Harriet Beecher Stowe: Critical Analysis

“A provocative overview of the life and afterlife of one of American literature’s most important texts….A sharp work of cross-disciplinary criticism that gives new power to a diminished novel. Reynolds successfully repositions the novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe as a major political work, crucial not just to the abolitionist movement, but as kindling for the Civil War and an important inspiration to the cultural discussions of race relations through most of the 20th century”
— Kirkus Reviews
In a well deserved tribute to the two hundreth anniversary of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s birthday, well reknowed historian David S. Reynolds displays the impact she had on not only the American culture but democracy as well, with her book Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Stowe illustrates the villianious of slavery with a touching story, which Stowe claimed was inspired by her own divine visions. Uncle Tom’s Cabin advanced the rise of abolitionism in the north while the south met with conflicting reactions. Some Southerns approved of it because of it’s representation of the southerners as kind and northerners as evil, while other …show more content…
Having the brand of Christianity made her feel sympathetic to abolitionism, her emotional understanding of adventure captured the public interest and lastly her sentimental way of speaking in words pushed readers to think their cristices without feeling compelled to do so. Her sentimental way of writing went to earn Stowe a reputation as an agitator of antislavery. Regardless there is no question that Uncle Tom’s Cabin struck a chord in many people’s hearts, in fact the book sold so well that a whole shelf of anti-Stowe novels was inspired. Among these were some of the greatest books the most prominent one being Thomas Dixon Jr.’s novel The Clansman. Along with being an inspiration Uncle Tom’s Cabin also influenced the civil-rights