Reflections on Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”
Monday, April 24, 2000
Economic History of the U.S. To 1900
Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin looks at slavery from the perspective of a Christian lady, and addresses the question of whether Christianity and slavery can coexist in a society we would like to call moral and humane. The question is a part of a larger one, one that is commonly referred to as “the problem of evil.” Stowe poses another question about the society of which she writes, and that is whether we are racially superior and whether this is any justification of acts of conquest. These questions will be discussed in brief in this paper, using specific character descriptions to help support the discussion.