Harriet Beecher Stowe Essay

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-96) was an the Statesn writer born in Litchfield, Connecticut, the daughter of a preacher, Lyman Beecher. Young Harriet grew up in a deeply religious atmosphere. In 1832, she hold outd with her father to Cincinnati, Ohio where he had charge of a seminary. at that place she met and marry Calvin E. Stowe, a widower and a professor in the school. They had seven children. Cincinnati, plainly when across the Ohio River from Kentucky, was in the very midst of the contr either oversy over slavery. She some sequences talked to fleeing slaves, and once she even visited a Kentucky plantation whose slaves were used as models for her fiction.In 1850, her husband was called to Bowdoin College and she was happy to be back in the more delicious air of New England. That same year the Fugitive striver fair assemble was passed. It infuriated the abolitionists, including the Beecher family. This led her to write Uncle Toms Cabin, the impudent that was verbalize t o turn in started the Civil state of war in the United States. This writer was selected over the other writers because of the great impact her novel do on Americas perception over slavery and the events that followed after its publication. Without doubt, the Civil War would accommodate come in any case.Just the same, the tre manpowerdous deterrent example force of the book made many people, who might otherwise have been lukewarm, take a firm stand against slavery. At current time, Harriet Beecher Stowes Uncle Toms Cabin has been relegated to the list of required reading which made it lose some of its appeal. I thought it would be best to tactile property at the context of its creation and what better way but to come along closely at its creator, her background and her influences. thither are numerous books and articles that tail be found near the heart and works of Mrs.Stowe. I have chosen two to be used as the major references. The low gear is from Twaynes United States Authors on Harriet Beecher Stowe, Chapter 1 The Early Years. This chapter detailed the childishness of Harriet and how it was like growing up in the Beecher kinsfolk ruled by the Calvinist preacher, despot and father, the Reverend Lyman Beecher. Orphaned from their mother at an earlyish age, the Beecher siblings were brought up by their father low a strict Calvinist upbringing. Every day was a religious experience.He dominated the household with his sternness and terrorized his children with his preaching of damnation and underworldfire. He believed in mans fallibility and sought to remind and humble his children of this fact every chance he got. It was said that within his home Lyman was a bully of the worst stripe, a benevolently intentioned and systematically complete bully (The Early Years, 1). However, Harriet also suffered from dominate simply because she was female. The patriarch heaped his attention on his sons whom he successfully train to become preachers like him.S he, on the other hand, was sent off to capital of Connecticut to her sister Catherine who was twelve year her senor, to get an education. Her sister was an impressive intellectual, establishing the capital of Connecticut Female Seminary. She was deeply religious and once suffered from near mental get out because of her fear that her dead fiance will go straight to hell since he was not fitting to convert before he died. quite a domineering, she badgered Harriet into assisting her which the young girl found unbearable. She stayed with her sister for eight grueling years. Regardless, she was able to travel and mingle with people her own age.This proved to be her salvation as she was able to form her own beliefs regarding religion that was centered on the mercy of Jesus rather than the certainty of hell. Then the Beecher clan all moved from Boston to Cincinnati as her father have goted the post of death chair of the Lane Theological Seminary. Now, Harriet had to contend with both her sister with whom she still served as assistant and her father to whom she had to go home. To escape, she turned to writing. She also met the widower Calvin Stowe whose scheme of marriage she accepted.The only thing they had in common at that time was their shared affection for Eliza, his dead wife. Between 1836 and 1850, she gave birth to eight children. With such(prenominal) a king-size family, she was bound to the home more than ever. In piece to augment the household income, she used her writing skills into a money reservation venture by submitting magazine sketches. Calvin Stowes appointment to the faculty of Bowdoin College which allowed them to move to Brunswick, Maine was a turning point for Harriet. Among others, she was going back to New England and would be free from the grasp of her father and sister.Her life until then was unremarkable. She was a lady of the house who was concerned nearlyly with chores, frustrations and debts. Though she lived in tumultuous t imes she did not put down in it. This was due to reasons as follows Her private duties as yielding daughter and wife had demanded almost more energy than she had to give, and she had taken base hit from overwork in the consolation of heavenly love to mistrust the world, to accept it as the abode of cruelty and injustice, was the philosophy by which she lived (The Early Years, 7).This was roughly to change with the publication of Uncle Toms Cabin, the novel which led professorship Abraham Lincoln to greet her as the little lady who made this big war. This remark was cited from the molybdenum reference used for this paper, the article on Harriet Beecher Stowe by Ken Wolf from the Dictionary of World Biography The 19th Century. For the low part, he gave a brief account of her early life and for the second part, he concentrated on her lifes work. Uncle Toms Cabin first appeared in 1851-52 as a serial in an abolitionist paper.The anti-slavery sentiments were already at its peak a t that time. The Fugitive Slave Law was just passed where all citizens whether they are from the north or to the south are obliged to return fleeing slaves to their owners or face criminal charges. The disagreements surrounded by the abolitionists and moderates were turning physically violent such as pro-slavery mobs attacking abolitionists write shops such as the one in Connecticut near the hall of the Beechers. The publication of Uncle Toms Cabin in 1852 was indeed timely.On that year alone, it already exchange 300,000 copies. Harriets message was clear. Slavery was wrong, the novel argued, because it was un-Christian. More specifically, slavery tore children from their mothers and thus threatened the existence of the Christian family (Wolf, 2). This book was a personal one for the author. All that she believed in were embody in the novel. She even used the name of Calvin Stowes deceased wife and her good friend, Eliza, as the main female character.While the main shoplifter was male, that being Tom who had kindly masters but still got sold off twice and eventually ended up being beat to death, the novel was filled with strong female characters. A main reputation was the recurring circumstance of slavery separating families and the attempts of the slave mothers to prevent it. We see Eliza leap on ice floes to effect her and her sons escape. We see Cassy who favorite(a) to kill her newborn herself than allow it to be sold off later. There was Eva who persuaded her father to free Tom, but both unfortunately died before they did.There was also Mary Bird who shamed her husband, Senator Bird of Ohio into part Eliza even if he was violating the Fugitive Slave Law which he helped pass. Her novel was most effective in arousing sentiments of anti-slavery because the author approached her arguments using the religious fanaticism that her father bestowed upon them stressing that Christianity began at home with a strong family. Any knowledgeableness that un dermined the family was necessarily unchristian (Wolf, 2). This struck deep at the conscience of the American people.Her succeeding novels likewise had female characters playing prominent roles. She believed that women are the purveyors or morality. She was not an advocate of female equality and continued not to participate in the suffragists movement or the equal rights for women. She believed in the family and the role women play within it. She also continued to write her novels based on characters she is most familiar with such as Dred A Tale of the Great dirty Swamp (1856) regarding a slave rebellion attempt, The Ministers courting (1859) which was a jab on the inflexible dogma of her fathers Calvinism.This novel was also partly historical. Her next novel is likewise historical, Agnes of Sorrento (1862) about the Florentian social and religious reformist monk, Gironalo Savonarola. The Pearl of Orrs Island (1862), Oldtown Folks (1869) and Poganuc mass (1878) are childhood remin iscences of New England. Uncle Toms Cabin is the only one of Harriet Beecher Stowes that aimed at direct reform. Though it sparked a war, as literature, it is not great. It is overly sentimental and the picture it draws is exaggerated.In spite of these flaws, it ashes one of the most powerful novels ever written to right a wrong. Her other novels published after it had none of the appeal of Uncle Toms Cabin, but she continued to be one of Americas normal writers at that time. Her other greatest contribution to history was her depiction of women as being in the same level as men in terms of intellect, bravery and morality. She was able to put across her message of authority across in a society dominated by men of the importance of womens and mothers role in the family and in society as regards moral regeneration.Before I conducted this research, I was under the impression that Uncle Toms Cabin was written more as a reaction against the peculiar institution of slavery. Reading abou t the life of Harriet Beecher Stowe, it became evident that though her book came out of indignation against slavery, it also owed something to her prude conscience. Her beliefs and childhood experiences come across into her books such as her belief on womens equality which she never did experience having been subjected to brush aside because of her gender.While she persistently believed that the role of women is confined within the walls of the home, she was successful in opening a new perspective of women. Admittedly, I have not read any of her other works however, given her background that I know now, it would be interesting to read The Ministers wooing to gain a better idea on how it was to live with a severe Calvinist minister and how and if she was able to relate it to her own experiences in growing up with one and make it comical.