A Brief Assessment

"So you are the little woman who wrote the book that created this great war." - Abraham Lincoln, 1862 (on meeting HBS)

Contributing Editor Jane Tompkins (Heath Anthology) has identified three concerns regarding the teaching of Stowe: "(1) the assumption that she is not a first-rate author because she has only recently been recognized and has traditionally been classed as a 'sentimental' author, whose works are of historical interest only; (2) by current standards, Stowe's portrayal of Black people in Uncle Tom's Cabin is racist; and (3) a lack of understanding of the cultural context within which Stowe was working."

Ms. Tomkins suggests that we teachers handle the first issue by discussing "how class and gender bias led to the selection of works by white male authors." For the second, we need to explain how assumptions about race have changed over the centuries; though well-meaning, Stowe uses stereotypes. As for the third concern, Ms. Tomkins suggests that we inform the students about the nineteenth century expectations of the purpose of life in the context of the legacy of puritanism. Other pertinent issues are the abolitionist and the women's suffrage movements.

Although Stowe's views of Blacks are dated, attention should be given to Stowe's works. She was the most popular American writer of her time and her use of literay realism anticipates the writings of Howells, Twain, and Crane.

Primary Works

Uncle Tom's Cabin, 1852; The Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin, 1853; Dred, 1856; The Minister's Wooing, 1859; The Pearl of Orr's Island, 1862; Oldtown Folks, 1969; Lady Byron Vindicated, 1870; Pink and White Tyranny, 1871; Sam Lawson's Oldtown Fireside Stories, 1872; Poganuc People, 1878.

| Top | Selected Bibliography

Adams, John R. Harriet Beecher Stowe. Boston: Twayne, 1989. PS2956 .A6

Ashton, Jean. Harriet Beecher Stowe: a reference guide. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1977. Z8849.4 A84

Birdoff, Harry. The world's greatest hit Uncle Tom's cabin; illus. with oldtime playbills, daguerreotypes, vignettes, music-sheets, poems, and cartoons. NY: S. F. Vanni, 1947 Res PS2954.U6 .B5

Boydston, Jeanne, Anne Margolis, and , Mary Kelley. The limits of sisterhood: the Beecher sisters on women's rights and woman's sphere. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, c1988. HQ1236.5 .U6 B69

Brown, Gillian. Domestic individualism: imagining self in nineteenth-century America. Berkeley: U of California P, 1990. PS374 .D57 B7

Crozier, Alice C. The novels of Harriet Beecher Stowe. NY, Oxford UP, 1969. PS2957 .C7

Donovan, Josephine. Uncle Tom's cabin: evil, affliction, and redemptive love. Boston: Twayne, 1991. PS2954 .U6 D66

Ellsworth, Mary E. Two New England writers microform Harriet Beecher Stowe and Mary Wilkins Freeman. Thesis (Ph. D.)--Columbia University, 1981. PS2957 .E55x 1981b

Foster, Charles H. The rungless ladder; Harriet Beecher Stowe and New England Puritanism. Durham: Duke UP, 1954. PS2957 .F6

Furnas, J. C. Goodbye to Uncle Tom. London: Secker and Warburg, 1956. E441 .F94

Gilbertson, Cathrene P. Harriet Beecher Stowe. NY: D. Appleton-Century,1937. PS2956 .G5

Gossett, Thomas F. Uncle Tom's cabin and American culture. Dallas: Southern Methodist UP, 1985. PS2954 .U6 G67

Hildreth, Margaret H. Harriet Beecher Stowe: a bibliography. Hamden, Conn: Archon Books, 1976. Z8849.4 H54

Hovet, Theodore. "The Power of the Popular: The Subversion of Realism in Harriet Beecher Stowe's 'My Wife and I'." American literary realism 29.2 (Wint 1997): 1-14.

Johnston, Johanna. Runaway to heaven; the story of Harriet Beecher Stowe. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1963. PS2956 .J6

Kent, Kathryn R. "'Single White Female' the Sexual Politics of Spinsterhood in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Oldtown Folks." American literature 69.1 (Mar 1997): 39-.

Kimball, Gayle. The religious ideas of Harriet Beecher Stowe: her gospel of womanhood. NY: Mellen P, 1982. PS2958 .R4 K55

Kirkham, Edwin B. The building of Uncle Tom's cabin. Knoxville: U of Tennessee P, 1977. PS2954 U6 K5

Rourke, Constance. Trumpets of jubilee Henry Ward Beecher, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Lyman Beecher, Horace Greeley, P. T. Barnum. NY: Harcourt, Brace & World,1963. E176 .R85

Smith, Gail K. "Reading with the Other: Hermeneutics and the Politics of Difference in Stowe's Dred." American literature 69.2 (Jun 1997): 289-315.

Stepto, Robert B. "Sharing the Thunder: The Literary Exchanges of Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry Bibb, and FD." In New Essays on Uncle Tom's Cabin, ed. Eric J. Sundquist. Cambridge : Cambridge UP, 1986. viii, pp. 200.

Wilson, Robert F. Crusader in crinoline, the life of Harriet Beecher Stowe. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company 1941 . PS2956 .W5

| Top | Study Questions

1. What makes a literary work "good"? Can ideas of what is good change over time? Why in our own century was Stowe ignored in favor of writers like Hawthorne and Melville?

2. What's the role of emotion in understanding a work of literature? Is Stowe's writing too emotional?

3. From its origins in Harriet Beecher Stowe, regionalism as a genre took women characters and women's values seriously. Analyze Stowe's portraits of Eliza in the excerpt from Uncle Tom's Cabin and Huldy in "The Minister's Housekeeper," and discuss the values explicit in Stowe's work.

4. Stowe's regional sketch "The Minister's Housekeeper" ends in comedy, with Huldy's marriage to the minister. Argue that the sketch does or does not belong to the literary tradition of early-nineteenth-century American humor.

MLA Style Citation of this Web Page:

Reuben, Paul P. "Chapter 3: Early Nineteenth Century - Harriet Beecher Stowe." PAL: Perspectives in American Literature- A Research and Reference Guide. WWW URL: http://www.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/chap3/stowe.html (provide page date or date of your login).  

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