Literary Analysis

      Anti-Uncle Tom's Cabin literature: showing that slavery is fun and oppression is necessary. Stowe goes against the common beliefs that slavery is necessary to control and guide blacks and the oppressed need and love to be oppressed. Stowe shows blacks as intelligent and fully capable of living without a master. Most criticisms against Stowe are how she showed slavemasters as not wholly benevolent, just mostly benevolent. I believe the slavemasters are sufficiently benevolent. Mr. Shelby even said, "I've trusted [Tom]... with everything I have," something I highly doubt most actual slave owners would say, showing Mr. Shelby as kind and on very good terms with his slaves. I suppose that Mr. Shelby may be overlooked by critics due to his short appearance in the beginning and absence from the next 300 pages of the book. Mrs. Shelby is the same; she fulfills the critics' assertion that slavemasters were more parental rather than master to their slaves. Likely this is to have the reader be content with the slave owner living up to the way they like to think of slave owners and progress to the harsh reality that slaves were beaten, whipped, and tortured, like the end of the book when Mr. Legree has Tom tortured to death. Tom forgives Legree, asking for Legree to be given mercy. Upstanding actions like these are what upset so many critics. The idea that a black man would be so saintly and how Stowe implies that abusing slaves is a sin which will be punished in hell. Strange how it's standard to use religion to justify slavery, but it's "self-righteous," as said by the critic James Baldwin, to use religion against slavery. Anti-Uncle Tom's Cabin literature hated the idea of slaves being good, intelligent, and civilized, preferring instead the idea that "Africans hate civilization and are never happier... than when allowed to live in abandonment, nakedness, and filth, their instincts crave," as said by Mrs. Schoolcraft. Which did critics hate more: civilized Africans because it goes against all their stereotypes they hold for blacks? Or are they more offended that the relationship between slaves and masters isn't as benevolent as they believed? Could the problem be that the protagonists are black and the antagonists are white? I think all three of these together created an overwhelmingly negative picture on the institution of slavery which some found to be a direct attack on themselves. Perhaps the south saw "attacks" like this as devious and malicious enough to be a justification to join the Confederate military and defend their way of life against misguided northern zealots. If this is the case then Uncle Tom's Cabin was a strong source of reason to go to war and, as is common knowledge, it truly was a strong influence in starting the American Civil War. Even Abraham Lincoln credited Stowe with being a strong influence in starting the Civil War.