Marth L Henning's Beyond Understanding Character Analysis

Stowe seems to only want to focus on the maternal sensibility a woman can possess, which makes women seem as if their nurturing instincts cause them to lack logic and rationality. In Marth L Henning’s Beyond Understanding: Appeals to the Imagination, Passions, and Will in Mid-Nineteenth-Century American Woman's Fiction, she claims that Stowe too often appeals to “the imagination and passion through the vehicle of sympathy,” which in turn makes the female characters seem almost one-dimensional (Henning, 92). An example of being dangerously emotional is the character Cassy. Cassy recounts her disturbing history to Uncle Tom himself and laments over the loss of her children during the slave trade. Cassy goes on to explain that after her master refused to save her son from getting an awful beating that “something inside of [her] head snapped,” and went at her master with a “great, sharp bowing knife” that she found on the table (Stowe, 310).

In Wearn’s work, she mentions how “Stowe [is unable] to imagine a positive feminine power beyond the [patriarchal] defined realm of legitimate Christian motherhood” which lead Stowe to putting almost too much emphasis on this role (Wearn, 40). Another extreme depiction of motherhood is when Cassy takes the life of her son so he will not have to be a slave. Cassy says that when her son was born she “kissed him and cried over him; and then gave him laudanum” (Stowe, 310). This is an example of how Cassy’s ability to make rational decisions becomes impaired because of how much love she has for her