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Christianity in Uncle Toms Cabin
【作者】：南昌翻译 【添加时间】：2007-8-1 14:27:41
摘要：本文作者采用加拿大著名文学批评家诺思洛普 弗莱的原型批评理论，从圣经原型的角度出发, 试图分析《汤姆叔叔的小屋》中的各类人物形象，比如汤姆叔叔、小伊娃、萨姆波和昆波以及几位虔诚的理想基督教徒母亲，以揭示这部小说中的宗教理念，并探讨斯托夫人解决奴隶制的办法。本文作者希望这篇论文对中国读者能从新的角度来欣赏这本经典著作有所帮助。
关键词：圣经原型 人物形象 基督教理念
Abstract: With the application of the renowned Canadian literary critic
Northrop Frye’s theory of archetype, the author in this thesis attempts
to analyze various characters, such as Uncle Tom, little Eva, Sambo and
Qimbo and some pious, ideal Christian mothers in Uncle Tom’s Cabin in terms
of Biblical archetype, to reveal the Christianity in this novel, and to
probe into Mrs. Stowe’s solution to the institution of slavery. She hopes
this thesis will be of any help to Chinese readers to appreciate this classic
novel in a new way.
Key Words: Biblical archetype character Christianity
Introduction
It is well known that western literature is based on two pillars--the Greek
culture and the Hebrew culture. In the Hebrew culture, there is a book,
namely, the Bible that accumulates its rich cultural heritage. Most western
authors are influenced by those two literary origins consciously or unconsciously.
They, without doubt, also influenced Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896),
a nineteenth century American female writer. Yet, with her strong religious
background, she tended to be influenced deeper by the latter than by the
former. Born into a family of religion, Harriet’s father, Lyman Beecher
was one of America’s most celebrated clergymen and the principal spokesman
for Calvinism in the nineteenth century; her mother, was a woman of prayer
who died when Harriet was four years old; her brother, Henry Ward Beecher,
was the best known pulpit orator of his times. In 1836, she was married
to Calvin Stowe, a Biblical scholar. In a word, Harriet Beecher Stowe was
bred, and lived all her life at the atmosphere of Christianity that inevitably
influenced her masterpiece Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
It’s commonly agreed that Uncle Tom’s Cabin is an anti-slavery novel.
In fact, it is for the cause of abolitionism that Mrs. Stowe took up her
pen. Yet, anti-slavery spirit is not contradictory or incompatible with
spirit of Christianity. In fact, they co-exist quite harmoniously in Uncle
Tom’s Cabin. Feminism is also quite evident in this book. Many articles
have been written to discuss the anti-slavery spirit or feminism in it.
However, this thesis will mainly focus on Christianity in Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
I. Northrop Frye’s Theory of Archetype
In Greek, ‘arch’ means ‘first’, ‘typos’ means ‘form’ or ‘type’. So, ‘archetype’
means first type/form or original type/form. In the theories of Swiss psychologist
Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961), archetypes are primordial mythic forms that
embody psychological drives and forces that originate in the collective
unconscious. For the Canadian literary critic Northrop Frye (1912-1991),
archetypes are the socially-concerned organizing forms and patterns of
literature that originate in myth and which unify and reveal literature
as an imaginatively-inhabitable world. His great work, such as The Secular
Scripture (1976), The Great Code (1982) and Words with Power (1990) all
center on the study of the Bible. In Frye’s system, the organizing principles
that give literature coherence and structure are derived from the archetypal
imagery found in the Bible and the myths of ancient Greece. He suggests
that all literature is based on displacements of these myths. Archetypal
criticism focused on characters, images, symbols, metaphors, plots, events
and themes1. The thesis attempts to use this theory to analyze the characters
in Uncle Tom’s Cabin in terms of Biblical archetype to reveal Christianity
in it and to probe into Mrs. Stowe’ solution to the institution of slavery.
II. Character Analysis
i. Tom
Tom, the protagonist of this novel, is obviously the Christ figure with
black skin. Tom’s experience is quite similar to that of Jesus Christ.
When Tom’s first master, Mr. Shelby sells Tom to the coarse slave-dealer
in financial straits, he betrays the loyalty of his most loyal slave since
boyhood. Jesus is sold by his apostle Judas who is prompted by his avarice
for money. So they are all betrayed and sold by the ones who are close
to them. While he struggles with his faith, as Jesus does in the last hours
of his life when he says, ‘my God, why have you forsaken me?’2, he never
loses his simple faith. Tom’s death scene also has striking likeness with
that of Jesus Christ. Tom is flogged near to death, so is Jesus before
his crucifixion. When Jesus dies, there are two criminals crucified together
with him, one of who believes Jesus is Messiah and is saved at the very
moment and spot. Sambo and Qimbo, Degree’s two cruel overseers who in every
sense are equal to criminals, are moved by Tom’s Christian fortitude and
patience and are converted at the very moment and spot. Jesus is crucified
to redeem sinners while Tom dies for the two runaway slaves, Cassy and
Emmeline. They are all innocent, but all die for others. In essence, they
all die for their faith and religious devotion. In fact, Tom dies as a
‘martyr’ which is revealed by the title of chapter forty.
Tom is not only similar in his experience to Jesus Christ. More important,
his temperament is like that of Jesus Christ. He is loving, faithful, forgiving
and obedient.
Tom is full of love for his neighbors, blacks and whites. While he is at
St.Clare’s home, he meets that pitiful, wretched old slave Prue whose only
left child is starved to death because she devotes all her time to tend
her mistress and loses her milk, yet her mistress refuses to buy milk for
her baby. Tom offers to carry her basket for her and sends the Gospel to
her. Just as when Jesus sees sinners, he pities them, helps them, cures
them and tells them ‘the good news’. Tom not only loves his fellow slaves,
but white people. When he sees his second young handsome flighty master
St Clare go to those wining parties, Tom goes down on his knees and pleads
with him not to attend those revelries again by quoting from the Bible,
‘it biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder’3. His love comes
to full display when he says on his deathbed to his first young master
George Shelby: “…Give my love to mas’r, and dear good missis-and everybody
in the place! Ye don’t know. ’Pears like I loves’em all! I loves every
creatur’, every what! -It’s nothing but love…”4. Here, Tom is the incarnation
of love, just like Jesus is identified with love.
Tom is faithful to God and man. Facing his third cruel master Simon Degree’s
threatening and flogging, he doesn’t give up his faith in God and insists
that his soul belongs to Him, not to him, though he bought him with twelve
hundred dollars. Tom is also very faithful to man, such as his first and
third masters who give him all their property to manage. Once, Mr. Shelby
let him to go to Cincinnati alone to do business for him, Tom doesn’t run
away, instead, he comes back because he thinks, ‘Ah, master trusted me,
and I couldn’t!’ (P.4). Just as he himself asks Mr. Shelby, “… have I ever
broke word to you, or go contrary to you, ’specially since I was a Christian?”
(P.53). St. Clare, a careless master, who gives Tom a bill without looking
at it, trusts Tom so much that ‘Tom had every facility and temptation to
dishonesty’, yet ‘nothing but an impregnable simplicity of nature, strengthened
by Christian faith, could have kept him from it’ (P.189).
Tom’s another distinctive characteristic is forgiveness, which is so
extraordinary that it’s almost divine, and which we can see in Jesus Christ.
Jesus forgives those who persecute him for he prays, ‘Father, forgive them,
for they know not what they do’5. Tom also forgives his third cruel master
Legree and Legree’s two overseers who harshly flogged him by saying, ‘I
forgive ye, with all my soul!’ (P.384)
Tom is submissive and obedient but only to God and according to his conscience.
When Jesus is facing his immediate bitter death, he prays in the Mount
of Olives, ‘…yet, not my will but yours be done’6. Tom says similar words,
‘The Lord’s will be done!’ (P.299) when he learns he will be sold to the
south after the unexpected death of St. Clare. Yet his obedience is not
to everyone. For example, once Legree requires Tom to flog a weak slave
woman, Tom refuses, saying, ‘…but this yer thing I can’t feel it right
to do; and mas’r, I never shall do it-never!’ (P.336) So his obedience
is no blind. He only obeys what he believes right.
Why Mrs. Stowe depicted Tom as a Christ-like figure? Perhaps she wanted
to elicit sympathy from her readers most of who were whites. She wanted
to inform her readers that such pious good man died under the slavery,
thus hoped them to realize it was wrong to keep such an evil system in
a Christian country. In a word, she intended to win the support of her
readers by striking their strings of emotions.
Most of us who have read this book will agree that Tom, an almost perfect,
immaculate character without any human weakness is too good to exist in
real life. So the portrait of Uncle Tom tends to be rather pale. Besides,
the image of Tom is a stereotype with typical African features, typical
African American accent and supposed typical good disposition of that race.
Thus, Tom is more a representative of a kind of person rather than an individual.
ii. Little Eva
Another image, radiating with spiritual luster, is Evangeline St. Clare,
namely, the ‘little Eva’. The name ‘Evangeline’ definitely promotes the
idea and image of angel. In appearance, she resembles an earthly angel-beautiful,
always dressed in white. In spirit, she is full of love, like a good guardian
angel. Once her father asks her which way she likes best-to live as they
do at her uncle’s up in Vermont, or to have a house full of servants, as
they do. Eva answers that their way is the pleasantest because ‘it makes
so many more people round you to love’ (P.172). The reason she asks her
Papa to buy Tom is ‘to make him happy’ (P.140). When she hears the story
of Prue, she doesn’t want to go out in her new carriage again for the terrible
story ‘sink(s) into her heart’ (P.203). In her eyes, there are many puzzling
things, such as why Prue is so unhappy, why Tom should be separated from
his wife and children, why no one loves that black little girl, Topsy.
What she only knows and does is to love all the people around her. Just
as her name ‘Evangeline’ suggests, she is an evangelist to everyone. She
shares the Gospel with all her father’s plantation slaves as well as questioning
her own father’s faith. This action by Eva saves many lost souls and gives
them hope. It also prompts the soul-searching and self-reevaluation in
her father. When dying, she gives every slave servant in her house a lock
of fair golden hair, asking him or her to be Christians, so that they could
see each other in heaven. Eva is delicate and dies early, which “dramatize
the fact that she does not belong to the world. This is especially evident
when the angel is a child, like Stowe’s Eva.”7
Through the eyes of the angelic child Mrs. Stowe exposed the evils of
the institution of slavery. Eva asks her father to free the slaves after
her death. Mrs. Stowe called on people to do as or more than the child
does.
iii. Sambo&Qimbo
Sambo and Qimbo, Simon Legree’s two cruel henchmen, are obviously the
images of the two criminals taken from the Bible who are crucified at the
same time beside Jesus Christ when we see their roles in the process of
Tom’s death. With the command of Legree, these two flog Tom near to the
point of death. Yet, Tom’s forgiveness, patience and fortitude even moves
these two villainous men, and they ask him who Jesus is that’s been a standin’
by him so, all this night (P.384). Then, Tom introduces Jesus Christ to
them, and they are converted immediately. In the Bible, one criminal is
also moved by Jesus and believes him, and his soul is saved at that moment.
In fact, these two overseers take two different archetypes from the Bible,
the one who flog Jesus Christ and the other who is saved through Jesus.
So, Sambo and Qimbo possess two different roles at the same time.
iv. Eliza
The above four images-Tom, Eva, Sambo and Qimbo–are easy to find their
respective archetypes in the Bible. Another more indirect one is Eliza
who is like Israelites running away from Egypt where they are slaves to
Canaan where they will have a new free happy life. Eliza’s running is guided
by God all the way, as Israelites are guided by God who appears ‘in the
pillars of cloud and fire’8. Israelites’ passing through the Red Sea which
‘was turned into dry land by strong east wind’9 is a miracle. So is Eliza’s
escape through jumping from one ice flow to another, which can’t be done
without the ‘strength such as God gives only to the desperate’ (P.57).
If we say the Ohio River is like the Red Sea, then the lake between America
and Canada is like the river Jordan that lies between terrible wilderness
and wonderful Canaan. I call the Ohio River the Red Sea, not the the river
Jordan, because Eliza still has to endure many pains after her crossing
of the Ohio River, just like Israelites still have to suffer much in the
wilderness. While after crossing the lake, the land of freedom--Canada
waits for her and her families. Eliza is an intriguing character. She is
submissive to her master and mistress, yet her child’s imminent danger
and her desire for her child’s freedom and well-being overrides her loyalty
to them. Israelites betray Pharaoh for they also long for freedom and well-being.
v. Pious, Ideal Christian Mothers
A mother of seven children, Mrs. Stowe herself was a loving Christian
mother. In Uncle Tom’s Cabin, she depicted many pious, ideal Christian
mothers, such as St.Clare’s mother, Legree’s mother, Mary Bird, Mrs. Shelby
and Eliza etc. In essence, these respectable mothers are the ones that
‘by the 1850s in the America, middle-class ideology had elevated one image
of woman—the home–loving woman, pleasing, conservative, and virtuous, a
comfort and delight to her husband, an ideal to her children—into a national
model’10. It is interesting to notice that these national models are quite
the same with the ‘angels in the house’ in England at the Victorian Age.
St. Clare’s mother, in his words, ‘…was divine…there was no trace of
any human weakness or error about her…’(P.208). Though gentle and submissive
to her husband, she opposed the institution of slavery covertly by helping
redress the wrongs done to the blacks and caring them. She also instills
into St. Clare that every man, including niggers has spirit, thus greatly
influences Clare’s attitude towards slavery. Though St. Clare doesn’t dare
to break it, he loathes it and shows his sympathy for black people by indulging
the slaves in his house.
Legree’s mother is another virtuous, pious and forgiving mother. The
only difference between she and St. Clare’s mother is that she is heart-broken
because her exhortations fall onto deaf ears and cold heart. Her hard-working
nurture can’t eradicate her son’s vicious and tough nature. He not only
disregards her admonitions, but also treats her cruelly. When she ‘in the
last agony of her despair, knelt at his feet’, he ‘spurned her from him,
throw her senseless on the floor, and, with brutal curses, fled to his
ship’ (P.345).
Mary Bird, the Senator’s wife, is ‘a timid, blushing, little woman of
about four feet in height…she ruled more by entreating and persuasion than
by command or argument…’(P.74). Such a gentle woman would be aroused to
great indignity when talking about the slavery system. She even says courageously
to her husband, ‘…and I’ll break it, for one, the first time I get a chance;
and I hope I shall have a chance, I do…’(P.75) when she hears her husband
has just vote for the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. When Eliza and her son
Harry appears on their doorsteps, she does get the chance and she does
break it.
Mrs. Shelby, a kind-hearted woman who thought by kindness, and care,
and instruction, she could make the condition of hers better than freedom
(P.33), at last believes the system ‘-a bitter, bitter, most accursed thing!
-A curse to the master and a curse to the slave…’(P.33) when she found
she couldn’t protect her beloved slaves, Tom and Harry.
Eliza, an amiable, pious mother who doesn’t want to disobey her master
and mistress until her own son faces the danger of being sold. She opposes
the system by action--running away from her once beloved ‘home’.
A common trait among those loving, pious mothers is that they are all
Christians and are all against the institution of slavery except it is
not so obvious in the case of Legree’s mother. To their soft hearts, slavery
is too cruel a thing to be allowed to exist. It’s against the Christian
principle of loving one’s neighbors. Besides opposing slavery, those mothers
are often spiritual guiders for their sons and husbands. To St. Clare,
his mother ‘was a direct embodiment and personification of the New Testament
’(P.208). To Harris, when he turns away from God, his wife is always the
one whose ‘gentle sprit ever restores him’ (P.402).
In fact, all the characters in Uncle Tom’s Cabin can be put into four
categories: perfect Christians, imperfect Christians, half-Christians and
non-Christians. Tom and Eva are those rare real Christians or perfect Christians
who really live up to the principles of the Bible. Imperfect Christians
include those like Mrs. Shelby and Miss Ophelia etc. They believe God,
but their selfishness or hypocrisy prevents them from being good Christians.
For example, Mrs. Shelby rationalizes her actions by ‘gild(ing) it over’
with ‘kindness and care’ (P.33). She is angry about her husband’s sale
of Tom and Harris because she doesn’t know how she can ever hold up her
head again among them (P.32). Miss Ophelia, though has missionary zeal,
dares not to tough Topsy, the slave girl she is reforming for she still
has the sense of white superiority at the bottom of her heart. There are
also some half-Christians or going-to-be Christians, such as St. Clare
and Gorge Harris. St. Clare is always skeptical towards religion and doesn’t
believe God until his daughters and his own deaths. Harris is another example.
He is rebellious at first, but when his family reunion comes to a reality,
he becomes more content and comes nearer to God. While Simon Legree is
a typical example of non-Christian whose tough nature refuse to be touched
by any good word. He doesn’t repent even at his last minute. This kind
of categorizing might be oversimplifying. Yet, this is a pattern that I
found in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. So in this sense, Uncle Tom’s Cabin is a book
soaked with spirit of Christianity.
III. Mrs. Stowe’s Solution to Slavery
Now, let’s come to the question of Mrs. Stowe’s way of solving slavery.
‘So you are the little woman who started this Great War!’ Abraham Lincoln
is said to have remarked when meeting Harriet Beecher Stowe for the first
time in the White House. When in a small hotel George Harris says to Mr.
Wilson, ‘I’ll fight for my liberty to the last breath I breath. You say
your fathers did it; if it was right for them, it is right for me’ (P.106),
it seems that the author Mrs. Stowe herself agreed with George. Then does
this mean Mrs. Stowe advocated slaves to fight for their freedom through
violence? Or the aim of her writing the book was to spark the Civil War?
We are almost temped to say ‘yes’ to both questions with the two ‘evidences’
cited above if we do not exam the whole book thoroughly. First, let’s not
forget that Mrs. Stowe herself was a devout Christian who wouldn’t advocate
any form of violence. Second, we should notice that Mr. Wilson advised
Harris he’d better not shoot (P.106). Third, we should also notice that
Mr. Simeon, the fervent Quaker, regards fighting with flesh as a temptation
though he believes Harris has the right to do it. In fact, Harris himself
would rather ‘…be let alone-to go peacefully out of it [America]’(P.106).
So, in the case of George Harris, Mrs. Stowe only advocated limited passive
resistance when the law of sacred family bond was violated by the system
of slavery. But on the whole, she held with the view of nonviolent resistance.
To be specific, she praised slaves’ spiritual and moral victory over slavery
which can be seen from her most carefully portrayed protagonist Tom, a
pious, submissive Christian, who was her ideal black. Moreover, for Mrs.
Stowe, the solution to slavery lied mainly in the white, not in the black,
which, of course, is rather absurd. By informing her white fellowmen of
the evils of slavery, she wanted the Southern slave owners to free slaves
voluntarily through Christian love, just as George Shelby does. Of course,
this childish, utopian idea can’t come to true for the economy of South
is based on the slavery system. Those plantation owners couldn’t give up
their property voluntarily, could they? She also wanted Northerners, especially
the Church of the North to shoulder the responsibility of educating those
future freed men. It is clearly shown in the Concluding Remarks, which
goes like this, ‘…receive them to the educating advantages of Christian
republican society and schools…’(P.412). So she didn’t praise violent way
of liberating slaves and didn’t intend to spark the war between the South
and the North, rather, she gave her readers her own solution to this problem.
But her way of liberating slaves and saving the Union failed when the Civil
War broke out.
Conclusion
To sum up, Christianity played a very important role in Harriet Beecher
Stowe’s wring which inevitably influenced greatly the portraiture of characters
in Uncle Tom’s Cabin and also Mrs. Stowe’s own solution to slavery. The
author of this thesis intends to interpret Uncle Tom’s Cabin in the light
of Christianity rather than anti-slavery and feminism to show a new outlook
of it. Christianity is an indispensable part of western cultures and an
important element in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, yet most Chinese readers are not
familiar with it. So the author in this thesis hopes to help Chinese readers
appreciate it better by informing them more about Christianity in it.
Notes
1. http://www.humanities.mcmaster.ca/~english/Gill/archetypal.html
2. Holy Bible (New Revised Standard Version, Chinese Union Version), Mark,
chapter 15, verse, 34. China Christian Council. Quotations from the Bible
in the following thesis are to this version.
3. Proverbs 23:32
4. Harriet Beecher Stowe. Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Hertfounshire: Wordsword
Edition Limited Cumberland House, 1995. P.387. The following citations
from the same book will be marked with pagination in the parentheses in
the text.
5. Luke 23:24
6. Luke 23:42
7. Springer Marlene. What Manner of Woman. New York: New York University
Press, 1977. P.213
8. Exodus 14:24
9. Exodus 14:21
10. Springer Marlene. What Manner of Woman. New York: New York University
Press, 1977. P.229
Bibliography
Bayam, Nina, and Murphy, Francis, and Gottesman, Ronald, and Parker, Hershel,
and Hollanda, Laurence B, and Pritchard, William H, and Kalstone, Davaid.
The Norton Anthology of American Literature, second edition, Volume 1.
New York: W.W.Norton&Company.Inc., 1985.
Cunliffe, Marcus. The Literature of the United States, fourth edition.
Virginia: R.R.Donnelley&Sons Company, 1986.
Frye, Northrop. The Archetype of Literature, collected by Modern British
and American Literary Criticism: An Anthology. Shanghai: Shanghai Translation
Publishing House, 1994.
Hough, Craham. An Essay on Criticism. New York: W.W.Norton&Company, Inc.,
1966.
Lauter, Paul. The Heath Anthology of American Literature, Volume 1. Toronto:
D.C.Heath and Company, 1990.
McMichael, George. Anthology of American Literature, second edition, Volume
2. London: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc.
Perkins, and Bradley, and Beattly, and Long. The American Tradition in
Literature, seventh edition, Volume 1. McGraw-Hill Publishing Company,
1976.
Rubinstein, Annette T. American Literature Root and Flower, Volume 1. Beijing:
Foreign Langue and Research Press, 1988.
Springer Marlene. What Manner of Woman. New York: New York University Press,
1977.
Stowe, Harriet Beecher. Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Hertfounshire: Wordsword Edition
Limited Cumberland House, 1995.
Perkins, Barbara, and Worhol, Robyn, and Perkins, George. Women’s Work,
an Anthology of American Literature. McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1994
斯陀夫人著，杨晔译，《汤姆大叔的小屋》。中国和平出版社，新世纪出版社，1999。
http://www.chfweb.com/smith/harriet.html
http://www.classicnote.com/ClassicNotes/Titles/uncletom/about.html
http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/cgi-bin/monforum/gsiesing.Sentimentality
http://www.gonzaga.edu/faculty/campbell/enl311/utc.html
http://www. Humanities.mcmaster.ca/~english/Gill/archetypal.htm
http://www.sparknotes.com/guides/uncletom/
关键词：圣经原型 人物形象 基督教理念
Abstract: With the application of the renowned Canadian literary critic
Northrop Frye’s theory of archetype, the author in this thesis attempts
to analyze various characters, such as Uncle Tom, little Eva, Sambo and
Qimbo and some pious, ideal Christian mothers in Uncle Tom’s Cabin in terms
of Biblical archetype, to reveal the Christianity in this novel, and to
probe into Mrs. Stowe’s solution to the institution of slavery. She hopes
this thesis will be of any help to Chinese readers to appreciate this classic
novel in a new way.
Key Words: Biblical archetype character Christianity
Introduction
It is well known that western literature is based on two pillars--the Greek
culture and the Hebrew culture. In the Hebrew culture, there is a book,
namely, the Bible that accumulates its rich cultural heritage. Most western
authors are influenced by those two literary origins consciously or unconsciously.
They, without doubt, also influenced Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896),
a nineteenth century American female writer. Yet, with her strong religious
background, she tended to be influenced deeper by the latter than by the
former. Born into a family of religion, Harriet’s father, Lyman Beecher
was one of America’s most celebrated clergymen and the principal spokesman
for Calvinism in the nineteenth century; her mother, was a woman of prayer
who died when Harriet was four years old; her brother, Henry Ward Beecher,
was the best known pulpit orator of his times. In 1836, she was married
to Calvin Stowe, a Biblical scholar. In a word, Harriet Beecher Stowe was
bred, and lived all her life at the atmosphere of Christianity that inevitably
influenced her masterpiece Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
It’s commonly agreed that Uncle Tom’s Cabin is an anti-slavery novel.
In fact, it is for the cause of abolitionism that Mrs. Stowe took up her
pen. Yet, anti-slavery spirit is not contradictory or incompatible with
spirit of Christianity. In fact, they co-exist quite harmoniously in Uncle
Tom’s Cabin. Feminism is also quite evident in this book. Many articles
have been written to discuss the anti-slavery spirit or feminism in it.
However, this thesis will mainly focus on Christianity in Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
I. Northrop Frye’s Theory of Archetype
In Greek, ‘arch’ means ‘first’, ‘typos’ means ‘form’ or ‘type’. So, ‘archetype’
means first type/form or original type/form. In the theories of Swiss psychologist
Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961), archetypes are primordial mythic forms that
embody psychological drives and forces that originate in the collective
unconscious. For the Canadian literary critic Northrop Frye (1912-1991),
archetypes are the socially-concerned organizing forms and patterns of
literature that originate in myth and which unify and reveal literature
as an imaginatively-inhabitable world. His great work, such as The Secular
Scripture (1976), The Great Code (1982) and Words with Power (1990) all
center on the study of the Bible. In Frye’s system, the organizing principles
that give literature coherence and structure are derived from the archetypal
imagery found in the Bible and the myths of ancient Greece. He suggests
that all literature is based on displacements of these myths. Archetypal
criticism focused on characters, images, symbols, metaphors, plots, events
and themes1. The thesis attempts to use this theory to analyze the characters
in Uncle Tom’s Cabin in terms of Biblical archetype to reveal Christianity
in it and to probe into Mrs. Stowe’ solution to the institution of slavery.
II. Character Analysis
i. Tom
Tom, the protagonist of this novel, is obviously the Christ figure with
black skin. Tom’s experience is quite similar to that of Jesus Christ.
When Tom’s first master, Mr. Shelby sells Tom to the coarse slave-dealer
in financial straits, he betrays the loyalty of his most loyal slave since
boyhood. Jesus is sold by his apostle Judas who is prompted by his avarice
for money. So they are all betrayed and sold by the ones who are close
to them. While he struggles with his faith, as Jesus does in the last hours
of his life when he says, ‘my God, why have you forsaken me?’2, he never
loses his simple faith. Tom’s death scene also has striking likeness with
that of Jesus Christ. Tom is flogged near to death, so is Jesus before
his crucifixion. When Jesus dies, there are two criminals crucified together
with him, one of who believes Jesus is Messiah and is saved at the very
moment and spot. Sambo and Qimbo, Degree’s two cruel overseers who in every
sense are equal to criminals, are moved by Tom’s Christian fortitude and
patience and are converted at the very moment and spot. Jesus is crucified
to redeem sinners while Tom dies for the two runaway slaves, Cassy and
Emmeline. They are all innocent, but all die for others. In essence, they
all die for their faith and religious devotion. In fact, Tom dies as a
‘martyr’ which is revealed by the title of chapter forty.
Tom is not only similar in his experience to Jesus Christ. More important,
his temperament is like that of Jesus Christ. He is loving, faithful, forgiving
and obedient.
Tom is full of love for his neighbors, blacks and whites. While he is at
St.Clare’s home, he meets that pitiful, wretched old slave Prue whose only
left child is starved to death because she devotes all her time to tend
her mistress and loses her milk, yet her mistress refuses to buy milk for
her baby. Tom offers to carry her basket for her and sends the Gospel to
her. Just as when Jesus sees sinners, he pities them, helps them, cures
them and tells them ‘the good news’. Tom not only loves his fellow slaves,
but white people. When he sees his second young handsome flighty master
St Clare go to those wining parties, Tom goes down on his knees and pleads
with him not to attend those revelries again by quoting from the Bible,
‘it biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder’3. His love comes
to full display when he says on his deathbed to his first young master
George Shelby: “…Give my love to mas’r, and dear good missis-and everybody
in the place! Ye don’t know. ’Pears like I loves’em all! I loves every
creatur’, every what! -It’s nothing but love…”4. Here, Tom is the incarnation
of love, just like Jesus is identified with love.
Tom is faithful to God and man. Facing his third cruel master Simon Degree’s
threatening and flogging, he doesn’t give up his faith in God and insists
that his soul belongs to Him, not to him, though he bought him with twelve
hundred dollars. Tom is also very faithful to man, such as his first and
third masters who give him all their property to manage. Once, Mr. Shelby
let him to go to Cincinnati alone to do business for him, Tom doesn’t run
away, instead, he comes back because he thinks, ‘Ah, master trusted me,
and I couldn’t!’ (P.4). Just as he himself asks Mr. Shelby, “… have I ever
broke word to you, or go contrary to you, ’specially since I was a Christian?”
(P.53). St. Clare, a careless master, who gives Tom a bill without looking
at it, trusts Tom so much that ‘Tom had every facility and temptation to
dishonesty’, yet ‘nothing but an impregnable simplicity of nature, strengthened
by Christian faith, could have kept him from it’ (P.189).
Tom’s another distinctive characteristic is forgiveness, which is so
extraordinary that it’s almost divine, and which we can see in Jesus Christ.
Jesus forgives those who persecute him for he prays, ‘Father, forgive them,
for they know not what they do’5. Tom also forgives his third cruel master
Legree and Legree’s two overseers who harshly flogged him by saying, ‘I
forgive ye, with all my soul!’ (P.384)
Tom is submissive and obedient but only to God and according to his conscience.
When Jesus is facing his immediate bitter death, he prays in the Mount
of Olives, ‘…yet, not my will but yours be done’6. Tom says similar words,
‘The Lord’s will be done!’ (P.299) when he learns he will be sold to the
south after the unexpected death of St. Clare. Yet his obedience is not
to everyone. For example, once Legree requires Tom to flog a weak slave
woman, Tom refuses, saying, ‘…but this yer thing I can’t feel it right
to do; and mas’r, I never shall do it-never!’ (P.336) So his obedience
is no blind. He only obeys what he believes right.
Why Mrs. Stowe depicted Tom as a Christ-like figure? Perhaps she wanted
to elicit sympathy from her readers most of who were whites. She wanted
to inform her readers that such pious good man died under the slavery,
thus hoped them to realize it was wrong to keep such an evil system in
a Christian country. In a word, she intended to win the support of her
readers by striking their strings of emotions.
Most of us who have read this book will agree that Tom, an almost perfect,
immaculate character without any human weakness is too good to exist in
real life. So the portrait of Uncle Tom tends to be rather pale. Besides,
the image of Tom is a stereotype with typical African features, typical
African American accent and supposed typical good disposition of that race.
Thus, Tom is more a representative of a kind of person rather than an individual.
ii. Little Eva
Another image, radiating with spiritual luster, is Evangeline St. Clare,
namely, the ‘little Eva’. The name ‘Evangeline’ definitely promotes the
idea and image of angel. In appearance, she resembles an earthly angel-beautiful,
always dressed in white. In spirit, she is full of love, like a good guardian
angel. Once her father asks her which way she likes best-to live as they
do at her uncle’s up in Vermont, or to have a house full of servants, as
they do. Eva answers that their way is the pleasantest because ‘it makes
so many more people round you to love’ (P.172). The reason she asks her
Papa to buy Tom is ‘to make him happy’ (P.140). When she hears the story
of Prue, she doesn’t want to go out in her new carriage again for the terrible
story ‘sink(s) into her heart’ (P.203). In her eyes, there are many puzzling
things, such as why Prue is so unhappy, why Tom should be separated from
his wife and children, why no one loves that black little girl, Topsy.
What she only knows and does is to love all the people around her. Just
as her name ‘Evangeline’ suggests, she is an evangelist to everyone. She
shares the Gospel with all her father’s plantation slaves as well as questioning
her own father’s faith. This action by Eva saves many lost souls and gives
them hope. It also prompts the soul-searching and self-reevaluation in
her father. When dying, she gives every slave servant in her house a lock
of fair golden hair, asking him or her to be Christians, so that they could
see each other in heaven. Eva is delicate and dies early, which “dramatize
the fact that she does not belong to the world. This is especially evident
when the angel is a child, like Stowe’s Eva.”7
Through the eyes of the angelic child Mrs. Stowe exposed the evils of
the institution of slavery. Eva asks her father to free the slaves after
her death. Mrs. Stowe called on people to do as or more than the child
does.
iii. Sambo&Qimbo
Sambo and Qimbo, Simon Legree’s two cruel henchmen, are obviously the
images of the two criminals taken from the Bible who are crucified at the
same time beside Jesus Christ when we see their roles in the process of
Tom’s death. With the command of Legree, these two flog Tom near to the
point of death. Yet, Tom’s forgiveness, patience and fortitude even moves
these two villainous men, and they ask him who Jesus is that’s been a standin’
by him so, all this night (P.384). Then, Tom introduces Jesus Christ to
them, and they are converted immediately. In the Bible, one criminal is
also moved by Jesus and believes him, and his soul is saved at that moment.
In fact, these two overseers take two different archetypes from the Bible,
the one who flog Jesus Christ and the other who is saved through Jesus.
So, Sambo and Qimbo possess two different roles at the same time.
iv. Eliza
The above four images-Tom, Eva, Sambo and Qimbo–are easy to find their
respective archetypes in the Bible. Another more indirect one is Eliza
who is like Israelites running away from Egypt where they are slaves to
Canaan where they will have a new free happy life. Eliza’s running is guided
by God all the way, as Israelites are guided by God who appears ‘in the
pillars of cloud and fire’8. Israelites’ passing through the Red Sea which
‘was turned into dry land by strong east wind’9 is a miracle. So is Eliza’s
escape through jumping from one ice flow to another, which can’t be done
without the ‘strength such as God gives only to the desperate’ (P.57).
If we say the Ohio River is like the Red Sea, then the lake between America
and Canada is like the river Jordan that lies between terrible wilderness
and wonderful Canaan. I call the Ohio River the Red Sea, not the the river
Jordan, because Eliza still has to endure many pains after her crossing
of the Ohio River, just like Israelites still have to suffer much in the
wilderness. While after crossing the lake, the land of freedom--Canada
waits for her and her families. Eliza is an intriguing character. She is
submissive to her master and mistress, yet her child’s imminent danger
and her desire for her child’s freedom and well-being overrides her loyalty
to them. Israelites betray Pharaoh for they also long for freedom and well-being.
v. Pious, Ideal Christian Mothers
A mother of seven children, Mrs. Stowe herself was a loving Christian
mother. In Uncle Tom’s Cabin, she depicted many pious, ideal Christian
mothers, such as St.Clare’s mother, Legree’s mother, Mary Bird, Mrs. Shelby
and Eliza etc. In essence, these respectable mothers are the ones that
‘by the 1850s in the America, middle-class ideology had elevated one image
of woman—the home–loving woman, pleasing, conservative, and virtuous, a
comfort and delight to her husband, an ideal to her children—into a national
model’10. It is interesting to notice that these national models are quite
the same with the ‘angels in the house’ in England at the Victorian Age.
St. Clare’s mother, in his words, ‘…was divine…there was no trace of
any human weakness or error about her…’(P.208). Though gentle and submissive
to her husband, she opposed the institution of slavery covertly by helping
redress the wrongs done to the blacks and caring them. She also instills
into St. Clare that every man, including niggers has spirit, thus greatly
influences Clare’s attitude towards slavery. Though St. Clare doesn’t dare
to break it, he loathes it and shows his sympathy for black people by indulging
the slaves in his house.
Legree’s mother is another virtuous, pious and forgiving mother. The
only difference between she and St. Clare’s mother is that she is heart-broken
because her exhortations fall onto deaf ears and cold heart. Her hard-working
nurture can’t eradicate her son’s vicious and tough nature. He not only
disregards her admonitions, but also treats her cruelly. When she ‘in the
last agony of her despair, knelt at his feet’, he ‘spurned her from him,
throw her senseless on the floor, and, with brutal curses, fled to his
ship’ (P.345).
Mary Bird, the Senator’s wife, is ‘a timid, blushing, little woman of
about four feet in height…she ruled more by entreating and persuasion than
by command or argument…’(P.74). Such a gentle woman would be aroused to
great indignity when talking about the slavery system. She even says courageously
to her husband, ‘…and I’ll break it, for one, the first time I get a chance;
and I hope I shall have a chance, I do…’(P.75) when she hears her husband
has just vote for the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. When Eliza and her son
Harry appears on their doorsteps, she does get the chance and she does
break it.
Mrs. Shelby, a kind-hearted woman who thought by kindness, and care,
and instruction, she could make the condition of hers better than freedom
(P.33), at last believes the system ‘-a bitter, bitter, most accursed thing!
-A curse to the master and a curse to the slave…’(P.33) when she found
she couldn’t protect her beloved slaves, Tom and Harry.
Eliza, an amiable, pious mother who doesn’t want to disobey her master
and mistress until her own son faces the danger of being sold. She opposes
the system by action--running away from her once beloved ‘home’.
A common trait among those loving, pious mothers is that they are all
Christians and are all against the institution of slavery except it is
not so obvious in the case of Legree’s mother. To their soft hearts, slavery
is too cruel a thing to be allowed to exist. It’s against the Christian
principle of loving one’s neighbors. Besides opposing slavery, those mothers
are often spiritual guiders for their sons and husbands. To St. Clare,
his mother ‘was a direct embodiment and personification of the New Testament
’(P.208). To Harris, when he turns away from God, his wife is always the
one whose ‘gentle sprit ever restores him’ (P.402).
In fact, all the characters in Uncle Tom’s Cabin can be put into four
categories: perfect Christians, imperfect Christians, half-Christians and
non-Christians. Tom and Eva are those rare real Christians or perfect Christians
who really live up to the principles of the Bible. Imperfect Christians
include those like Mrs. Shelby and Miss Ophelia etc. They believe God,
but their selfishness or hypocrisy prevents them from being good Christians.
For example, Mrs. Shelby rationalizes her actions by ‘gild(ing) it over’
with ‘kindness and care’ (P.33). She is angry about her husband’s sale
of Tom and Harris because she doesn’t know how she can ever hold up her
head again among them (P.32). Miss Ophelia, though has missionary zeal,
dares not to tough Topsy, the slave girl she is reforming for she still
has the sense of white superiority at the bottom of her heart. There are
also some half-Christians or going-to-be Christians, such as St. Clare
and Gorge Harris. St. Clare is always skeptical towards religion and doesn’t
believe God until his daughters and his own deaths. Harris is another example.
He is rebellious at first, but when his family reunion comes to a reality,
he becomes more content and comes nearer to God. While Simon Legree is
a typical example of non-Christian whose tough nature refuse to be touched
by any good word. He doesn’t repent even at his last minute. This kind
of categorizing might be oversimplifying. Yet, this is a pattern that I
found in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. So in this sense, Uncle Tom’s Cabin is a book
soaked with spirit of Christianity.
III. Mrs. Stowe’s Solution to Slavery
Now, let’s come to the question of Mrs. Stowe’s way of solving slavery.
‘So you are the little woman who started this Great War!’ Abraham Lincoln
is said to have remarked when meeting Harriet Beecher Stowe for the first
time in the White House. When in a small hotel George Harris says to Mr.
Wilson, ‘I’ll fight for my liberty to the last breath I breath. You say
your fathers did it; if it was right for them, it is right for me’ (P.106),
it seems that the author Mrs. Stowe herself agreed with George. Then does
this mean Mrs. Stowe advocated slaves to fight for their freedom through
violence? Or the aim of her writing the book was to spark the Civil War?
We are almost temped to say ‘yes’ to both questions with the two ‘evidences’
cited above if we do not exam the whole book thoroughly. First, let’s not
forget that Mrs. Stowe herself was a devout Christian who wouldn’t advocate
any form of violence. Second, we should notice that Mr. Wilson advised
Harris he’d better not shoot (P.106). Third, we should also notice that
Mr. Simeon, the fervent Quaker, regards fighting with flesh as a temptation
though he believes Harris has the right to do it. In fact, Harris himself
would rather ‘…be let alone-to go peacefully out of it [America]’(P.106).
So, in the case of George Harris, Mrs. Stowe only advocated limited passive
resistance when the law of sacred family bond was violated by the system
of slavery. But on the whole, she held with the view of nonviolent resistance.
To be specific, she praised slaves’ spiritual and moral victory over slavery
which can be seen from her most carefully portrayed protagonist Tom, a
pious, submissive Christian, who was her ideal black. Moreover, for Mrs.
Stowe, the solution to slavery lied mainly in the white, not in the black,
which, of course, is rather absurd. By informing her white fellowmen of
the evils of slavery, she wanted the Southern slave owners to free slaves
voluntarily through Christian love, just as George Shelby does. Of course,
this childish, utopian idea can’t come to true for the economy of South
is based on the slavery system. Those plantation owners couldn’t give up
their property voluntarily, could they? She also wanted Northerners, especially
the Church of the North to shoulder the responsibility of educating those
future freed men. It is clearly shown in the Concluding Remarks, which
goes like this, ‘…receive them to the educating advantages of Christian
republican society and schools…’(P.412). So she didn’t praise violent way
of liberating slaves and didn’t intend to spark the war between the South
and the North, rather, she gave her readers her own solution to this problem.
But her way of liberating slaves and saving the Union failed when the Civil
War broke out.
Conclusion
To sum up, Christianity played a very important role in Harriet Beecher
Stowe’s wring which inevitably influenced greatly the portraiture of characters
in Uncle Tom’s Cabin and also Mrs. Stowe’s own solution to slavery. The
author of this thesis intends to interpret Uncle Tom’s Cabin in the light
of Christianity rather than anti-slavery and feminism to show a new outlook
of it. Christianity is an indispensable part of western cultures and an
important element in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, yet most Chinese readers are not
familiar with it. So the author in this thesis hopes to help Chinese readers
appreciate it better by informing them more about Christianity in it.
Notes
1. http://www.humanities.mcmaster.ca/~english/Gill/archetypal.html
2. Holy Bible (New Revised Standard Version, Chinese Union Version), Mark,
chapter 15, verse, 34. China Christian Council. Quotations from the Bible
in the following thesis are to this version.
3. Proverbs 23:32
4. Harriet Beecher Stowe. Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Hertfounshire: Wordsword
Edition Limited Cumberland House, 1995. P.387. The following citations
from the same book will be marked with pagination in the parentheses in
the text.
5. Luke 23:24
6. Luke 23:42
7. Springer Marlene. What Manner of Woman. New York: New York University
Press, 1977. P.213
8. Exodus 14:24
9. Exodus 14:21
10. Springer Marlene. What Manner of Woman. New York: New York University
Press, 1977. P.229
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