How does Harriet Beecher Stowe use the characters in her book to individually affect all of her readers across the demographically diverse United States to ultimately expose the fundamental wrongs of slavery? Freedom. Every human being on Earth has a deep and fundamental necessity and craving to freedom. It’s our natural right. The pursuit of freedom has spanned countless generations and goes back to the very beginnings of mankind. Humans have always fought for their freedom. Examples of this range from a teenager wanting to stay out later at night, to a gun owner being opposed to various gun control laws or propositions, to religious groups seeking exemption from certain laws, to whole races of ethnic groups fighting for their liberty. Over history, this freedom has been taken away from certain groups of people by others seeking resources or monetary gain. Then came the ideas of democracy. The Greeks were the first to experiment with the ideas of a people’s government. Thousands of years later, the Forefathers of the United States took these principles to write the foundation that has held America together for more than two hundred and fifty years. The very basis for the Declaration of Independence that started the world’s first modern democracy, The United States of America, contained words declaring all men as “created equal.” This mindset was revolutionary for its time period, however, sadly, it was not applied to “all men.” Slavery was once the country’s main source of labor that fueled the cash crop economy of the South, which in turn supplied the textile, tobacco, rice, and indigo industries of the North.
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Over time, sectional tensions began to rise over the institution of slavery and the basic freedom being denied towards blacks. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel attacked the institution more aggressively than any other novel before it. Not only was it a novel, but also a sermon. Stowe’s basis for her argument against slavery was the love and compassion that were supposedly the fundamental ideas behind Christianity. In Uncle Tom’s Cabin, author Harriet Beecher Stowe uses a variety of characters, such as slave owners, women, and Christian figures, in order to cover the broad demographic spectrum of the 19th century United States in order to appeal to the masses and affect each reader in a specific and different way to ultimately expose the brutality, inequality, and immorality of the “peculiar institution” of slavery. The three most prominent slave owners in Stowe’s writing, Arthur Shelby, Augustine St. Clare, and Simon Legree, come to represent three very different types of slave owners, ranging from kind father figures, to ignorant and hypocritical, to downright brutal and barbaric. Stowe’s wide-ranging types of slave owners are intended to have an impact on a variety of different people living in the United States at the time the book was published in March of 1852. The character of Arthur Shelby embodies the stereotype of a kindly and perceptive slave owner who genuinely cares about his slaves. He is introduced to the reader as “a man of humanity” who “had the appearance of a gentleman,”(1) immediately presenting his character as likeable and all together decent. However, it later becomes evident to the reader, the flaws Mr. Shelby possesses, such as having “promised [Tom] his freedom” and then selling him due to the fact that he will “bring the highest sum of any”(29). Stowe’s character of Arthur Shelby is intended to appeal to those in the North who were neither supportive of nor opposed to slavery, by exposing the hypocrisy of slave owning, even in situations that were kind to both slave and owner, and the manner in which it crushes the dreams and hopes of human beings as well as destroys the dignity of having one’s own freedom. On another level, Stowe uses the character of Augustine St. Clare, a wealthy slave owner and Louisiana gentleman. St. Clare is perhaps the most conflicted and self-contradictory character in Stowe’s novel, however he is characterized this way to appeal to those who saw the wrongs of slavery but refused to take any action to support the growing abolitionist movement of the mid-1800s. He is illustrated as
Over time, sectional tensions began to rise over the institution of slavery and the basic freedom being denied towards blacks. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel attacked the institution more aggressively than any other novel before it. Not only was it a novel, but also a sermon. Stowe’s basis for her argument against slavery was the love and compassion that were supposedly the fundamental ideas behind Christianity. In Uncle Tom’s Cabin, author Harriet Beecher Stowe uses a variety of characters, such as slave owners, women, and Christian figures, in order to cover the broad demographic spectrum of the 19th century United States in order to appeal to the masses and affect each reader in a specific and different way to ultimately expose the brutality, inequality, and immorality of the “peculiar institution” of slavery. The three most prominent slave owners in Stowe’s writing, Arthur Shelby, Augustine St. Clare, and Simon Legree, come to represent three very different types of slave owners, ranging from kind father figures, to ignorant and hypocritical, to downright brutal and barbaric. Stowe’s wide-ranging types of slave owners are intended to have an impact on a variety of different people living in the United States at the time the book was published in March of 1852. The character of Arthur Shelby embodies the stereotype of a kindly and perceptive slave owner who genuinely cares about his slaves. He is introduced to the reader as “a man of humanity” who “had the appearance of a gentleman,”(1) immediately presenting his character as likeable and all together decent. However, it later becomes evident to the reader, the flaws Mr. Shelby possesses, such as having “promised [Tom] his freedom” and then selling him due to the fact that he will “bring the highest sum of any”(29). Stowe’s character of Arthur Shelby is intended to appeal to those in the North who were neither supportive of nor opposed to slavery, by exposing the hypocrisy of slave owning, even in situations that were kind to both slave and owner, and the manner in which it crushes the dreams and hopes of human beings as well as destroys the dignity of having one’s own freedom. On another level, Stowe uses the character of Augustine St. Clare, a wealthy slave owner and Louisiana gentleman. St. Clare is perhaps the most conflicted and self-contradictory character in Stowe’s novel, however he is characterized this way to appeal to those who saw the wrongs of slavery but refused to take any action to support the growing abolitionist movement of the mid-1800s. He is illustrated as