Summary: Chapter XVI
The next morning, Marie complains about the slaves, calling
them selfish creatures. Eva points out that her mother could not
survive without Mammy, an old black woman who sits up long nights
with Marie. But Marie grumbles that Mammy talks and thinks too much about
her husband and children, from whom Marie has separated her. When
St. Clare and Eva exit the room, Marie begins to complain to Miss
Ophelia, who generally greets her remarks with blank silence.
In contrast to her mother, Eva remains filled with joy
and does all she can to make Tom happy. Ever adoring and generous,
she tells Marie that a house full of slaves makes for a much more
pleasant life than a house without them because, with slaves, one
has more people to love. Extending her affection lavishly on everyone,
Eva gives no thought to the differences between blacks and whites.
Analysis: Chapters XIV–XVI
Stowe’s idealization of Little Eva is matched only by
her idealization of Uncle Tom. Both characters manifest supreme
virtue and goodness, furthering the book’s religious messages. Because
of Eva’s status as an innocent child, she poses no threat to readers.
For this reason, Stowe can use her to voice what was then a radical
view of religious thought and racial equality.
While Eva’s character is highly idealized, Miss Ophelia
receives what may be the most realistic treatment of any female
in the book. While Stowe’s other women—Mrs. Shelby, Mrs. Bird, and
Rachel Halliday, for example—tend to appear as only slightly varying
versions of the “perfect” wife-mother, Miss Ophelia approaches the world
without the bleeding heart of these characters. Educated and independent,
Miss Ophelia is motivated not by feminine emotion, but by rational
thought and a sense of practical duty. The reader has seen how Stowe
uses her other women characters to prod gently at her readers’ consciences,
as well as to appeal particularly to Northern mothers and wives
who may have had moral influence in their households. With Miss
Ophelia, the author may be diversifying her strategy. While Stowe
plays on the emotions of deep-feeling mothers, she also aims to
speak to women more like St. Clare’s independent cousin. An intellectually
adept Northern woman, Miss Ophelia is informed about the issues
surrounding slavery but has not yet examined her own prejudices.
The reader can see evidence of Miss Ophelia’s unconscious prejudice
in her reaction to Eva’s color-blind displays of affection. Eva
tries to convince her cousin that they should all be motivated by
love, and although Miss Ophelia agrees on a theoretical level, she
still recoils at the thought of the girl kissing and hugging the
slaves.
Unlike Miss Ophelia, St. Clare is less moved by what he
“should” do than by what he feels. This allows him to denounce slavery
without hesitation and without considering logical consequences
of abolition. Yet this passion without practicality leads to a policy
in which St. Clare condemns slavery without taking action to eradicate
it. Stowe thus treats St. Clare with much of the same irony she extended
to Mr. Shelby. As Stowe develops the main theme of her novel—the
evil of slavery and its incompatibility with Christian morality—she
continually explores ambiguous characters and situations that seem
either to justify or to excuse the practice of slavery. St. Clare
and Shelby, good men who own slaves and act as kindly masters to
them, provide two of the most interesting of these ambiguous characters.
Good men and good masters, they offer a test case for the institution
of slavery. Stowe seeks to show that the institution is so inherently
evil as to render oxymoronic the notion of “beneficent” slavery
or “benign” slaveholders.
Stowe portrays the slave-master relationship as creating
an intolerable gulf in power, class, liberty and education, even
when it exists between two mutually well-meaning men such as Shelby
and Tom, who earnestly care for each other’s welfare. This gulf
first becomes clear when Shelby smokes his cigar to soothe himself
for cleaving Tom’s family apart. And now the reader sees the romantic
and sentimental St. Clare arguing with Ophelia on behalf of the
humanity of his slaves while he continues to own them as property.
In the years prior to the Civil War, many people excused slavery
by claiming that most slaveholders were good men or acted in the
interest of their slaves. Stowe uses her irony to argue against
this idea. She implies that the slaves’ interests do not lie in
having kind masters; instead, they lie in being set free. Any man
who owns slaves automatically acts against his slaves’ best interests
simply by continuing to own them.
