摘要：本文作者采用加拿大文學(xué)批評家諾思洛普 弗萊的原型批評理論，從圣經(jīng)原型的角度出發(fā), 試圖分析《湯姆叔叔的小屋》中的各類人物形象，比如湯姆叔叔、小伊娃、薩姆波和昆波以及幾位虔誠的理想基督教徒母親，以揭示這部小說中的宗教理念，并探討斯托夫人解決奴隸制的辦法。本文作者希望這篇論文對中國讀者能從新的角度來欣賞這本經(jīng)典著作有所幫助。
關(guān)鍵詞：圣經(jīng)原型 人物形象 基督教理念
Abstract: With the application of the renowned Canadian literary critic Northrop Frye's theory of archetype, the author in this thesis attempts to analyze various characters, such as Uncle Tom, little Eva, Sambo and Qimbo and some pious, ideal Christian mothers in Uncle Tom's Cabin in terms of Biblical archetype, to reveal the Christianity in this novel, and to probe into Mrs. Stowe's solution to the institution of slavery. She hopes this thesis will be of any help to Chinese readers to appreciate this classic novel in a new way.
Key Words: Biblical archetype character Christianity
Introduction
It is well known that western literature is based on two pillars——the Greek culture and the Hebrew culture. In the Hebrew culture, there is a book, namely, the Bible that accumulates its rich cultural heritage. Most western authors are influenced by those two literary origins consciously or unconsciously.
They, without doubt, also influenced Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896), a nineteenth century American female writer. Yet, with her strong religious background, she tended to be influenced deeper by the latter than by the former. Born into a family of religion, Harriet's father, Lyman Beecher was one of America's most celebrated clergymen and the principal spokesman for Calvinism in the nineteenth century; her mother, was a woman of prayer who died when Harriet was four years old; her brother, Henry Ward Beecher, was the best known pulpit orator of his times. In 1836, she was married to Calvin Stowe, a Biblical scholar. In a word, Harriet Beecher Stowe was bred, and lived all her life at the atmosphere of Christianity that inevitably influenced her masterpiece Uncle Tom's Cabin.
It's commonly agreed that Uncle Tom's Cabin is an anti-slavery novel. In fact, it is for the cause of abolitionism that Mrs. Stowe took up her pen. Yet, anti-slavery spirit is not contradictory or incompatible with spirit of Christianity. In fact, they co-exist quite harmoniously in Uncle Tom's Cabin. Feminism is also quite evident in this book. Many articles have been written to discuss the anti-slavery spirit or feminism in it. However, this thesis will mainly focus on Christianity in Uncle Tom's Cabin.
I. Northrop Frye's Theory of Archetype
In Greek, "arch" means "first", "typos" means "form" or "type". So, "archetype" means first type/form or original type/form. In the theories of Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961), archetypes are primordial mythic forms that embody psychological drives and forces that originate in the collective unconscious. For the Canadian literary critic Northrop Frye (1912-1991), archetypes are the socially-concerned organizing forms and patterns of literature that originate in myth and which unify and reveal literature as an imaginatively-inhabitable world. His great work, such as The Secular Scripture (1976), The Great Code (1982) and Words with Power (1990) all center on the study of the Bible. In Frye's system, the organizing principles that give literature coherence and structure are derived from the archetypal imagery found in the Bible and the myths of ancient Greece. He suggests that all literature is based on displacements of these myths. Archetypal criticism focused on characters, images, symbols, metaphors, plots, events and themes1. The thesis attempts to use this theory to analyze the characters in Uncle Tom's Cabin in terms of Biblical archetype to reveal Christianity in it and to probe into Mrs. Stowe' solution to the institution of slavery.
II. Character Analysis
i. Tom
Tom, the protagonist of this novel, is obviously the Christ figure with black skin. Tom's experience is quite similar to that of Jesus Christ. When Tom's first master, Mr. Shelby sells Tom to the coarse slave-dealer in financial straits, he betrays the loyalty of his most loyal slave since boyhood. Jesus is sold by his apostle Judas who is prompted by his avarice for money. So they are all betrayed and sold by the ones who are close to them. While he struggles with his faith, as Jesus does in the last hours of his life when he says, "my God, why have you forsaken me?" 2. He never loses his simple faith. Tom's death scene also has striking likeness with that of Jesus Christ. Tom is flogged near to death, so is Jesus before his crucifixion. When Jesus dies, there are two criminals crucified together with him, one of who believes Jesus is Messiah and is saved at the very moment and spot. Sambo and Qimbo, Degree's two cruel overseers who in every sense are equal to criminals, are moved by Tom's Christian fortitude and patience and are converted at the very moment and spot. Jesus is crucified to redeem sinners while Tom dies for the two runaway slaves, Cassy and Emmeline. They are all innocent, but all die for others. In essence, they all die for their faith and religious devotion. In fact, Tom dies as a "martyr" which is revealed by the title of chapter forty.
Tom is not only similar in his experience to Jesus Christ. More important, his temperament is like that of Jesus Christ. He is loving, faithful, forgiving and obedient.
Tom is full of love for his neighbors, blacks and whites. While he is at St.Clare's home, he meets that pitiful, wretched old slave Prue whose only left child is starved to death because she devotes all her time to tend her mistress and loses her milk, yet her mistress refuses to buy milk for her baby. Tom offers to carry her basket for her and sends the Gospel to her. Just as when Jesus sees sinners, he pities them, helps them, cures them and tells them "the good news'. Tom not only loves his fellow slaves, but white people. When he sees his second young handsome flighty master St Clare go to those wining parties, Tom goes down on his knees and pleads with him not to attend those revelries again by quoting from the Bible, "it biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder"3. His love comes to full display when he says on his deathbed to his first young master George Shelby: "…Give my love to mas"r, and dear good missis-and everybody in the place! Ye don't know. "Pears like I loves'em all! I loves every creatur", every what! -It's nothing but love…"4. Here, Tom is the incarnation of love, just like Jesus is identified with love.
Tom is faithful to God and man. Facing his third cruel master Simon Degree's threatening and flogging, he doesn't give up his faith in God and insists that his soul belongs to Him, not to him, though he bought him with twelve hundred dollars. Tom is also very faithful to man, such as his first and third masters who give him all their property to manage. Once, Mr. Shelby let him to go to Cincinnati alone to do business for him, Tom doesn't run away, instead, he comes back because he thinks, "Ah, master trusted me, and I couldn't!" (P.4). Just as he himself asks Mr. Shelby, "… have I ever broke word to you, or go contrary to you, "specially since I was a Christian?" (P.53). St. Clare, a careless master, who gives Tom a bill without looking at it, trusts Tom so much that "Tom had every facility and temptation to dishonesty", yet "nothing but an impregnable simplicity of nature, strengthened by Christian faith, could have kept him from it" (P.189).
Tom's another distinctive characteristic is forgiveness, which is so extraordinary that it's almost divine, and which we can see in Jesus Christ. Jesus forgives those who persecute him for he prays, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do"5. Tom also forgives his third cruel master Legree and Legree's two overseers who harshly flogged him by saying, "I forgive ye, with all my soul!" (P.384)
Tom is submissive and obedient but only to God and according to his conscience. When Jesus is facing his immediate bitter death, he prays in the Mount of Olives, "…yet, not my will but yours be done"6. Tom says similar words, "The Lord's will be done!" (P.299) when he learns he will be sold to the south after the unexpected death of St. Clare. Yet his obedience is not to everyone. For example, once Legree requires Tom to flog a weak slave woman, Tom refuses, saying, "…but this yer thing I can't feel it right to do; and mas'r, I never shall do it-never!" (P.336) So his obedience is no blind. He only obeys what he believes right.
Why Mrs. Stowe depicted Tom as a Christ-like figure? Perhaps she wanted to elicit sympathy from her readers most of who were whites. She wanted to inform her readers that such pious good man died under the slavery, thus hoped them to realize it was wrong to keep such an evil system in a Christian country. In a word, she intended to win the support of her readers by striking their strings of emotions.
Most of us who have read this book will agree that Tom, an almost perfect, immaculate character without any human weakness is too good to exist in real life. So the portrait of Uncle Tom tends to be rather pale. Besides, the image of Tom is a stereotype with typical African features, typical African American accent and supposed typical good disposition of that race. Thus, Tom is more a representative of a kind of person rather than an individual.
ii. Little Eva
Another image, radiating with spiritual luster, is Evangeline St. Clare, namely, the "little Eva". The name "Evangeline" definitely promotes the idea and image of angel. In appearance, she resembles an earthly angel-beautiful, always dressed in white. In spirit, she is full of love, like a good guardian angel. Once her father asks her which way she likes best-to live as they do at her uncle's up in Vermont, or to have a house full of servants, as they do. Eva answers that their way is the pleasantest because "it makes so many more people round you to love" (P.172). The reason she asks her Papa to buy Tom is "to make him happy" (P.140). When she hears the story of Prue, she doesn't want to go out in her new carriage again for the terrible story "sink(s) into her heart" (P.203). In her eyes, there are many puzzling things, such as why Prue is so unhappy, why Tom should be separated from his wife and children, why no one loves that black little girl, Topsy. What she only knows and does is to love all the people around her. Just as her name "Evangeline" suggests, she is an evangelist to everyone. She shares the Gospel with all her father's plantation slaves as well as questioning her own father's faith. This action by Eva saves many lost souls and gives them hope. It also prompts the soul-searching and self-reevaluation in her father. When dying, she gives every slave servant in her house a lock of fair golden hair, asking him or her to be Christians, so that they could see each other in heaven. Eva is delicate and dies early, which "dramatize the fact that she does not belong to the world. This is especially evident when the angel is a child, like Stowe's Eva."7
Through the eyes of the angelic child Mrs. Stowe exposed the evils of the institution of slavery. Eva asks her father to free the slaves after her death. Mrs. Stowe called on people to do as or more than the child does.
iii. Sambo&Qimbo
Sambo and Qimbo, Simon Legree's two cruel henchmen, are obviously the images of the two criminals taken from the Bible who are crucified at the same time beside Jesus Christ when we see their roles in the process of Tom's death. With the command of Legree, these two flog Tom near to the point of death. Yet, Tom's forgiveness, patience and fortitude even moves these two villainous men, and they ask him who Jesus is that's been a standin" by him so, all this night (P.384). Then, Tom introduces Jesus Christ to them, and they are converted immediately. In the Bible, one criminal is also moved by Jesus and believes him, and his soul is saved at that moment. In fact, these two overseers take two different archetypes from the Bible, the one who flog Jesus Christ and the other who is saved through Jesus. So, Sambo and Qimbo possess two different roles at the same time.
iv. Eliza
The above four images-Tom, Eva, Sambo and Qimbo–are easy to find their respective archetypes in the Bible. Another more indirect one is Eliza who is like Israelites running away from Egypt where they are slaves to Canaan where they will have a new free happy life. Eliza's running is guided by God all the way, as Israelites are guided by God who appears "in the pillars of cloud and fire"8. Israelites' passing through the Red Sea which "was turned into dry land by strong east wind"9 is a miracle. So is Eliza's escape through jumping from one ice flow to another, which can't be done without the "strength such as God gives only to the desperate" (P.57). If we say the Ohio River is like the Red Sea, then the lake between America and Canada is like the river Jordan that lies between terrible wilderness and wonderful Canaan. I call the Ohio River the Red Sea, not the the river Jordan, because Eliza still has to endure many pains after her crossing of the Ohio River, just like Israelites still have to suffer much in the wilderness. While after crossing the lake, the land of freedom——Canada waits for her and her families. Eliza is an intriguing character. She is submissive to her master and mistress, yet her child's imminent danger and her desire for her child's freedom and well-being overrides her loyalty to them. Israelites betray Pharaoh for they also long for freedom and well-being.
v. Pious, Ideal Christian Mothers
A mother of seven children, Mrs. Stowe herself was a loving Christian mother. In Uncle Tom's Cabin, she depicted many pious, ideal Christian mothers, such as St.Clare's mother, Legree's mother, Mary Bird, Mrs. Shelby and Eliza etc. In essence, these respectable mothers are the ones that "by the 1850s in the America, middle-class ideology had elevated one image of woman—the home–loving woman, pleasing, conservative, and virtuous, a comfort and delight to her husband, an ideal to her children—into a national model"10. It is interesting to notice that these national models are quite the same with the "angels in the house" in England at the Victorian Age.
St. Clare's mother, in his words, "…was divine…there was no trace of any human weakness or error about her…"(P.208). Though gentle and submissive to her husband, she opposed the institution of slavery covertly by helping redress the wrongs done to the blacks and caring them. She also instills into St. Clare that every man, including niggers has spirit, thus greatly influences Clare's attitude towards slavery. Though St. Clare doesn't dare to break it, he loathes it and shows his sympathy for black people by indulging the slaves in his house.
Legree's mother is another virtuous, pious and forgiving mother. The only difference between she and St. Clare's mother is that she is heart-broken because her exhortations fall onto deaf ears and cold heart. Her hard-working nurture can't eradicate her son's vicious and tough nature. He not only disregards her admonitions, but also treats her cruelly. When she "in the last agony of her despair, knelt at his feet', he "spurned her from him, throw her senseless on the floor, and, with brutal curses, fled to his ship" (P.345).
Mary Bird, the Senator's wife, is "a timid, blushing, little woman of about four feet in height…she ruled more by entreating and persuasion than by command or argument…"(P.74). Such a gentle woman would be aroused to great indignity when talking about the slavery system. She even says courageously to her husband, "…and I'll break it, for one, the first time I get a chance; and I hope I shall have a chance, I do…"(P.75) when she hears her husband has just vote for the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. When Eliza and her son Harry appears on their doorsteps, she does get the chance and she does break it.
Mrs. Shelby, a kind-hearted woman who thought by kindness, and care, and instruction, she could make the condition of hers better than freedom (P.33), at last believes the system "-a bitter, bitter, most accursed thing! -A curse to the master and a curse to the slave…"(P.33) when she found she couldn't protect her beloved slaves, Tom and Harry.
Eliza, an amiable, pious mother who doesn't want to disobey her master and mistress until her own son faces the danger of being sold. She opposes the system by action——running away from her once beloved "home".
A common trait among those loving, pious mothers is that they are all Christians and are all against the institution of slavery except it is not so obvious in the case of Legree's mother. To their soft hearts, slavery is too cruel a thing to be allowed to exist. It's against the Christian principle of loving one's neighbors. Besides opposing slavery, those mothers are often spiritual guiders for their sons and husbands. To St. Clare, his mother "was a direct embodiment and personification of the New Testament "(P.208). To Harris, when he turns away from God, his wife is always the one whose "gentle sprit ever restores him" (P.402).
In fact, all the characters in Uncle Tom's Cabin can be put into four categories: perfect Christians, imperfect Christians, half-Christians and non-Christians. Tom and Eva are those rare real Christians or perfect Christians who really live up to the principles of the Bible. Imperfect Christians include those like Mrs. Shelby and Miss Ophelia etc. They believe God, but their selfishness or hypocrisy prevents them from being good Christians. For example, Mrs. Shelby rationalizes her actions by "gild(ing) it over" with "kindness and care" (P.33). She is angry about her husband's sale of Tom and Harris because she doesn't know how she can ever hold up her head again among them (P.32). Miss Ophelia, though has missionary zeal, dares not to tough Topsy, the slave girl she is reforming for she still has the sense of white superiority at the bottom of her heart. There are also some half-Christians or going-to-be Christians, such as St. Clare and Gorge Harris. St. Clare is always skeptical towards religion and doesn't believe God until his daughters and his own deaths. Harris is another example. He is rebellious at first, but when his family reunion comes to a reality, he becomes more content and comes nearer to God. While Simon Legree is a typical example of non-Christian whose tough nature refuse to be touched by any good word. He doesn't repent even at his last minute. This kind of categorizing might be oversimplifying. Yet, this is a pattern that I found in Uncle Tom's Cabin. So in this sense, Uncle Tom's Cabin is a book soaked with spirit of Christianity.
III. Mrs. Stowe's Solution to Slavery Now, let's come to the question of Mrs. Stowe's way of solving slavery. "So you are the little woman who started this Great War!" Abraham Lincoln is said to have remarked when meeting Harriet Beecher Stowe for the first time in the White House. When in a small hotel George Harris says to Mr. Wilson, "I'll fight for my liberty to the last breath I breath. You say your fathers did it; if it was right for them, it is right for me" (P.106), it seems that the author Mrs. Stowe herself agreed with George. Then does this mean Mrs. Stowe advocated slaves to fight for their freedom through violence? Or the aim of her writing the book was to spark the Civil War? We are almost temped to say "yes" to both questions with the two "evidences" cited above if we do not exam the whole book thoroughly. First, let's not forget that Mrs. Stowe herself was a devout Christian who wouldn't advocate any form of violence. Second, we should notice that Mr. Wilson advised Harris he'd better not shoot (P.106). Third, we should also notice that Mr. Simeon, the fervent Quaker, regards fighting with flesh as a temptation though he believes Harris has the right to do it. In fact, Harris himself would rather "…be let alone-to go peacefully out of it [America]"(P.106). So, in the case of George Harris, Mrs. Stowe only advocated limited passive resistance when the law of sacred family bond was violated by the system of slavery. But on the whole, she held with the view of nonviolent resistance. To be specific, she praised slaves' spiritual and moral victory over slavery which can be seen from her most carefully portrayed protagonist Tom, a pious, submissive Christian, who was her ideal black. Moreover, for Mrs. Stowe, the solution to slavery lied mainly in the white, not in the black, which, of course, is rather absurd. By informing her white fellowmen of the evils of slavery, she wanted the Southern slave owners to free slaves voluntarily through Christian love, just as George Shelby does. Of course, this childish, utopian idea can't come to true for the economy of South is based on the slavery system. Those plantation owners couldn't give up their property voluntarily, could they? She also wanted Northerners, especially the Church of the North to shoulder the responsibility of educating those future freed men. It is clearly shown in the Concluding Remarks, which goes like this, "…receive them to the educating advantages of Christian republican society and schools…"(P.412). So she didn't praise violent way of liberating slaves and didn't intend to spark the war between the South and the North, rather, she gave her readers her own solution to this problem. But her way of liberating slaves and saving the Union failed when the Civil War broke out.
Conclusion
To sum up, Christianity played a very important role in Harriet Beecher Stowe's wring which inevitably influenced greatly the portraiture of characters in Uncle Tom's Cabin and also Mrs. Stowe's own solution to slavery. The author of this thesis intends to interpret Uncle Tom's Cabin in the light of Christianity rather than anti-slavery and feminism to show a new outlook of it. Christianity is an indispensable part of western cultures and an important element in Uncle Tom's Cabin, yet most Chinese readers are not familiar with it. So the author in this thesis hopes to help Chinese readers appreciate it better by informing them more about Christianity in it.
關(guān)鍵詞：圣經(jīng)原型 人物形象 基督教理念
Abstract: With the application of the renowned Canadian literary critic Northrop Frye's theory of archetype, the author in this thesis attempts to analyze various characters, such as Uncle Tom, little Eva, Sambo and Qimbo and some pious, ideal Christian mothers in Uncle Tom's Cabin in terms of Biblical archetype, to reveal the Christianity in this novel, and to probe into Mrs. Stowe's solution to the institution of slavery. She hopes this thesis will be of any help to Chinese readers to appreciate this classic novel in a new way.
Key Words: Biblical archetype character Christianity
Introduction
It is well known that western literature is based on two pillars——the Greek culture and the Hebrew culture. In the Hebrew culture, there is a book, namely, the Bible that accumulates its rich cultural heritage. Most western authors are influenced by those two literary origins consciously or unconsciously.
They, without doubt, also influenced Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896), a nineteenth century American female writer. Yet, with her strong religious background, she tended to be influenced deeper by the latter than by the former. Born into a family of religion, Harriet's father, Lyman Beecher was one of America's most celebrated clergymen and the principal spokesman for Calvinism in the nineteenth century; her mother, was a woman of prayer who died when Harriet was four years old; her brother, Henry Ward Beecher, was the best known pulpit orator of his times. In 1836, she was married to Calvin Stowe, a Biblical scholar. In a word, Harriet Beecher Stowe was bred, and lived all her life at the atmosphere of Christianity that inevitably influenced her masterpiece Uncle Tom's Cabin.
It's commonly agreed that Uncle Tom's Cabin is an anti-slavery novel. In fact, it is for the cause of abolitionism that Mrs. Stowe took up her pen. Yet, anti-slavery spirit is not contradictory or incompatible with spirit of Christianity. In fact, they co-exist quite harmoniously in Uncle Tom's Cabin. Feminism is also quite evident in this book. Many articles have been written to discuss the anti-slavery spirit or feminism in it. However, this thesis will mainly focus on Christianity in Uncle Tom's Cabin.
I. Northrop Frye's Theory of Archetype
In Greek, "arch" means "first", "typos" means "form" or "type". So, "archetype" means first type/form or original type/form. In the theories of Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961), archetypes are primordial mythic forms that embody psychological drives and forces that originate in the collective unconscious. For the Canadian literary critic Northrop Frye (1912-1991), archetypes are the socially-concerned organizing forms and patterns of literature that originate in myth and which unify and reveal literature as an imaginatively-inhabitable world. His great work, such as The Secular Scripture (1976), The Great Code (1982) and Words with Power (1990) all center on the study of the Bible. In Frye's system, the organizing principles that give literature coherence and structure are derived from the archetypal imagery found in the Bible and the myths of ancient Greece. He suggests that all literature is based on displacements of these myths. Archetypal criticism focused on characters, images, symbols, metaphors, plots, events and themes1. The thesis attempts to use this theory to analyze the characters in Uncle Tom's Cabin in terms of Biblical archetype to reveal Christianity in it and to probe into Mrs. Stowe' solution to the institution of slavery.
II. Character Analysis
i. Tom
Tom, the protagonist of this novel, is obviously the Christ figure with black skin. Tom's experience is quite similar to that of Jesus Christ. When Tom's first master, Mr. Shelby sells Tom to the coarse slave-dealer in financial straits, he betrays the loyalty of his most loyal slave since boyhood. Jesus is sold by his apostle Judas who is prompted by his avarice for money. So they are all betrayed and sold by the ones who are close to them. While he struggles with his faith, as Jesus does in the last hours of his life when he says, "my God, why have you forsaken me?" 2. He never loses his simple faith. Tom's death scene also has striking likeness with that of Jesus Christ. Tom is flogged near to death, so is Jesus before his crucifixion. When Jesus dies, there are two criminals crucified together with him, one of who believes Jesus is Messiah and is saved at the very moment and spot. Sambo and Qimbo, Degree's two cruel overseers who in every sense are equal to criminals, are moved by Tom's Christian fortitude and patience and are converted at the very moment and spot. Jesus is crucified to redeem sinners while Tom dies for the two runaway slaves, Cassy and Emmeline. They are all innocent, but all die for others. In essence, they all die for their faith and religious devotion. In fact, Tom dies as a "martyr" which is revealed by the title of chapter forty.
Tom is not only similar in his experience to Jesus Christ. More important, his temperament is like that of Jesus Christ. He is loving, faithful, forgiving and obedient.
Tom is full of love for his neighbors, blacks and whites. While he is at St.Clare's home, he meets that pitiful, wretched old slave Prue whose only left child is starved to death because she devotes all her time to tend her mistress and loses her milk, yet her mistress refuses to buy milk for her baby. Tom offers to carry her basket for her and sends the Gospel to her. Just as when Jesus sees sinners, he pities them, helps them, cures them and tells them "the good news'. Tom not only loves his fellow slaves, but white people. When he sees his second young handsome flighty master St Clare go to those wining parties, Tom goes down on his knees and pleads with him not to attend those revelries again by quoting from the Bible, "it biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder"3. His love comes to full display when he says on his deathbed to his first young master George Shelby: "…Give my love to mas"r, and dear good missis-and everybody in the place! Ye don't know. "Pears like I loves'em all! I loves every creatur", every what! -It's nothing but love…"4. Here, Tom is the incarnation of love, just like Jesus is identified with love.
Tom is faithful to God and man. Facing his third cruel master Simon Degree's threatening and flogging, he doesn't give up his faith in God and insists that his soul belongs to Him, not to him, though he bought him with twelve hundred dollars. Tom is also very faithful to man, such as his first and third masters who give him all their property to manage. Once, Mr. Shelby let him to go to Cincinnati alone to do business for him, Tom doesn't run away, instead, he comes back because he thinks, "Ah, master trusted me, and I couldn't!" (P.4). Just as he himself asks Mr. Shelby, "… have I ever broke word to you, or go contrary to you, "specially since I was a Christian?" (P.53). St. Clare, a careless master, who gives Tom a bill without looking at it, trusts Tom so much that "Tom had every facility and temptation to dishonesty", yet "nothing but an impregnable simplicity of nature, strengthened by Christian faith, could have kept him from it" (P.189).
Tom's another distinctive characteristic is forgiveness, which is so extraordinary that it's almost divine, and which we can see in Jesus Christ. Jesus forgives those who persecute him for he prays, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do"5. Tom also forgives his third cruel master Legree and Legree's two overseers who harshly flogged him by saying, "I forgive ye, with all my soul!" (P.384)
Tom is submissive and obedient but only to God and according to his conscience. When Jesus is facing his immediate bitter death, he prays in the Mount of Olives, "…yet, not my will but yours be done"6. Tom says similar words, "The Lord's will be done!" (P.299) when he learns he will be sold to the south after the unexpected death of St. Clare. Yet his obedience is not to everyone. For example, once Legree requires Tom to flog a weak slave woman, Tom refuses, saying, "…but this yer thing I can't feel it right to do; and mas'r, I never shall do it-never!" (P.336) So his obedience is no blind. He only obeys what he believes right.
Why Mrs. Stowe depicted Tom as a Christ-like figure? Perhaps she wanted to elicit sympathy from her readers most of who were whites. She wanted to inform her readers that such pious good man died under the slavery, thus hoped them to realize it was wrong to keep such an evil system in a Christian country. In a word, she intended to win the support of her readers by striking their strings of emotions.
Most of us who have read this book will agree that Tom, an almost perfect, immaculate character without any human weakness is too good to exist in real life. So the portrait of Uncle Tom tends to be rather pale. Besides, the image of Tom is a stereotype with typical African features, typical African American accent and supposed typical good disposition of that race. Thus, Tom is more a representative of a kind of person rather than an individual.
ii. Little Eva
Another image, radiating with spiritual luster, is Evangeline St. Clare, namely, the "little Eva". The name "Evangeline" definitely promotes the idea and image of angel. In appearance, she resembles an earthly angel-beautiful, always dressed in white. In spirit, she is full of love, like a good guardian angel. Once her father asks her which way she likes best-to live as they do at her uncle's up in Vermont, or to have a house full of servants, as they do. Eva answers that their way is the pleasantest because "it makes so many more people round you to love" (P.172). The reason she asks her Papa to buy Tom is "to make him happy" (P.140). When she hears the story of Prue, she doesn't want to go out in her new carriage again for the terrible story "sink(s) into her heart" (P.203). In her eyes, there are many puzzling things, such as why Prue is so unhappy, why Tom should be separated from his wife and children, why no one loves that black little girl, Topsy. What she only knows and does is to love all the people around her. Just as her name "Evangeline" suggests, she is an evangelist to everyone. She shares the Gospel with all her father's plantation slaves as well as questioning her own father's faith. This action by Eva saves many lost souls and gives them hope. It also prompts the soul-searching and self-reevaluation in her father. When dying, she gives every slave servant in her house a lock of fair golden hair, asking him or her to be Christians, so that they could see each other in heaven. Eva is delicate and dies early, which "dramatize the fact that she does not belong to the world. This is especially evident when the angel is a child, like Stowe's Eva."7
Through the eyes of the angelic child Mrs. Stowe exposed the evils of the institution of slavery. Eva asks her father to free the slaves after her death. Mrs. Stowe called on people to do as or more than the child does.
iii. Sambo&Qimbo
Sambo and Qimbo, Simon Legree's two cruel henchmen, are obviously the images of the two criminals taken from the Bible who are crucified at the same time beside Jesus Christ when we see their roles in the process of Tom's death. With the command of Legree, these two flog Tom near to the point of death. Yet, Tom's forgiveness, patience and fortitude even moves these two villainous men, and they ask him who Jesus is that's been a standin" by him so, all this night (P.384). Then, Tom introduces Jesus Christ to them, and they are converted immediately. In the Bible, one criminal is also moved by Jesus and believes him, and his soul is saved at that moment. In fact, these two overseers take two different archetypes from the Bible, the one who flog Jesus Christ and the other who is saved through Jesus. So, Sambo and Qimbo possess two different roles at the same time.
iv. Eliza
The above four images-Tom, Eva, Sambo and Qimbo–are easy to find their respective archetypes in the Bible. Another more indirect one is Eliza who is like Israelites running away from Egypt where they are slaves to Canaan where they will have a new free happy life. Eliza's running is guided by God all the way, as Israelites are guided by God who appears "in the pillars of cloud and fire"8. Israelites' passing through the Red Sea which "was turned into dry land by strong east wind"9 is a miracle. So is Eliza's escape through jumping from one ice flow to another, which can't be done without the "strength such as God gives only to the desperate" (P.57). If we say the Ohio River is like the Red Sea, then the lake between America and Canada is like the river Jordan that lies between terrible wilderness and wonderful Canaan. I call the Ohio River the Red Sea, not the the river Jordan, because Eliza still has to endure many pains after her crossing of the Ohio River, just like Israelites still have to suffer much in the wilderness. While after crossing the lake, the land of freedom——Canada waits for her and her families. Eliza is an intriguing character. She is submissive to her master and mistress, yet her child's imminent danger and her desire for her child's freedom and well-being overrides her loyalty to them. Israelites betray Pharaoh for they also long for freedom and well-being.
v. Pious, Ideal Christian Mothers
A mother of seven children, Mrs. Stowe herself was a loving Christian mother. In Uncle Tom's Cabin, she depicted many pious, ideal Christian mothers, such as St.Clare's mother, Legree's mother, Mary Bird, Mrs. Shelby and Eliza etc. In essence, these respectable mothers are the ones that "by the 1850s in the America, middle-class ideology had elevated one image of woman—the home–loving woman, pleasing, conservative, and virtuous, a comfort and delight to her husband, an ideal to her children—into a national model"10. It is interesting to notice that these national models are quite the same with the "angels in the house" in England at the Victorian Age.
St. Clare's mother, in his words, "…was divine…there was no trace of any human weakness or error about her…"(P.208). Though gentle and submissive to her husband, she opposed the institution of slavery covertly by helping redress the wrongs done to the blacks and caring them. She also instills into St. Clare that every man, including niggers has spirit, thus greatly influences Clare's attitude towards slavery. Though St. Clare doesn't dare to break it, he loathes it and shows his sympathy for black people by indulging the slaves in his house.
Legree's mother is another virtuous, pious and forgiving mother. The only difference between she and St. Clare's mother is that she is heart-broken because her exhortations fall onto deaf ears and cold heart. Her hard-working nurture can't eradicate her son's vicious and tough nature. He not only disregards her admonitions, but also treats her cruelly. When she "in the last agony of her despair, knelt at his feet', he "spurned her from him, throw her senseless on the floor, and, with brutal curses, fled to his ship" (P.345).
Mary Bird, the Senator's wife, is "a timid, blushing, little woman of about four feet in height…she ruled more by entreating and persuasion than by command or argument…"(P.74). Such a gentle woman would be aroused to great indignity when talking about the slavery system. She even says courageously to her husband, "…and I'll break it, for one, the first time I get a chance; and I hope I shall have a chance, I do…"(P.75) when she hears her husband has just vote for the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. When Eliza and her son Harry appears on their doorsteps, she does get the chance and she does break it.
Mrs. Shelby, a kind-hearted woman who thought by kindness, and care, and instruction, she could make the condition of hers better than freedom (P.33), at last believes the system "-a bitter, bitter, most accursed thing! -A curse to the master and a curse to the slave…"(P.33) when she found she couldn't protect her beloved slaves, Tom and Harry.
Eliza, an amiable, pious mother who doesn't want to disobey her master and mistress until her own son faces the danger of being sold. She opposes the system by action——running away from her once beloved "home".
A common trait among those loving, pious mothers is that they are all Christians and are all against the institution of slavery except it is not so obvious in the case of Legree's mother. To their soft hearts, slavery is too cruel a thing to be allowed to exist. It's against the Christian principle of loving one's neighbors. Besides opposing slavery, those mothers are often spiritual guiders for their sons and husbands. To St. Clare, his mother "was a direct embodiment and personification of the New Testament "(P.208). To Harris, when he turns away from God, his wife is always the one whose "gentle sprit ever restores him" (P.402).
In fact, all the characters in Uncle Tom's Cabin can be put into four categories: perfect Christians, imperfect Christians, half-Christians and non-Christians. Tom and Eva are those rare real Christians or perfect Christians who really live up to the principles of the Bible. Imperfect Christians include those like Mrs. Shelby and Miss Ophelia etc. They believe God, but their selfishness or hypocrisy prevents them from being good Christians. For example, Mrs. Shelby rationalizes her actions by "gild(ing) it over" with "kindness and care" (P.33). She is angry about her husband's sale of Tom and Harris because she doesn't know how she can ever hold up her head again among them (P.32). Miss Ophelia, though has missionary zeal, dares not to tough Topsy, the slave girl she is reforming for she still has the sense of white superiority at the bottom of her heart. There are also some half-Christians or going-to-be Christians, such as St. Clare and Gorge Harris. St. Clare is always skeptical towards religion and doesn't believe God until his daughters and his own deaths. Harris is another example. He is rebellious at first, but when his family reunion comes to a reality, he becomes more content and comes nearer to God. While Simon Legree is a typical example of non-Christian whose tough nature refuse to be touched by any good word. He doesn't repent even at his last minute. This kind of categorizing might be oversimplifying. Yet, this is a pattern that I found in Uncle Tom's Cabin. So in this sense, Uncle Tom's Cabin is a book soaked with spirit of Christianity.
III. Mrs. Stowe's Solution to Slavery Now, let's come to the question of Mrs. Stowe's way of solving slavery. "So you are the little woman who started this Great War!" Abraham Lincoln is said to have remarked when meeting Harriet Beecher Stowe for the first time in the White House. When in a small hotel George Harris says to Mr. Wilson, "I'll fight for my liberty to the last breath I breath. You say your fathers did it; if it was right for them, it is right for me" (P.106), it seems that the author Mrs. Stowe herself agreed with George. Then does this mean Mrs. Stowe advocated slaves to fight for their freedom through violence? Or the aim of her writing the book was to spark the Civil War? We are almost temped to say "yes" to both questions with the two "evidences" cited above if we do not exam the whole book thoroughly. First, let's not forget that Mrs. Stowe herself was a devout Christian who wouldn't advocate any form of violence. Second, we should notice that Mr. Wilson advised Harris he'd better not shoot (P.106). Third, we should also notice that Mr. Simeon, the fervent Quaker, regards fighting with flesh as a temptation though he believes Harris has the right to do it. In fact, Harris himself would rather "…be let alone-to go peacefully out of it [America]"(P.106). So, in the case of George Harris, Mrs. Stowe only advocated limited passive resistance when the law of sacred family bond was violated by the system of slavery. But on the whole, she held with the view of nonviolent resistance. To be specific, she praised slaves' spiritual and moral victory over slavery which can be seen from her most carefully portrayed protagonist Tom, a pious, submissive Christian, who was her ideal black. Moreover, for Mrs. Stowe, the solution to slavery lied mainly in the white, not in the black, which, of course, is rather absurd. By informing her white fellowmen of the evils of slavery, she wanted the Southern slave owners to free slaves voluntarily through Christian love, just as George Shelby does. Of course, this childish, utopian idea can't come to true for the economy of South is based on the slavery system. Those plantation owners couldn't give up their property voluntarily, could they? She also wanted Northerners, especially the Church of the North to shoulder the responsibility of educating those future freed men. It is clearly shown in the Concluding Remarks, which goes like this, "…receive them to the educating advantages of Christian republican society and schools…"(P.412). So she didn't praise violent way of liberating slaves and didn't intend to spark the war between the South and the North, rather, she gave her readers her own solution to this problem. But her way of liberating slaves and saving the Union failed when the Civil War broke out.
Conclusion
To sum up, Christianity played a very important role in Harriet Beecher Stowe's wring which inevitably influenced greatly the portraiture of characters in Uncle Tom's Cabin and also Mrs. Stowe's own solution to slavery. The author of this thesis intends to interpret Uncle Tom's Cabin in the light of Christianity rather than anti-slavery and feminism to show a new outlook of it. Christianity is an indispensable part of western cultures and an important element in Uncle Tom's Cabin, yet most Chinese readers are not familiar with it. So the author in this thesis hopes to help Chinese readers appreciate it better by informing them more about Christianity in it.