In her presentation of Tom’s trials after St. Clare’s
death, Stowe makes a point about slavery at large, a point she repeats
throughout the book. Namely, a slave’s fate lies at the mercy of
his master, and a master’s legal claim on a slave overrides all
efforts by others to improve the slave’s welfare. Thus Miss Ophelia
can do nothing to stop Marie. Marie can whip the slaves or sell
them into further cycles of abuse. Stowe emphasizes the importance
of religion and love and their ability to transform the heart, but
in this section she does not shy away from the horrific evil that
exists in their absence.
Stowe focuses not only on the effect of slavery on slaves
but also on its effect on the slaves’ owners. While slavery causes
emotional and physical suffering among the slaves that slaveholders
can never know, the system also makes human beings lose all sense
of right and wrong. This latter effect extends to both the oppressed
and the oppressor. Through the story of the Legree plantation, Stowe
shows how the system turns slaves against each other—how cruelty
makes people crueler. The plantation also lacks all sense of religion.
Tom tries to fight against the cruelty, to infuse goodness into
this moral void. The only commands he refuses to obey are those
that go against his faith; thus in the scene of the beating in Chapter
XXXIII, he holds strong. These pages work toward transforming Tom
into a martyr-figure. He would rather face a severe beating himself
than violate his principles by beating another slave.
