Summary Of Uncle Tom's Cabin By Harriet Beecher Stowe

In Harriet Beacher Stowes’ Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a historical fiction novel, the text

not only shows women more courageous than seen before at the time in which the book

was written, but it also helps create a path to equality of women in the future. Arthur

Shelby, a slave owner who is relatively nice, has financial problems and cannot afford to

continue to own all of his slaves. Instead of being sold off to yet another slave owner,

Eliza runs away with her son Harry, and they attempt to get to freedom in Canada. While

Eliza and Harry are challenged on their journey North, Tom is sold to a loathsome slave

owner named Simon Legree, who eventually ends up ordering his men to kill him. It is

explained in the text that all genders and races
It is expressed that this world is

meant for every one to live equal and free and that the fight for equality will be never

stop until it solved. Rather than the more obvious social issue of slavery, which is seen in

Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Stowe shows women's issues through the text and expresses the

importance of women’s rights and the views of woman in society whether she meant to

or not.

Harriet Beecher Stowe uses geography to show how Eliza is courageous when

crossing the Ohio River by leaping over flowing water from one patch of ice to the next,

until she reaches the other side representing the passage in to freedom from slavery.

Crossing the Ohio River allowed for Eliza and Harry to get away from Haley who later

pays three men to go after them. “The gray mist of evening, rising slowly from the river,

enveloped her as she disappeared up the bank, and the swollen current and floundering

masses of ice presented a hopeless barrier between her and her pursuer. (Stowe 62)”

There is not a better way than getting across the river to show the strength and courage

Eliza had to overcome that major obstacle, which that amount of courage was
Stowe shows women’s roles and their influence through out the novel, and it

might have had a greater impact in the women’s rights movement had the novel not been

rewritten for theatrical use. “In short, while Stowe’s novel can be read as an indictment of

patriarchy, was the novel entered the popular culture market place it was rewritten to

condemn precisely which had sought to condemn. (Bowman)” Ruth Bowman explains

how Uncle Tom’s Cabin was rewritten for theatrical performances and in doing so it was

altered to support the very thing it was against. This might have altered the views the

public had about women’s roles in society and to not recognize the influences women had

on men. If the novel was not rewritten for theatrical performances the public might

recognize the important influences women have on men. Mrs. Shelby, a Christian

woman, can be seen influencing the ideas of her husband in the beginning of the book.

She expresses how slavery is wrong and against Christian morals, “ Why not make a

pecuniary sacrifice? I’m willing to bear my part of the inconvenience. O, Mr. Shelby, I

have tried –tried most faithfully, as a Christian woman should –to do my duty to