Critical Commentary

>>My Theme: Sexual Slavery
>>What I Read: Who Gets to Create the Lasting Images? The Problem of Black Representation in Uncle Tom's Cabin by Sophia Cantave

Right off the bat, we’re posed with an important question, one I still find myself asking: How did Stowe, as opposed to Mary Prince and Harriet Wilson (Who wrote The History of Mary Prince and Our Nig  respectively), get her novel to be the one that became, as Cantave describes it, “the proverbial shot hear around the world” or slavery? How did a white, free woman’s take on slavery become the benchmark and overshadow two actual African American writers with arguably truer experiences? While she acknowledges the importance of the novel, as does just about anyone who criticizes it, she brings u the question of how Stowe got the chance to “study” the subjects of her novel. (Stowe has been sited saying “My vocation is simply that of a painter, and my object will be to hold up the most lifelike and graphic manner possible Slavery, its reverses, changes, and the negro character, which I have had ample opportunities for studying”) We have to consider the negative impact all of this had on the movement of popular US culture, whether Stowe intended it or not. The biggest point, in essence, is the fact that Stowe was a white woman stirring the pot she may not have necessarily been qualified to stir. “A first, a return to Uncle Toms Cabin feels like a return to a crime scene with too many nagging questions left unanswered.”

Another point is that Stowe did her best in using what she had at hand, for example the different ways blacks would interact with other black, or how blacks interacted with whites. “By mixing the tragic and the laughable, Uncle Tom’s Cabin gives white people and black people a way to read slavery together…Thus the joking relationship and the various and the various uses of the comic exist as one of the earliest acceptable signs of black subordination and one the slaves continuously manipulated. But the comic interactions as Stowe uses them do not so much subvert as reinforce the existing order.” But this did more harm than good by reinforcing the fact that slavery did not make for “good art”. It was a messy subject, and its almost like Stowe was trying to make a more critically consumable version of it, rather than the raw truth of it all. 

Here’s where I see a tie- in for my theme: “…Stowe gives herself the power to draw the veil when writing on slavery.” This is absolutely a constant throughout the story. Stowe likes to pick and choose which parts she chooses to show, which ones will be most impactful. In a way, this works for her. It must have, the novel has held up to the last 150+ years. But at the same time she slits her own throat in the proper portrayal that gives the most “fair” representation. Slavery was not neat. It wasn’t anything close to it. But Stowe chooses what makes good art for her, and the experiences of the slaves she writes about, and in a way writes for, suffers because of it. She discounts the actual experiences of enslaved people by banking more on her own experience of what will make the best kind of art, father than staying true to a matter she honestly doesn’t know much about. And even today, some of the images she enforced with her writing are still holding fast. 

She goes on to compare Stow’s writing to Wilson’s, in the way that Wilson portrays her main character Fredo. In focusing more on the characters themselves rather than the circumstances of “white benevolence” like  Stowe did, her narrative is ultimately more powerful and successful in the portrayal of black slave life and the effects it had on those involved. And even those who weren’t. In Wilson’s novel, Fredo’s husband feels like he has to play the role of former slave to get support from abolitionists in the North. This also bring sup the raw truth that northern abolitionists, though supportive, could have done so much more with their free voices than they did. They only seemed interested in helping the currently enslaved, rather than trying to free any and all blacks that could possibly some under fire. But, that’s a different novel entirely. The point is, Stowe didn’t do it correctly, which isn’t entirely surprising, given she was a privileged white woman  as opposed to the actual black voices that lived through the horrors of slavery. 

This is something I can get behind. I’ve had a feeling since the beginning that this wasn’t the way things should have been handled. The idea of a white woman writing a narrative for slavery, as great as it was for the time, never sat well with me. It’s important to understand what I mean when I say this. Uncle Tom’s Cabin has undeniable impact and range in it’s subject matter. Stowe didn’t completely drop the ball, she did a lot of it right. It furthered the cause of abolitionism and is credited with helping to start the Civil War. But it’s undeniable that there was a lot of problematic imprints left behind with it as well, some even seen today. 

A man named Albion Tourgee conducted a fifteen year long study where black slaves read or were read to from Uncle Tom’s Cabin and their thought were recorded afterwards. The dichotomy was either nervous silences or complete agreement with Stowe’s words. But one slave was recorded as saying that Stowe “didn’t know what slavery was so left out the worst of it.” I think that’s still the biggest problem with the novel. Stowe was maybe a little afraid to include some of the rougher aspects, or maybe just plain didn’t know about or understand them. Product of the times or not, it definitely suffers for it in the long run. It provides such a toothless, watered down version that it ultimately hurts the purpose of the narrative. But boiling everything down to “white benevolence” like mentioned above, rather than the raw truths of runaway slaves, ended up hurting the narrative even with actual slaves. 

I’ve agreed with just about everything I read in this essay. It’s put into words what I’ve been feeling reading the entirely of this book, and that’s the fact that it only hits the target about half of the time. It’s like treating the symptoms, but not ultimately the cause (even though the cause was resolved later on, after all of this.) Cantave says it best early on: “Thus, despite her best intentions, Uncle Tom’s Cabin betrays her overwhelming race and class privileges and the way she herself helped to further limit African Americans’ access to the dominant language and their own literary portrayal of slave experience.”