Publisher's Synopsis
The Cabin of Uncle Tom; Or perhaps, Life Among the Lowly, is an anti-slavery novel by American writer Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in 1852, the novel had a huge impact on attitudes toward African Americans and slavery in the U.S. and is believed to have "helped lay the foundation for the Civil War".
Stowe, a Connecticut-born teacher at the Hartford Woman Seminary and an active abolitionist, showcased the character of Uncle Tom, a long suffering black male, around whom the stories of various other characters revolve. The sentimental novel looks at the cruel realities of slavery whilst proving that Christian love is able to conquer something so damaging as the slavery of human beings.
Here is the complete text of the novel with the followings annotations:
*Literary analysis
Just one theme dominates Uncle Tom's Cabin: Stowe also talks about the evil and immorality of slavery in her book, though she also discusses the moral authority of motherhood and also the power of Christian love in her book, highlighting the relationship between these and the horrors of slavery. Stowe at times changed the story's voice to give a "homily" on the damaging nature of slavery (for instance, a white female on the steamboat carrying Tom further south says, "The most terrible part of slavery is its outrages of affections and feelings - the separation of families, for example"). Stowe also showed the evil of slavery by demonstrating just how this "peculiar institution" separated families from One another.
