UNCLE TOM'S CABIN: AUNT CHLOE

Aunt Chloe, Uncle Tom's wife, is fat, warm, and jolly. She is a good housekeeper and a superb cook, and justly proud of her skill. She loves Tom, and urges him to escape to Canada rather than to go South with Haley. After Tom is sold, she convinces the Shelbys to hire her out to a baker in Louisville and to use her wages to buy Tom's freedom. She is heartbroken to learn of his death.

^^^^^^^^^^UNCLE TOM'S CABIN: MOSE, PETE, AND POLLY

Mose, Pete, and Polly, the children of Uncle Tom and Aunt Chloe, are playful and rambunctious. Polly is Tom's special favorite, and she loves to bury her tiny hands in his hair.

^^^^^^^^^^UNCLE TOM'S CABIN: ELIZA HARRIS

Eliza Harris is raised by her mistress, Mrs. Shelby, to be pious and good. Described as light-skinned and pretty, Eliza dearly loves her husband, George Harris, and their little boy, Harry. When she learns that Harry is about to be sold, Eliza carries him in her arms to the Ohio River, which she crosses on cakes of ice. Although generally a modest and retiring young woman, Eliza becomes extraordinarily brave because of her love for her son.

When her family has been reunited and is safely settled in Canada, Eliza keeps a good home and gives birth to a daughter. At the novel's end, she learns that Cassy is her long-lost mother.