We suggest you familiarize yourself with the work of the talented American writer Harriet Beecher Stow. This work, written in 1852, is a vivid example of a social novel that had a great influence on world thought and changed the attitude towards slavery.
Harriet Beecher Stowe. "Uncle Tom's Cabin"
Below is the work "Uncle Tom's Cabin" - a brief summary, as well as a description of the main characters. This is only an interpretation of the main events, for a deeper understanding it is necessary to familiarize yourself with the full text of the work. The volume of the novel is about 400 pages, depending on the publication.
Chapter 1-12
Having borrowed a large sum, a Kentucky farmer named Arthur Shelby is faced with the prospect of losing everything he owns. Although he and his wife, Emily Shelby, established a warm relationship with their slaves, Arthur still decides to sell two of them to Mr. Haley, a rude slave trader, to raise money and pay off his debts. The slaves in question are Uncle Tom, a middle-aged man whose wife and children work on the plantation, and Harry, the youngest son of Eliza, Mrs. Shelby's maid. When Shelby tells his wife about his agreement with Mr. Haley, she is horrified because she promised Eliza not to sell her son.
Eliza overhears Mr. Shelby’s conversation with his wife and, warning Uncle Tom and his wife, Aunt Chloe, she takes Harry and runs north, hoping to find freedom with her husband George in Canada.
Haley pursues her, but two other Shelby slaves warn her of danger. She miraculously manages to escape and cross the half-frozen
Ohio River to the border separating Kentucky from the North.
Chapter 13-19
Further, the events of the work "Uncle Tom's Cabin" Beecher Stone unfold as follows.
Haley hires a bloodhound slave named Loker and his gang to bring Eliza and Harry back to Kentucky. Mother and baby are on their way to the Quaker settlement, who agree to help transport them to a safe place. In the village, they meet with George, who happily reunites with his family to travel to Canada.
Meanwhile, Uncle Tom sadly leaves his family and his friend Mr. George, Shelby's youngest son, and Haley takes him down the Mississippi River to sell him on the slave market.
On the ship, Tom meets a young white girl named Eve with an angelic face and quickly makes friends with her. When Eve falls into the river, Tom dives to save her, and the girl’s father, Augustine St. Clair, gratefully agrees to buy Tom from Haley. Tom goes with him to New Orleans, where over time it becomes more and more indispensable as a worker and closer to Eve, with whom pious Christianity connects him.
In the North, George and Eliza continue to flee the persecution of Locker and his people. When Locker tries to capture them, George shoots him, so they hide from the chase. Eliza convinces George and the Quakers to bring the wounded Locker to a nearby settlement where he can be cured. Meanwhile, in New Orleans, St. Clair discusses slavery with his cousin Ophelia, who opposes slavery as an institution, but is not without prejudice against blacks. St. Clair, on the contrary, does not feel hostility towards them, but accepts slavery, since he considers himself powerless to change things.
Chapters 20-32
To help Ophelia overcome her preconceptions, St. Clair buys Topsy, a young black woman who was brutally mocked by her master, and also organizes Ophelia's training.
Two years have passed since the life of Tom and St. Clair, Eve grows very poorly. She gradually weakens, and then dies, having seen in a vision a paradise before death. Her death has a great impact on everyone who knew her: Ophelia begins to love slaves, Topsy learns to trust and feel affection for other people, and St. Clair decides to let Tom go home. However, having failed to fulfill his intention, he was stabbed to death in an attempt to resolve the conflict. When he dies, he finally finds God and follows him to reunite with his mother in heaven.
St. Clair's cruel wife, Marie, is selling Tom to a vicious plantation owner named Simon Legry. Tom travels to the Louisiana countryside with a group of new slaves, including Emmeline, whom Legry acquired for use as a sex slave, replacing her with the previous sex slave Cassie.
Legry has a strong dislike for Tom, when he does not obey the order to beat his fellow slave with a whip. Tom is brutally beaten, and Legry decides to completely suppress his faith in God.
Chapters 33-38
Tom meets Cassie and listens to her story. This daughter was taken from her slave, she became pregnant again, but decided to kill the child, because she could not bear the fact that he would again be taken from her, which would certainly happen.
Around the same time, with the help of Tom Locker, who became a different person after the Quakers healed him, George, Eliza, and Harry were finally able to move from Lake Erie to Canada and get the long-awaited freedom. In Louisiana, Tom’s faith passes a rigorous test of difficulty, and he almost ceases to believe. However, he had two visions (the first - Jesus, the second - Eve), thanks to which his spiritual strength grows and gives him the courage to withstand all the torments of a difficult time living with Legri. He encourages Cassie to flee.
Chapters 39-44
She does this by taking Emmeline with her after she comes up with a trick - she and Emmeline decide to pretend to be ghosts. When Tom refuses to tell Legry where Cassie and Emmeline have gone, Legry orders the overseers to beat him.
When Tom is near death, he forgives Legri and the overseers. George Shelby arrives with the money to buy Tom’s freedom, but it was already too late. He can only watch Tom die a martyrdom.
Sailing towards freedom, Cassie and Emmeline meet George Harris’s sister and travel with her to Canada, where Cassie realizes that Eliza is her daughter. The newly reunited family travels to France and then decides to leave for Liberia, an African country where former American slaves live. George Shelby returns to Kentucky, where, after his father’s death, he releases all the slaves in honor of Tom’s memory. He encourages them to think about Tom's sacrifice and lead a godly Christian life, as the deceased did.
Thus ends Beecher's Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The novel makes an ambiguous impression.
"Uncle Tom's Cabin": the main characters
Uncle Tom is a kind, pious man, the protagonist of the work, since the story "Uncle Tom’s Cabin" is named after this character. Even in the most adverse conditions, he always prays to God and finds a way to maintain his faith.
Tom suffers from abuse by Simon Legri, which undermines his faith in God, but he withstands all trials and dies the death of a Christian martyr. For a complete understanding of the image of this hero, we recommend that you read the entire work "Uncle Tom's Cabin". The summary gives only a superficial idea of it.
Aunt Chloe is the wife of Uncle Tom, the cook of Mr. Shelby. Chloe often acts as a cheerful, simple nature, but these traits only mask her more complex feelings.
Shelby Family
Arthur Shelby is the host of Uncle Tom in Kentucky, who sells it to the cruel Haley to cover his debts. An educated and kind person, Shelby, however, permits and perpetuates slavery. Stowe uses it to illustrate that the immorality inherent in slavery makes the villains of everyone who practices it, not just the most cruel masters depicted in Uncle Tom’s Shack. A summary of this attitude towards slaves gives a description of passive atrocity, which the author cannot justify.
Emily Shelby is the wife of Mr. Shelby, a loving Christian who does not believe in the natural nature of slavery. She uses her influence on her husband to try and help Shelby's slaves, and is one of the many virtuous and insightful female characters in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a summary of which you have just studied.
George Shelby, nicknamed Tom "Mr. George", is a kindhearted son of the Shelby family. He loves Tom and promises to save him from the cruelty of slavery. After Tom’s death, he decides to free all the slaves on a family farm in Kentucky. More moral than his father, George not only has a good heart, but also acts according to his command.
Harris family
George Harris is Eliza's husband, an inquisitive and talented mulatto, loving his family and willingly fighting for his freedom. He confronts runaway slave hunter Tom Locker and is not afraid to shoot him when his family’s safety is at stake.
Eliza Harris is Mrs. Shelby's maid, George's wife and Harry's mother. Eliza is a smart, beautiful, and brave slave. After she becomes aware of Mr. Shelby’s intentions to sell her son to Mr. Hailey, she proves the strength of her motherly love and fortitude by making an extreme escape. The crossing on the ice of the Ohio River by Eliza Harris is the most famous scene of the novel.
Harry Harris is the son of Eliza and George, a little boy.
St Clair Family
Augustine St. Clair is the master of Tom in New Orleans, father of Eve. This is a windy and romantic person indulging in various pleasures. St. Clair does not believe in God, drinks almost every day. But he adores his daughter, shows compassion for slaves, but shares the hypocrisy of Mr. Shelby in the fact that he sees the evil generated by slavery, and nevertheless tolerates and practices it. According to Stow, in Uncle Tom’s Hut, heroes like Augustine are more likely negative characters.
Eve St. Clair is the angel-like daughter of St. Clair and Marie, also referred to in the book as little Eve (or Evageline). Depicted as a perfect child - an example of a moral being and an impeccable Christian. She laments the existence of slavery and sees no difference between blacks and whites. While still a young girl, she becomes one of the most important figures in the life of Tom and in the entire work "Uncle Tom's Cabin", a summary of which is presented above.
Miss Ophelia, St. Clair's cousin from the North (Vermont State), came to help him housekeeping. Ophelia opposes slavery abstractly, inactive. Nevertheless, she finds the slaves unpleasant and has prejudices against them. After Eve's death, through a relationship with Topsy, Ophelia understands her fallacies and learns to look at slaves as human beings. Stow hopes that many readers of the North will recognize themselves in Ophelia from the novel "Uncle Tom’s Cabin": the reviews of the inhabitants of the North were especially important for the writer, since, after reading the work, they might reconsider their views on slavery.
Marie - the wife of St. Clair - an egocentric woman. Stupid, capricious, she is the opposite of the ideal of a woman, which appears more than once throughout the novel.
Other characters
Quakers - a group of Christians that appeared in the middle of the 17th century in England, dedicated to achieving an internal understanding of God without the use of religion, clergy, or external rites. Quakers have long been contributing to social reform and peace. They help George, Elise, and many other slaves. In Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, the author uses these characters to portray Christianity, free of hypocrisy, smug display, fanatical prescriptions. This type of Christianity, as he suggests, can play a decisive role in the abolition of slavery.
Senator and Mrs. Bird. Mrs. Bird is another example of a virtuous woman. She is trying to influence her husband. Senator Bird is an example of a well-meaning person who sympathizes with the causes of abolitionism, but nevertheless remains to rest on his laurels, trying to maintain the status quo.
Tom Locker is the bloodhound slave hired by Haley to bring Eliza, Harry, and George back. Tom Locker first appears on the pages of Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin" as a rude, cruel person. George shoots him when he tries to capture them, and after healing by the Quakers, Loker undergoes a transformation and decides to join the Quakers and stay with them.
Mr. Haley is a slaver who bought Uncle Tom and Harry from Mr. Shelby. A rude man, Haley exposes himself as a virtue who treats slaves well. However, in reality this was not so, the treatment of slaves was often rude and cruel.
Topsy is a wild, uncultured slave that Ophelia is trying to change for the better, gradually, following the example of Eve, she teaches to love and respect others.
Simon Legry is Tom's evil, ruthless landlord on a Louisiana plantation. A vicious barbarian, a disgusting man, Legri promotes the spread of violence and hatred against slaves.
Cassie is a slave to Legry and Eliza's mother, a proud and intelligent woman who has developed a clever way to escape from her master.
Emmeline is a young and beautiful slave girl that Legry buys for herself to replace Cassie and make her his mistress. She was raised as a pious Christian.