How Uncle Tom's Cabin changed the future (and you can too)
Greatness is measured in many ways. When referring to literary works, it often reflects the mastery of the telling of a story. That might include the content of the story itself, but if it does, it's only because the content and the execution are difficult to untangle. Such might be the case with the 19th century novel Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe.
Hammatt Billings (Public domain)
There is another way to measure greatness, however, and that is by impact. If we use this measure, Uncle Tom's Cabin, regardless of literary merit, has a level of greatness rarely matched in literary works. It was the second best-selling book of the 19th century--behind only the Bible. That's significant considering it was written in a time when women were not as well-respected as men, especially in literature, and when many of Stowe's female contemporaries resorted to writing with pen names to get around that social injustice.
But Stowe was no ordinary woman. She came from a famous religious family. Her father and several brothers were well-known Christian ministers. Her sister started a college for women, which Stowe herself attended. The entire family were abolitionists.
In 1850, U.S. Congress passed a series of laws that have come to be known as the Compromise of 1850. One of those laws was the Fugitive Slave Act. The act required that northern states return escaped slaves to southern states where the institution was legal. It outraged northern abolitionists. Uncle Tom's Cabin saw its first publication in 1852.
The novel became a heroic tale to northerners who wanted to end the practice of slavery. It outraged southerners who defended the practice. It also gave birth to several racial stereotypes including the "dutiful black servant," which has been given the name "Uncle Tom" and has been used in a derogatory sense among members of the African-American community for a long time. Stowe herself represents how members of the female gender can have a powerful influence, a striking testimony to her zeal for a good cause before women's suffrage grew teeth. And there is ample evidence it could have had an impact on the temperance movement, as well.
One legendary anecdote conveys just how far-reaching an impact Uncle Tom's Cabin may have had. Abraham Lincoln, upon meeting the novelist, is said to have exclaimed, "So you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war--" referring to the Civil War, of course. Whether he actually said those words or not is anyone's guess, but they illustrate the immediate impact Uncle Tom's Cabin had on U.S. society in the 1850s and 1860s.
In other words, the novel is significant for much more than any literary merit it may contain. It literally changed the trajectory of U.S. culture.
It's possible the Civil War would have happened without the publication of the novel, but the novel, as great literature often does, stirred up sentiments, both good and bad, in the American people on both sides of a hotbed issue that still has cultural ramifications today. And for that, "great" is more than a simple descriptive term.
Uncle Tom's Cabin has been praised and loathed, by those who are sympathetic to its anti-slavery and anti-prejudice messages as well as those who aren't. Not long after its publication, southern writers began putting out their own books to counter Stowe's message. They came to be called "anti-Tom novels." None of them grew to the popularity that Uncle Tom's Cabin attained, but they were not feeble attempts. One such work gave birth to the myth of the Lost Cause, as prominent today as it ever was.
One of the criticisms against the novel is perhaps the very thing that gave it its power for more than a century and a half. Written with sentimentalism, a literary style that relies on emotion as a key element in storytelling, its purpose was to illustrate the destructive nature of slavery. And it did that well.
Nevertheless, 20th century readers and critics have not been friendly toward the style. My own personal preference is not in favor of it, but that doesn't mean I can't appreciate the impact that such a novel has on history, and the future. Uncle Tom's Cabin's influence cannot be denied.
Black writers since its publication have had mixed reactions to the novel and its themes. Frederick Douglass loved it. James Baldwin hated it.
It's easy to see why some black authors have had strong negative reactions to the novel. Stowe may not have known any black people at the time she wrote the novel (her social status and geography would have made it unlikely). Her black characters were all based on popular minstrel shows that perpetuated black stereotypes. In a sense, this popular form of sentimentality was itself prejudicial, though, to be fair to Stowe, her intentions were noble. She wanted black people to be as free as she was.
Over time, she'd get her wish, but it didn't come without a lot of struggle.
Despite the many achievements of African-Americans on U.S. soil, there are still deep-seated racial issues strewn throughout the culture. The election of the first black president itself came with tensions attached. Since the 1960s, African-Americans have made inroads into various institutions that have been historically dominated by white people, and much of it has come on the back of the parallel Black Power and Black Arts movements, which many white Americans have found threatening. In a time when African-Americans can achieve a level of success on their own, and on their own terms, a novel like Uncle Tom's Cabin may seem much less worthy of praise. But don't mistake the decline of its significance with lack of significance to begin with.
I started this series with an encouragement for up-and-coming writers to use the nascent farmpunk genre of literature as a launchpad for changing the future. In terms of historical significance, genres need not matter. As Harriet Beecher Stowe's famous novel illustrates, literature has the power to change the trajectory of a nation.
Uncle Tom's Cabin is significant in that it helped spark a contemporary event that still today is embedded in the American conscience, by virtue of its own far-reaching power. Because of this, the novel has been discussed, praised, criticized, and loathed (all with just cause) due to its owns strengths and weaknesses. Great literature is great, first and foremost, because it contains this power.
The novel isn't necessarily great because it achieved any level of literary excellence. It conformed to the literary style of its contemporaries, but that isn't saying much. Uncle Tom's Cabin is great literature because it addressed a great theme and solicited mass reactions to it. It can be a model for today's literature, which can stir up political tensions, ask difficult questions, challenge widely held assumptions, and force discussion around difficult topics. Truly great literature reaches beyond the scope of imagination and into the realm of reality to change minds, hearts, and the paths of collective consciences. It can change the future, and it must.
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