Miss Ophelia In Uncle Tom's Cabin Essay

While technically part of the North, Kentucky operated much like any Southern state- meaning of course, that Kentucky still practiced slavery. Thus, within Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, readers do not get much of a glance into the mindset of the abolitionists up North, barring the people who help Eliza and George escape (who are often only around for a couple of chapters at best). In other words, Miss Ophelia is the first proper Northern abolitionist (she comes straight from Vermont, after all) that Stowe focuses her narration on for an extended period, which gives readers much insight into her thoughts and motives (and consequently, she represents abolitionists for readers). Her introduction into the novel, therefore, is carefully …show more content…
If she had stayed in third person for that line and not directly called out the reader- “Miss Ophelia stands in a very shining brown linen travelling-dress, tall, square-formed, and angular”-, Stowe’s audience (who are most likely people who are passive about slavery) would not have had to acknowledge that abolitionists are not just some faceless opposition that the readers can refuse to recognize as human beings with morals. Similarly, if she had continued the passage in second person, perhaps the following line being “you observed her thin face with its sharp outlines” instead of “her face was thin, and rather sharp in its outlines”, the audience would have confronted the dilemma of slavery for too long, becoming defensive of their own morals, and they would turn away from the novel unconvinced and unlikely to change anytime soon. In other words, by only having that one line in second person, Stowe makes the audience view the world from abolitionists’ perspective (and therefore, dealing with the righteousness of their own behavior) for just moment before comforting the reader with the return to third person, leaving the audience’s mind open to