How Enslavement Narratives Expand Our Paradigms
I need these stories when I curse my disrupters, wishing they would diminish, fade, and vanish. We all need these stories to help us understand stories unlike our own and expand us.
What comes to mind when you hear the name Uncle Tom? Probably not a strong, self-possessing man but an abject sell-out. No one wants to be an Uncle Tom. So, how does he inspire me in my cancer journey? The answer is that before Uncle Tom becomes an insult, he is a martyr, a slave who sacrifices his freedom and life for his fellow slaves.
My appreciation of Uncle Tom starts during the lethargy of chemo with a book which leads to a string of related readings. Eventually, I’m immersed in slavery and Jim Crow readings, stories of people who chafe under lifetimes of sorrows and burdens, who, like us, don’t choose their disrupters. Why should we care about these old stories, you might ask? They show us how to cope and persevere and what’s worth living and dying for. I need these stories when I curse my disrupters, wishing they would diminish, fade, and vanish. We all need these stories to expand us, build empathy, and see the central role of suffering in human experience.
My journey starts with David McCullough’s Pioneers, a story about settling the Northwest Territory starting in 1788, a wilderness northwest of the Ohio River which would develop into the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. I’m fascinated by Manasseh Cutler and his son Ephraim who together labor—and at one point almost lose the struggle—to keep the territory free of slavery and their far-reaching legacy.
Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1851 book Uncle Tom’s Cabin belongs to that legacy. Her composite stories heard from black servants during the 17 years she lives in Cincinnati where slavery is illegal make the characters personal and their suffering relatable. The sensational success of the book leads to it being said that “Mrs. Stowe made more converts to antislavery with her book than all the preachers and lecturers combined” (McCullough, 255). That catches my attention. I want to read the stories of this woman whom Lincoln allegedly greeted in 1862 with this flip comment: “So you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war.”
So, I read Uncle Tom’s Cabin, an extensive, gut-wrenching account of families caught in slavery, stories of children ripped from their mother’s arms, mistreatment, violence and oppression, unimaginable horror, stories which vivify slavery. You might be thinking why I would put myself through such an emotional wringer when I’m struggling through my own pain. Perhaps it’s because I’m looking for a way to cope through a story far worse than mine; perhaps experiencing pain increases my capacity to enter another’s pain. I’m riveted to these stories.
There are stories of benign and beastly owners, making the point that even the benign ones, who treat their slaves kindly to assuage their consciences, are equally complicit in the system of injustice because they don’t use their power to end it. Stowe lets no one off the hook, neither the North nor the South, calling slavery America’s problem.
I’m fascinated by the complexity of Tom’s character. Tom has a hard life of oppression, loss, and grief. Clearly, there’s something to the sycophant—suck-up—association with the character, especially when he lives in the South under the indulgent master St. Clare. When he dies, Tom is sold farther north to a cruel master named Simon Legree. After a life of struggle and pain, it is almost unbearable to see him end up there. Legree lets his fury fall on Tom over the escape of two slaves, Cassy and Emmeline. He resolves that if the hunt with neighboring plantations, dogs, and guns does not produce Cassy and Emmeline, he will break Tom down to find out where they are. He hates Tom because of his independence of mind, even though he is faithful.
When the hunt turns up nothing—the women are hiding at the plantation until an opportune time for escape—Tom steels himself for an assault from his despotic master. Knowing the details of the fugitives’ plan, he resolves not to betray his fellow slaves, even if it means dying for it. Stowe ties Tom’s resoluteness to a moment of inspiration: “a higher voice there was saying, ‘Fear not them that kill the body, and, after that, have no more that they can do.’ Nerve and bone of that poor man’s body vibrated to those words, as if touched by the finger of God; and he felt the strength of a thousand souls in one” (Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 637).
With virulent anger, Legree tells Tom he will kill him if he doesn’t reveal the whereabouts of the slaves. Tom refuses, but Legree commands him to speak while striking him furiously. When asked if he knows anything, Tom responds, “‘I know, Mas’r; but I can’t tell anything. I can die!’” (638). Impassioned, Tom urges his master to consider his conscience, “’Oh, Mas’r don’t bring this great sin on your soul! It will hurt you more than’t will me! Do the worst you can, my troubles’ll be over soon; but, if ye don’t repent, yours won’t never end!’” Then after one “hesitating pause, the spirit of evil came back, with sevenfold vehemence; and Legree, foaming with rage, smote his victim to the ground.” Stowe’s description of Tom’s death stops there with the poignant comment: “Scenes of blood and cruelty are shocking to our ear and heart. What man has nerve to do, man has not nerve to hear” (639).
Tom stands on the non-negotiable decision to protect life, the life of his friends, who are also two of the most disadvantaged members of society, female slaves. He knows what’s worth dying for and dies on his own terms. His choice, his autonomy is the one thing that no person, no weapon, no authority can take from him. His martyrdom ultimately becomes the defining moment of his life, which shapes how we view this character.
When I finish the book, I’m curious how the derogatory association with Uncle Tom came about? Shouldn’t literary characters, or anyone, be considered by the arc of their lives, instead of a part of it? Doesn’t the climax of a book and character ultimately determine how the character is viewed? Wiki offers an interesting answer—though the full account of the disconnect is too complex to delve into here—that the epithet emerges years after the book is published as minstrel shows—usually performed by white actors in blackface—depict him in a negative light. These shows are pro-slavery, changing Uncle Tom from a Christian martyr to a fool. At the time of publication in 1851 Stowe’s stories reject the racial stereotypes of minstrel shows, though clearly Stowe weaves her own sentimental racial stereotypes into her characters. While she deserves criticism for this, she, like each of us, is also a person of her time, bound, to an extent, to its zeitgeist. Imperfect as her book may be, it propels the abolitionist cause like no other force at the time.
This disconnect removes us from an inspirational character who still encourages us today. Uncle Tom represents a triumph of the will and heart, that even in the face of certain death, he commands his response. I, too, can choose how to respond to my disrupters as Walter Anderson invites us to do:
“I am responsible. Although I may not be able to prevent the worst from happening, I am responsible for my attitude toward the inevitable misfortunes that darken life. Bad things do happen; how I respond to them defines my character and the quality of my life. I can choose to sit in perpetual sadness, immobilized by the gravity of my loss, or I can choose to rise from the pain and treasure the most precious gift I have—life itself.”
Works Cited
Beecher Stowe, Harriet. Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Aladdin Paperbacks, 2002.
McCullough, David. The Pioneers. Simon & Shuster, 2019.