Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher StoweMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
This was a fabulous read. That is, if it can ever be possible to enjoy a book so full of sadness, outrageous cruelty and unspeakable injustice to fellow human beings! But it is so well written, so well expressed by this accomplished and famed author. Even though it has taken me many years to build up the courage to read this novel – being so prepared as I was for its overly emotional content – I could not prevent shedding a tear at several points in the narrative. In the more cynical times of the 20th and 21st centuries such overt sentimentality is easily scoffed at of course. A favourite author of mine, Anthony Trollope, described another favourite, Charles Dickens, as ‘Mr Popular Sentiment’ in one of his own novels in 1912!
Uncle Tom has often been accused as being ‘too Christian’ and even too saintly, and so on, for his faithful devotion to Mr Shelby, his kindly Kentuckian owner. Mrs Stowe herself paints Shelby as some kind of ‘villain’ for supporting the system of slavery in the Southern States at that time. The only defence I can have for my tears, while being totally shocked at the horrors of the practice, is that one has to be aware of the mores of the 19th century time in which the book was written. Taking those things into consideration, together with historical facts like the very high levels of infant mortality, throughout all countries of the world then, perhaps makes a modern reader’s emotional feelings more understandable.
As a retired teacher I can sympathise with other reviewers who feel that Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel is so powerful, so significant as a treatise against slavery, wherever it occurs, it should be required reading in every high school. Add it to your ‘must read’ list of books.
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