Uncle Tom's Cabin Comparison Essay

There is no doubt that the novels of Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe and Our Nig: Sketches from the Life of a Free Black by Harriet E. Wilson have many similarities. Both of the novels were written in the 1800’s long before the Civil Rights Act was ever written. The character of Tom (Uncle Tom’s Cabin), and Frado (Our Nig), appear to me, the reader to be the strongest similarity between the two novels. In the story of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Tom is an African American slave living on an American plantation in the South during a time when slave trading was a common practice and legal. In the story of Our Nig, Frado is a young mulatto girl living in New Hampshire, a Northern state where slavery had already been abolished. Tom is a slave, …show more content…
Although, Wilson describes the Bellmont household as a matriarchy substantiated by cruelty and abuse, behind this depiction is the longing for the mother-savior (Gabler-Hover & Sattelmeyer). In her comparison of Our Nig and Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Ammon’s argues that Wilson both Mrs. Bellmont’s tyrannical mother rule reveals that mother rule may be as bad as or worse than the white male rule. Our Nig implicitly critiques the belief that white mothers and Victorian maternal values will be the source of the nation’s salvation. However, Ammons argues that Our Nig in a rather ironic fashion shares the sense of maternity espoused in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. In Wilson’s retelling of Marie St. Claire, the reader is horrified because Mrs. Bellmont transgresses our notions of the mother." Thus, Ammons seems to believe that Wilson is not critical of mother role as an ideal, but she reveals that even mother rule can go awry. Even Stowe acknowledges this possibility with her portrayal of Marie; however, she balances Marie with numerous nurturing women such as Rachel Halliday. But in Our Nig, there is essentially no reprieve from Mrs. Bellmont’s sadism. Various