A Stark Contrast

The book opens with a stark contrast of two men from the antebellum south, one a slave trader, the other a slaveholder.  The trader, Haley, has a less than complimentary introduction:

He was a short, thick-set man, with coarse, commonplace features, and that swaggering air of pretension which marks a low man who is trying to elbow his way upward in the world. He was much over-dressed, in a gaudy vest of many colors, a blue neckerchief, bedropped gayly with yellow spots, and arranged with a flaunting tie, quite in keeping with the general air of the man. His hands, large and coarse, were plentifully bedecked with rings; and he wore a heavy gold watch-chain, with a bundle of seals of portentous size, and a great variety of colors, attached to it, -- which, in the ardor of conversation, he was in the habit of flourishing and jingling with evident satisfaction. His conversation was in free and easy defiance of Murray's Grammar, and was garnished at convenient intervals with various profane expressions, which not even the desire to be graphic in our account shall induce us to transcribe (Ch. 1).

Haley is referred to as a "low man" while his dress is out of the ordinary.  His ostentatious display shows a lack of good judgment and his colloquial way of speaking shows, perhaps, a lack of education, as demonstrated by the following quote:

 "Well, I've got just as much conscience as any man in business can afford to keep, -- just a little, you know, to swear by, as 't were," said the trader, jocularly; "and, then, I'm ready to do anything in reason to 'blige friends; but this yer, you see, is a leetle too hard on a fellow -- a leetle too hard" (Ch. 1).

Haley's dialect depicts the unrefined stereotype of a white southerner.


Mr. Shelby, on the other hand, is called a "gentleman" and whereas Haley's gaudy raiment is ridiculed, opulent is the word Stowe uses to describe Shelby, suggesting that though Shelby is having financial trouble, he carries himself with more dignity than his counterpart.

Shelby, though forced to sell for financial reasons, views his slaves as family while Haley sees slaves as mere commodities.  Shelby refers to them by their names or with such phrases as "my boy," but Haley speaks more generally about slaves as a group, calling them "niggers."


'Tan't, you know, as if it was white folks, that's brought up in the way of 'spectin' to keep their children and wives, and all that. Niggers, you know, that's fetched up properly, ha'n't no kind of 'spectations of no kind; so all these things comes easier" (Ch. 1).

Haley doesn't see slaves as human and doesn't expect them to be capable of emotion attachments to familial units.  Shelby has grown up with and live among his slaves all his life and can relate to them.  One idea that Stowe establishes is that children are more likely to empathize and grow emotionally attached to slaves than are their adult counterparts, such as is the case with "Mas'er George," who spends more time with the slaves than with whites in the opening chapters.  Ultimately, Stowe advises that slavery is an ugly system, no matter the attempts to beautify it:

So long as the law considers all these human beings, with beating hearts and living affections, only as so many things belonging to a master, -- so long as the failure, or misfortune, or imprudence, or death of the kindest owner, may cause them any day to exchange a life of kind protection and indulgence for one of hopeless misery and toil, -- so long it is impossible to make anything beautiful or desirable in the best regulated administration of slavery (Ch. 1).

Despite Shelby's humane treatment of his slaves, he still lends his support to a reproachful system that his wife rejects:

" I was a fool to think I could make anything good out of such a deadly evil. It is a sin to hold a slave under laws like ours, -- I always felt it was, -- I always thought so when I was a girl, -- I thought so still more after I joined the church; but I thought I could gild it over, -- I thought, by kindness, and care, and instruction, I could make the condition of mine better than freedom -- fool that I was!" (Ch. 5).

Her assertion is Stowe's belief as well, that nothing good can come of slavery, no matter how good the people involved.

The Reception of Uncle Tom's Cabin in Victorian Europe

Uncle Tom's Cabin was wildly popular in Europe, particularly in England, leading to the coinage of the term Tom-mania.  The popularity of the novel is reflected by the production of 11 different stage productions in the first year following its publication.  The character Uncle Tom as used in non-slavery related marketing as well, advertising china and coffee.  The novel's popularity revolved around British interest in American society.  The foreign mannerisms as well as the practice of slavery caused British readers to snag copies of the book voraciously.  Among the reading public, Uncle Tom was an instant hit. 

Nevertheless, the press was wary of the novel's possible influence among the English working class.  One periodical in particular, the London Times, relentlessly attacked the work on social grounds.  According to the Times, the slaves of America lived much better lives than the English working class, and the fear was that advocating the emancipation of the slaves would lead to an uprising among the lower classes of England.  Through this reasoning, the Times discredits the abolitionist cause as political ploy for one  group to seize control of the country.  Ultimately, the paper views Stowe's object in writing the novel as an attempt to get the masses riled up to promote social unrest.  Nevertheless, another periodical viewed the novel as an attack on American society that proves the superiority of the English. 

Among her literary companions, Stowe received mixed reviews.  Tolstoy praised Stowe's unparalleled writing acumen while George Sand noted Stowe's "genius of goodness."  Heinrich Heine read a German translation while in Paris and had a religious experience.  Others, however, were not impressed.  Dickens, who championed social causes himself, called the book "noble but defective."

Sources:  Runaway to Heaven (1963), Johanna Johnston
American Slaves in Victorian England (2000), Audrey Fisch

Fugitive Slave Law

From website of Dickinson College

One of the major issues facing slaveholders in the antebellum period was runaway slaves.  The law protected the right of masters to their property and required those who came in contact with runaways to report them and assist in returning them to their masters.  Despite this law, many northern abolitionists refused to comply and many state passed laws in opposition to the national fugitive law.  Consequently, many slaves fled to the north and lived as free citizens without much fear of being forced to return to the southern plantations.  Because of this conflict between northern and southern constituencies, Henry Clay of Kentucky developed the Compromise of 1850, which included a tougher Fugitive Slave Law.  Among its provisions, the right to a jury trial was denied to all fugitives, more federal help assisted in securing warrants, and up to a $1000 fine and six months in jail for those assisting runaway slaves.

One of the consequences of the law was more intense sectionalism and disdain between the north and south.  Whereas the law sought to bring peace, it created more conflict as northerners refused to comply.  Another result was a rapid increase in the activity of the Underground Railroad, with many of the slaves deciding to leave the country altogether and live in Canada.  The country was clearly traveling down the slippery slope to war.  In UTC, Stowe vividly describes the conflict between those trying to retrieve fugitives and those trying to assist their escape.

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-96) was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, the daughter of Lyman Beecher and Roxana Foote.  Her father was a well-known Congregationalist minster who preached against dueling, drinking and Unitarianism, which denied the Trinity.  She was a well-loved child, despite the fact that her father did not hide the fact that he wished Harriet had been a boy.  Her mother died when she was five and, despite her father's remarrying, lost her stepmother at 24.  During her youth, the writings of Lord Byron and Sir Walter Scott piqued her interest in literature. 

At the time of Harriet's birth, slavery was legal in Connecticut though strongly condemned by Lyman Beecher.  In the early 1830s, the family moved to Cincinnati upon Beecher's acceptance of a position as head of the new Lane Theological Seminary.  While in Cincinnati, Harriet first encountered slavery, which was legal across the Ohio river in Kentucky, and was horrified at the marketing of slaves as commodities.  The images she saw never left her and would be recreated in her novel Uncle Tom's Cabin.

In 1836 Harriet Beecher married Calvin Stowe, a professor of religion at her father's seminary who, despite not being very handsome, was very intelligent.  The couple had seven children between 1836 and 1850, when the couple moved to Maine where Calvin Stowe accepted a position at Bowdoin College.  In addition to her earlier mentioned novel, Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Dred (1856), about a slave rebellion,  The Minister's Wooing (1859), and Lady Byron Vindicated (1870), which detailed Lord Byron's infidelities.

Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) is the conception of a series of visions Stowe received from God.  She had never traveled south but was able to describe vividly the lives of slaves on plantations because of her interaction with free and enslaved blacks while in Cincinnati.  Upon publication, the novel sold out immediately, and eventually sold over 150,000 copies in its first seven months.  The book received praise from as far away as Russia from Leo Tolstoy, who view it as literature in its highest form.  Critics gave the book mixed, politically charged reviews.  Stowe received much hate mail, one of which contained the severed ear of a disobedient slave.  Nevertheless, the influence of the work is undeniable, as characterized by Abraham Lincoln's only half-jocular supposed greeting when meeting Stowe for the first time in 1862:  "So this is the little lady who started this big war."

Source:  Runaway to Heaven by Johanna Johnston

The Ending

Domestic Bliss (1863), W. Muschamp

Trollope must like happy endings.

There are a number of curious marriages.  Aside from the marriage of Marie Melmotte and Hamilton Fisker detailed in the previous post, another strange marriage involves Georgiana Longestaffe.  After her previous engagement to Brehgert dissolves, Georgiana frets about growing older as a single woman and starts up an imtimacy with a curate from a nearby parish who is not introduced to the reader until and appears only in chapter 95.  The two grow close and elope in a matter of weeks.  Upon their return, they are accepted as husband and wife and Mr. Longestaffe helps them purchase a small living and the couple that only recently met lives in "connubial bliss" (Ch. 95). 

Another strange though humorous marriage occurs between Madame Melmotte and Herr Croll, the German assistant of the former's late husband.  Croll and Madame Melmotte both have been victim's of the late financier and use this common thread to strike up an intimacy.  The humorous part is that Madame Melmotte, who, like Croll leaves England after the debacle, decides that she cannot go to New York, where her husband is known, as a Melmotte, so she decides she must marry to change her name and that "Croll would do as well as any other" (Ch. 98).  Obviously, love is not a motive in this marriage, as Madame concludes that both have money, thus making the match a desirable one. 

Lady Carbury rejected Mr. Broune earlier in the novel and he appeared relieved at her rejection, but the two end up as a couple as well.  However, whereas Trollope had satirized her earlier in the novel, at one point calling her "false from head to foot," he makes her a figure of sympathy at the end, particularly with the line "at last real peace should be in her reach" (Ch. 99).  Broune rids her of Felix, sending the latter to Germany to help (trouble?) a clergyman.  Broune also has money, so she no longer has to pursue a futile literary career to take care of her family. 

Finally, the one marriage that seemed determined to happen from the beginning, despite a number of road blocks is that of Paul and Hetta.  Roger proves his worth when he gives Carbury Manor to Paul and Hetta, with the condition that their future son carry the Carbury name.  Ultimately, Roger decides he must do what will make Hetta happy:

But then over these convictions there came a third,—equally strong,—which told him that the girl loved the younger man and did not love him, and that if he loved the girl it was his duty as a man to prove his love by doing what he could to make her happy (Ch. 100).

Consequently, everyone (except maybe Felix) seems to enjoy a somewhat happy ending.