Uncle Tom's Cabin: A Literary Analysis

The eighteenth century was filled with wars and strife to the extent that men began to have apprehension about philosophical problems of existence, death, and eternity. Due to this upheaval, literary style progressed from Classicism and Neoclassicism to what became known as Romanticism. Romanticism was a literary movement that focused on emotions, imagination and symbolism. The romantic style was designed to evoke a reader’s sympathy and emotion for the protagonist and their passions or inner struggles. By making a reader empathize with the central character’s passion, this made the reader feel impassioned as well, and was therefore an effective method to raise awareness about an issue at hand. In fact, Harriet Beecher Stowe, a dedicated abolitionist and teacher at Hartford Female Seminary, used Romanticism in her anti-slavery novel to counteract the notion held by society in the nineteenth century that African American slaves were not capable of feeling emotions. Her novel was largely effective as it created an uproar in the South, swayed moderates to become abolitionists, and was

In Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe uses Romanticism by featuring female protagonists in a style that evokes a reader’s sympathy and emotion. In the nineteenth century, slaves were regarded as property. Slaves were perceived as less than human and incapable of feelings, including the ability to love their children. With this vision in mind, slave-owners had trivial concern in separating a slave’s family by selling their children at slave auctions. In chapter twelve of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Stowe uses Romanticism to oppose society’s common perception by vividly illustrating what a slave-auction feels like for Tom, one of the slave protagonists. Stowe begins by