A Comparison Between the Factual and Emotional Truth of Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Harriet Beecher Stowe’s renowned work Uncle Tom’s Cabin portrays the story of the brutality of slavery through the trials of its characters. In Stowe’s tale, a young maid decides to escape from slavery after she overhears her masters planning to sell her son to a slave trader. The main protagonist of the story, Uncle Tom, fails to escape slavery and becomes a martyr when he is beaten to death after refusing to inform his masters on the whereabouts of two runaway slaves. Since its inception, Uncle Tom’s Cabin has drawn criticism from both those opposed to and in favor of slavery. In her work The Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Stowe addresses the criticism held by those supportive to slavery, which is that her novel fabricated the realities of slavery in the South. Yet, African American writer James Baldwin (Sonny's Blues) presents the case that Uncle Tom’s Cabin is false because it is emotionally misrepresentative of the experience of slavery. However, an assessment of both the text of the novel and Stowe’s follow-up work, it can be determined that Uncle Tom’s Cabin is both factually and emotionally honest in its portrayal of slavery.

In The Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Stowe addresses the criticisms that her novel fabricated the facts in order to portray slavery in a horrendous manner. One detail that Stowe defends is the earliest scene in the novel where the slave owners Arthur and Emily Shelby conspire to sell their slaves to Mr. Haley, a slave trader. During this scene, the slave owners entice a young slave boy named Jim C)ow to sing and dance for the slave trader while condescendingly patting him on the head. Further, Mr. Haley expresses his disdain for slaves, asserting his skepticism that they can behave ethically. As Stowe notes, her critics often asserted that this scene was fabricated. However, she verifies that through her own experiences, she saw a slave trader purchase a young boy who had previously possessed legal rights to be free (Stowe). Thus, she contends that her personal experience confirms that traders often were involved in improper methods of acquiring slaves to sale.

Further, Stowe portrays the character of slave traders by providing a copy of a letter that was written by a known slave trader. In this correspondence he revealingly writes:

Kephart and myself are determined to go the whole hog for any negro you can find, and you must give me the earliest information as soon as you do find any. Enclosed you will receive a handbill, and I can make a good bargain if you can find them. I will, in all cases, as soon as a negro runs off, send you a handbill immediately, so that you may be on the look-out (Stowe Key).

This correspondence supports Stowe’s case because it demonstrates that slave traders were driven by profit to capture slaves. Further, the letter reveals that Stowe was accurate in presenting her character Mr. Haley is a callous sight. As this letter of support demonstrates, slave traders did merely see slaves as commodity items.

Another point of controversy is Stowe’s portrayal of the brutal treatment of slaves. When the character Uncle Tom is sold into slavery at a plantation, he is soon beaten severely for refusing to whip another slave. Stowe addresses the criticism that the brutality visited upon slaves was exaggerated. In her defense, Stowe provides documentation that proves that slaves were systemically beaten. In a transcript of an interview with a police officer, Stowe displays an officer’s confession that slaves who are found in the streets after curfew are given punishments of up to thirty-nine lashes (Stowe). Further, the police officers acknowledged that they flog slaves at the request of their masters (Stowe). As this interview demonstrates, even public officials in society who were uninvolved with the actual practice of owning slaves were involved in the brutality.

Yet, while Stowe demonstrates that the facts of her story are not fabricated, James Baldwin launched the criticism that the story is emotionally false in his essay “Everybody’s Protest Novel.” In his work, Baldwin presents the main thesis that novels championed by activists, such as Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin enable people to be passive regarding injustice by providing them with a sense of emotional satisfaction. Critiquing Stowe’s work, Baldwin writes,

Sentimentality, the ostentatious parading of excessive and spurious emotion, is the mark of dishonesty, the ability to feel; the wet eyes of the sentimentalist betray his aversion to experience, his fear of life, his arid heart,; and it is always, therefore, the signal of secret and violent inhumanity, the mask of cruelty (Baldwin).

Essentially, Baldwin asserts that the emotional nature of the work overrides the authenticity of the experiences in the novel.

To an extent, Baldwin is correct that there is extensive emotionalism in Stowe’s story. For example, when Cassy discusses her treatment as a sex slave with Uncle Tom, she makes the following declaration regarding a white male with whom she had an affair:

O, how I did love that man! How I love him now,—and always shall, while I breathe! He was so beautiful, so high, so noble! He put me into a beautiful house, with servants, horses, and carriages, and furniture, and dresses (Stowe Cabin).

This passage confirms Baldwin’s assertion that Stowe’s style of prose often contributes to sentimentality that obscures the emotional truth of the situation. Though Cassy was clearly exploited by the character, her statements possess a romantic nature that is inappropriate to the topic.

However, regardless of Baldwin’s criticisms, Stowe consistently captures the emotional truth of slavery in her novel. For example, when Stowe describes a female slave being sold as a sex slave, she writes:

The blood flushes painfully in her otherwise colorless cheek, her eye has a feverish fire, and her mother groans to see that she looks more beautiful than she ever saw her before. The auctioneer sees his advantage, and expatiates volubly in mingled French and English, and bids rise in rapid succession (Stowe Cabin).

This passage successfully conveys the humiliation that the slave felt and suggests a savage nature in those bidding on her. Further, Stowe demonstrates the abhorrent nature of Arthur and Emily Shelby when she describes the manner in which the coerced the boy into performing a degrading dance in front of Mr. Haley. As these counterexamples demonstrate, the overall strength of Stowe’s work counters the few instances where her prose obscure the harsher elements of slavery.

Because of its role as one of the most compelling condemnations of slavery, Uncle Tom’s Cabin has warranted strong criticism from individuals who question both the factual and emotional veracity of the novel. Through her rebuttal publication Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Stowe demonstrates that she can provide documentation to confirm disputed facts in the novel. Through interviews with officials and letters from participants in the slave trade, Stowe demonstrates that she is not exaggerating the brutality experienced by slaves. Further, a balanced assessment of the passages from her novel refute Baldwin’s claim that Stowe’s novel is excessively sentimental, failing to capture the emotional horrors of slavery. Uncle Tom’s Cabin is likely to remain an enduring authority on American slavery because of its ability to withstand scrutiny from multiple points of view.

Works Cited

Stowe, Harriet Beecher. A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin. Boston: Jewett, Proctor & Worthington, 1853. Web. 14 Mar. 2014.

Stowe, Harriet Beecher. Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The Project Gutenberg. 13 Jan. 2006. Web. 13 Mar. 2014.

Baldwin, James. "Everybody's Protest Novel." Notes of a Native Son. Boston: Beacon Press, 1955. 13-23. Web. 13 Mar. 2014.