Hold Fast to Our Belief

Abstract：

Uncle Tom’s Cabin is a well-known realistic work of Harriet Beecher Stowe. It revolves around a long suffering slave Uncle Tom to develop its plot and delineates the life of his surrounding slaves sand slaveholders. This novel exposes the evil of slavery and also exalts the vital role of strong belief in one’s life.

 

Key word: Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom, Belief

Harriet Beecher Stowe is an American author and abolitionist. Her father Lyman was a renowned clergyman. In her childhood, she was greatly influenced by Calvinism because of her relation with her father. In her youth, due to her Uncle Samuel Ford’s influence, she adopted the liberalism belief. She was fond of reading the romantic novels of Scott，Sir Walter, which was saliently reflected in her later works. In 1832, she along with her family moved to Cincinnati where she taught at a Girl’s School and wrote some life essays about New England. In 1836, she married Calvin Ellis Stowe, one of the leading professors at Lane. During this time, her visit to Kentucky make her witness slaves’ life, which provides the material for her novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The strong anti-slavery sentiment at her father’s school impacted her much. This sentiment becomes the mood of her novel. Harriet returned to New England in 1850 when her husband took a professorship at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. Partly inspired by the moral outrage she greeted the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, partly liberated by her return to her New England roots, she availed of the free time to conceive Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

The novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin depicted life of African-American under slavery; it reached millions as a novel and play, and became influential in the United States and United Kingdom. The novel’s great effects on the readers made her get a smashing success. Abraham Lincoln once praised her, “It is you the little woman started the Civil War.” It is really a very influential masterpiece for it energized anti-slavery forces in the North American, while provoking widespread anger in the south. Her writing may be sentimental and her understanding of the slaves may be limited, but she has used her sentimentality for serious purposes.

Stowe is also a religious abolitionist. She claimed that Uncle Tom’s Cabin is a Christian book, written by God Himself, with her pen as His medium. She preaches the virtue of submission to God will.

 

 

 

Plot:

The serious financial problems harass Arthur Shelby, a plantation owner in Kentucky .Though he treats their slaves kindly, he still decides to sell slaves to a slave trader, Harley, to raise much-needed money. The slaves to be sold to Haley are Uncle Tom and Harry Harris. His wife, Emily is very benevolent to their slaves so when she learns her husband’s decision, she feels appalled for she knows it will mean breaking up the family. Tom has to be separated from his wife, Aunt Chloe, the plantation’s cook, and from his children. Harry has to be separated from his parents. His mother, Eliza, a beautiful quadroon, is Mrs. Shelby’s maid. His father is George, a slave at a nearby farm.

Eliza decides to escape with her son but Tom decides to stay put out of concern for the Shelbys when they know the news. Meanwhile Eliza’s husband, who can’t bear his master’s cruelness has also decided to flee and is to meet up with Eliza in Canada. 

During their formidable flight, Eliza and Harry are tracked by Haley and his trackers. Because of Haley’s closing track and her fear of losing Harry, Eliza amazingly crosses the river by jumping from one ice flow to another. She meets a lot of hardships but luckily she gets many help from some kind people. Coincidentally, she also gets reunited with her husband George happily. With the company of the Quakers, they leave for Canada. But Loker and Marks still capture Eliza and her family. It obliges George to shoot at Loker. Eliza is afraid that Loker will die and persuades George to send him to make him better at the nearby Quakers settlement.

Meanwhile, on the way down the Mississippi, Tom saves a little white girl Eva after she falls overboard. Eva had once urged her father, Augustine St. Clare, to buy Tom. He fulfills her wish. Tom finds life on the St. Clare plantation agreeable, for although he is head coachman he spends most of his time with Little Eva.

St. Clare has brought his cousin, Miss Ophelia, to run the household. But St. Clare and his cousin Miss Ophelia bicker with each other over the different opinions on slavery. Miss Ophelia opposes slavery but dislikes blacks while St. Clare thinks he has no prejudice against the black even though he is a slaveholder. In order to convince her cousin to believe her prejudice against the black is wrong, he buys slave child named Topsy and asks her to train Topsy.

Over the next two years, life is generally happy at the mansion. Besides St. Clare comes to understand the evils of slavery and decides to make Tom a free man and Miss Ophelia starts to overcome her prejudice against blacks. The changes are due in no small part to the influence of little Eva and Tom, who see the goodness in everyone. Unfortunately, little Eva takes sick and dies. Later St. Clare is also killed in an incident. In the consequent, his promise to free Tom is never fulfilled.

     His wife sells Tom to an extremely cruel slave owner, Simon Legree, who beats his blacks mercilessly and uses slave women to satisfy his lust. 

Although Tom has had bad luck, Eliza and George have had good luck on the trip to freedom and at last they have reached Canada safely.

When Tom refuses to carry out his master’s order, as expected to whip others, Legree feels very angry, whips him seriously and decides to overwhelm Tom’s religious belief. But Tom still refuses to stop reading the Bible and also takes all his length to comfort other slaves there. In this plantation, Tom meets two slave women Cassy who is used as a mistress by Legree, and Emmeline whom he plans to rape.

Cassy tries to talk Tom into killing Legree one night, but Tom refuses. Tom then encourages Cassy to run with Emmeline but he will still stay there for he believes God will save him. Cassy and Emmeline conspire to play supernatural tricks on Legree to wear him down until it the right time for them to flee. Legree fails to find the escapees and he orders him to tell what he knows. When Tom is unresponsive, Legree whips him to death.

George Shelby who has been looking for Tom arrives there but he only finds Tom dies remarkably without any complain in his heart. Legree slips into a serious illness after Cassy and Emmeline haunt the house. They take advantage of it and escape finally. 

Happily, they come across George Shelby and Emily de Thoux, who turns out to be the sister of George Harris, Eliza’s husband on the way to their freedom. In the ensuing conversation between them, it reveals that Cassy is Eliza’s mother. The three women go to Canada, where they reunite with George and Eliza and later they leave Canada for Africa, where they establish a colony for former slaves. After George Shelby reaches Kentucky, he frees his slaves and tells them to remember Tom’s sacrifice and his pious religious belief.

 

Character analyses of main characters:

Uncle Tom: In the early time of the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Uncle Tom, the protagonist in the novel, is deemed as an honorable, steadfast and persevering Christian slave. However, in recent years, his name has become a nickname of those African Americans who are blamed to go and seek refugee with the white race. However, the real intention of Stowe is to mold him as a noble and admirable hero. In the work, Uncle Tom endures the affliction of being exploited but he still sticks to his belief even refusing to curse those who treat him cruelly. At last, his enemy also has to revere him.

Eliza Harris：She is a slave and maid of Emily Shelby. Realizing her five-year-old son, Harry, will be sold to the slave trader, Haley, she runs away with her son to the North. In Ohio, she meets her husband, George Harris again. Their family at last immigrates to Canada and then they go to France. Finally, they settle down in Lybia.

Eva: Her full name is Evangeline St. Clare. When Uncle Tom is on the way to New Orleans, Eva appears into the story. When the five-year-old little girl falls into the river, Uncle Tom saves her bravely. Eva entreats his father to but Tom and she likes Tom very much. Eva often talks about something about love and forgiveness. She even persuades the stubborn slave girl, Topsy, to believe she could get love. Part of people thinks she is the role prototype of Mary Sue.

Simon Legree: He born in the north of America is an extremely cruel slave overseer. He buys Uncle Tom after Augustine St. Clare dies. He has an intention to defeat uncle Tom’s faith.

Topsy: She is a ragged slave girl bought by Augustine St. Clare. When asked who created her, she thinks no one creates her and believes she is created by herself. In the late times, she is moved by Eva’s love and changes her mind.

Arthur Shelby: He is the slave owner of Uncle Tom in Kentucky. He is depicted as a kind slaveholder and traditional southern gentleman. Though he treats Tom and other slaves well, he refused to renounce the slavery. He sells Tom and a slave boy, Harry, in order to avoid his financial ruin.

Emily Shelby: She is Arthur’s wife. She believes in Christianity deeply and also tries to influence her slaves by her benevolence and morality. She is appalled by her husband’s decision to sell slaves. As a woman, she has no legal status to avert that because all the property belongs to her husband.

George Shelby: He is the son of Arthur Shelby and Emily Shelby. He treats Tom as his mentor and is also a very pious Christian. After he grows up, he finds Tom just before he dies and buries him. When returning to his home, he frees his slaves.

Augustine St. Clare: He is the second master of Uncle Tom and the father of little Eva. He is the most merciful slave owner in the novel. He has realized the evil of slavery. After his daughter’s death, he becomes more religious and also read the Bible to Tom and decides to make Tom a free man. But before carrying out his good will, he is killed in an incident.

George Harris: He is Eliza’s husband and lives on a neighboring plantation. He is also a brilliant man. His owner becomes jealous and demotes him from his factory job to doing hard labor on the plantation and at last he runs away.

Harry Harris: He is the Son of George and Eliza Harris.

Tom Loker: An impertinent slave hunter.

Marks: Slave hunter, friend of Tom Loker.

Marie St. Clare: She is the Augustine’s niggling wife. 

Miss Ophelia: She is the cousin of St. Clare. She runs households in St. Clare’s home.

Cassy, Emmeline: They are slaves in Legree’s house who conspire against him. Cassy is Eliza’s mother.

Emily de Thoux: She is the sister of George Harris.

 

Comment:

A famous saying goes, in one’s lifetime, one who can hold fast to his belief is undoubtedly a respectable man. After appreciating Uncle Tom’s Cabin, I contemplate this saying again and have a better understand of it for several characters in this novel leave me that impression as a sacred warrior who clings to and guards their belief. I am really startled by their firm belief since with their belief in heart whatever suffering they confront seems trifling and tractable.

Due to their firmly clinging to their belief, Eliza and her husband George made their great effort and finally realized their goals. Take Eliza for example. Her belief of pursing family reunion happiness helps her to pluck up courage to fight for their basic right and relieves her suffering from her obstacle. On hearing Mr. and Mrs. Shelby talking about selling her little Harry secretly, Eliza decided to take Harry away by herself. Though her hostess educated her and treated her very well, though she was soft and mild, in order not to break up with her only child, she ran away. Nobody will forget the scene of Eliza’s jumping onto the fragment of the ice on the river. When the slave traders were chasing after her, with wild and cries and desperate energy she leaped to another and still another ice; she stumbled, leaped, slipped and sprang upwards bravely! Her shoes were gone, her stockings cut from her feet and blood marked every step; but she never gave up and still struggled for son and their freedom. What a miracle! She crossed that river, which astonished everyone.

No one will deny Uncle Tom’s pious religious belief. His good quality is very salient to everyone. The more I become exposed to the character Uncle Tom, the more I respect him. He is really a faithful believer in Christianity and he did not fall short of his master’s expectation or do anything he thought to be ashamed.

At the very beginning of the story, Mr. Shelby, Tom’s first master, wanted to sell Tom. When people asked why he did not escape, his answer was that master trusted me, and I couldn’t leave him like that. Because Tom, a faithful Christian, believes god tells him that he should stay put out of concern for the Shelbys. When Cassy asked him to escape with her, he urged Cassy to escape with Emmeline but said he himself could not join them, for he believed God wanted him to stay and gave comfort to the other slaves. Such was Uncle Tom. I cannot get such an honest and upright image out of my mind. He held to his religious faith so firmly that even the most dreadful death can not break up. He is an audacious hero that makes people long to forget.

His firm belief makes us feel he is really sacred. Many people may feel confused at why Tom refused to escape for several times. Does it mean he doesn’t want to struggle for freedom? The answer is definite” No”. One illustration can tell us that he never gives up his freedom. We can see after St. Clare dies he asks Miss Ophelia to talk with Marie St. Clare to help him to become a free man. For several times, he chooses not to escape due to his firm religious faith. Though Tom is deprived of freedom and is a restricted man all his life, we can not deny he is actually always a free man in the analysis of Tom’s mentality. When he was tortured by the cruel slaveholder Legree, he never surrendered. He told Legree that he could take his body but he could never take his soul for it belonged to God. When he was at the last gasp, he still tried to exhort Legree to be kind so god would forgive him and even died without spite. Because of his firm belief he could be so peaceful no matter what evils he confronts.

We feel pitiful for Uncle Tom’s death, but he was remembered by all the slaves and his sprit is highly priced. When Tom’s young master, George, came back to his home after Tom’s death, he gathered all the slaves and handed each of them a bundle of papers containing a certificate of freedom on the place. He freed all the slaves and claimed that he would never have any slaves. He reminded us that every time we rejoice in our freedom, think that we owe it to that good old Uncle Tom. Think of our freedom, every time we see Uncle Tom’s Cabin, that warm and loving place. It is his great belief that impinges over people’s free will and kindness.

The belief we have is of great significance to our life. It will support us whenever we are caught up in rough conditions; it will help us get out of the dark to see the sunrise and it will teach us how to adapt ourselves to different circumstances. Life is full of ups and downs. We should hold fast to our belief to fight against the setback which seems invincible sometimes to realize our goals! With strong belief, we will found that hardship is just a paper tiger.

Conclusion:

   The novel is initially written in English. Those words seem to be “tailor-made”, each irreplaceable by any others. Every word finds its place in the sentence. Not only its words, but also the philosophical ideas and historical meaningfulness it embodies deserve our contemplating and pondering. If we could hold fast to our belief as firmly as Uncle Tom, Eliza and so on, we can conquer a lot of difficulties in our life and approach nearer to our goals.