Despite this apparent resignation, St. Clare also shows
anger against the system and tells of his mother’s moral perfection:
“a direct embodiment and personification of the New Testament,”
she possessed a love of humanity that contrasted sharply with his father’s
aristocratic attitudes, lack of religious sentiment, and embrace
of slavery. Although she never confronted his father directly, St.
Clare’s mother made a great impression upon his moral constitution.
Thus when St. Clare and his twin brother inherited the family’s
slaves upon their father’s death, he found himself unable to bear
being the master of a huge plantation and hundreds of slaves. St.
Clare tells of a slave who was caught trying to run from the plantation.
He explains that the slave had a reputation for rebelliousness,
but St. Clare, by tending to him and caring for him, “tamed” him. He
then made out free papers for the slave. But the slave felt so grateful
toward St. Clare that he ripped the papers in two and pledged his
life to him. Eva, who is also listening to the story, starts crying
and says that hearing these things makes them sink into her heart.
Later, Tom tries to write a letter to his wife and children,
but his limited literacy causes him trouble. Eva agrees to help
him, and together they write a letter, which Tom sends.
Analysis: Chapters XVII–XIX
The standoff in Chapter XVII between the escaping slaves
and Tom Loker’s gang provides one of the most dramatically compelling moments
in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, bringing to a crisis the
conflict between the escaped slaves’ noble dignity and the slave
hunters’ detestable cruelty. Stowe, who often uses the technique
of directly addressing the reader, takes the opportunity to point
out that if George were a man in Hungary he would be seen as a hero,
but because he is a black man in America he is not. In this way,
she attempts to simplify and sentimentalize the situation in such
a way that her readers will identify with the heroism of George’s
stand.
One of Stowe’s most effective techniques of persuasion
lies in her presentation of the slaves as real human beings. That
is, although Stowe does not portray them with a high degree of “realism”
per se, she does render them human to her white audience. In 1852,
whites lived such separate lives from blacks that Stowe could dislodge
some of their prejudices simply by presenting blacks interacting
as a family or feeling joy and sorrow. If she could make whites
in the North realize that many of the escaping slaves had families,
histories, and pressing human reasons to escape the system of slavery,
she could make them see the institution in a new light. Historians
have argued that Stowe succeeded in this project, effectively breaking
through the familiar defenses of the slave system. By forcing
her readers to see the institution from a new perspective, not dulled
by custom and familiarity, Stowe may have helped to change many
people’s attitudes.
Stowe’s attempts to render the slaves human prove integral
to her powerful portrayal of Prue in the next chapter. Having begun
to humanize the slaves, she shows a slave who has been dehumanized by
the system. If George’s attempt to escape explores the theme of slavery
from the standpoint of a noble hero, the story of Prue explores
the same theme from the standpoint of a tragic victim. Although
Stowe has had her characters discuss at length the evils of slavery,
she now illustrates her point graphically, intending to shock the
reader on a deeply emotional level. Until Stowe introduces Prue, all
of the slaves seem to receive comparably decent treatment; the most
cruelty they suffer seems to come when they are between owners,
in trade and in transit. But slavery ruins Prue, even before it
literally claims her life. She has been treated as nothing more
than an animal—useful for breeding other animals to sell—and she
has been destroyed morally and psychologically. Whether or not Prue’s
story achieves its desired effect on the reader, it definitively
converts Miss Ophelia, who realizes suddenly the institution’s wickedness.
Miss Ophelia’s outrage at Prue’s fate, along with her
ensuing discussion with St. Clare, helps to shed light on the man’s
character. Basically a good-hearted man, he nonetheless feels that
he has no choice but to uphold a system of which he disapproves. This
contradiction attests to the pernicious power of the slavery, forceful
enough to override individual decency. Indeed, many people in 1850s
America found slavery fundamentally repugnant, and yet the system
persisted. The conversation between Miss Ophelia and St. Clare explores
how this is possible. In St. Clare’s description of his father,
he explains how much depends on the moral lines that an individual
chooses to draw. While one may stand for freedom, one can choose
to apply the ideal to men only, to whites only, or to white male
landowners only.
