Harriet Beecher Stowe Flashcards
Harriet Beecher Stowe
June 14th 1811
Litchfield, Connecticut, USA
first of July 1896 in Hartford, Connecticut, USA
came, religious, abolitionist
d grew, ingrained, slavery sinful, direct link, religious beliefs, political views
book, Tom and Eva =s, christian faith
If black man, good, white girl, = human dignity, scen, keep bondage.
Harriet Beecher Stowe was born June 14th 1811 in Litchfield, Connecticut, USA and died the first of July 1896 in Hartford, Connecticut, USA. She came from a very religious family who also were abolitionist. Due to this she grew up with the ingrained sentiment that slavery was sinful, creating a direct link between her religious beliefs and political views. In her book, Tom and Eva became equals through their equally strong christian faith. If a black man can be as good a christian as a white girl, it follows that he has equal human dignity and that it therefore would be a scene to keep him in bondage.
Lost son, feel strongly, families.
wrote, emotions, humanising them.
Elisa run away, mistreated, save child.
Fierce protectiveness, willingness risk, morality, defender, diminish
She also lost her one-year-old son which allowed her to feel strongly for the slaves forced to be separated from their families. In her work she wrote about the slaves emotions as being the same as white peoples and thereby humanising them. One example is Elisa’s decision to run away, not because she had been mistreated, but to save her child. This fierce protectiveness and willingness to risk everything for her child gives Elisa a sense of morality that not even the strongest defender of slavery could diminish.
1850 Fugitive Slave Law, past forbade, assistance, northern free states, forced slavery.
Main, opposed.
Gamaliel Bailey, National Era “I feel now that the time is come when even a woman or a child who can speak a word for freedom and humanity is bound to speak… I hope every woman who can write will not be silent”.
In 1850 The Fugitive Slave Law was past forbade any assistance to runaway slaves and increased the risk for black people living in the northern free states to be forced into slavery. She was living in Main at the time and was strongly opposed to this law. This drove her to contact Gamaliel Bailey, an editor of the National Era and she wrote “I feel now that the time is come when even a woman or a child who can speak a word for freedom and humanity is bound to speak… I hope every woman who can write will not be silent”.
Sentimental novel.
Spread opinions, easily read, engaging.
read, evoking, sympathy, character.
Romanticism nature, imagination, symbolism.
Questioned, institution, 150 years.
Blacks, humans, immoral, animal.
Ideas, pain, threatened, son, Legree’s plantation.
The book is a sentimental novel. At the time novels were an efficient way spread opinions since they were easily read and were engaging. Beecher-Stowe was affected by the current genre that most women during that time were encouraged to read, with the purpose of evoking the reader’s sympathy for the main characters. Novels from the Romanticism were also about nature, imagination and symbolism. They questioned what was morally right or wrong in society, which is what Beecher Stowe did when challenging an institution which had been in practice for almost a 150 years. Blacks were not properly considered humans and keeping them as slaves wasn’t more immoral than owning horses or hens. Beecher Stowe questioned these ideas by writing about the pain that slavery caused, for example Elisa being threatened with being separated from her son forever and the brutal treatment of Tom at the Legree’s plantation.
bestseller, furious debate, civil war.
Abolition, equal rights.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin quickly became a bestseller and sparked the furious debate about slavery between the north and the south which eventually led to the outbreak of the civil war. To this day the novel is credited as a major cause for the abolition and the beginning of the development towards giving blacks equal rights to whites.
