Rating: 
Summary: I Just Don't Like It
Review: Harriet Beecher Stowe was born in Connecticut in 1811 and four years later her mother died leaving hear older sister, Catherine, to raise her. Catherine founded a college in Hartford, where Stowe received her education, and later became a teacher at the school. Stowe married Calvin Stowe, a minister at her father's seminary college, in Cincinnati, Ohio. Living there for eighteen years, Stowe was unconsciously gathering data and impressions about slavery. This information was the main influence for Uncle Tom's Cabin. This book is historical fiction, based on Stowe's real life experiences with slavery. "The portrayal of slavery and its effects on families and on individuals is gut-wrenching - when Uncle Tom has to leave his family, and when Eliza may lose little Harry, one feels utterly desolate." . The way you feel when you finally realize, after straightening out all the details in your mind, that Uncle Tom has to leave his family and that Eliza may lose her son. This was the best part of the book, as you can see illustrated in two lines. Uncle Tom's Cabin has been deemed unbearably boring by many of its readers including myself. "...absolutely tedious, over-wrought--morality tale one of those books they make you analyze to death in English class. not worth the money." That is not to say that it is a bad book, or that the reason for writing it is unjust and that it doesn't make any sense, I am just referring to the extensive detail used in creating, the sometimes, overly vivid scenes. The book could have been two-hundred pages long and still gotten it's point across just as well, or maybe even better. I didn't like the book, it was too long and drawn out, personally I like a writer to just say what they mean and not try to make you think something when they refer to something else. This book had a lot of religious reference, but it wasn't necessary for you to understand all of them because it was part of Uncle Tom's character to be somewhat of a preacher. One review I read stated that from reading this book, the reviewer discovered that this book supported slavery. I didn't get this impression at all. What I saw was that many slave owners were actually very nice to their slaves. The only reason for slavery was cheap labor, many plantations couldn't have survived without slavery, but for the slave owners to keep their slaves in line and from running away they had to develop a friendly relationship just as many managers do with their employees today. I saw this friendly relationship in almost all of the slave owners in the novel. You will see this specifically when Uncle Tom finds out he has to leave the Shelby plantation, he says he wants to be loyal to his "Mas'r". So this book is not supporting slavery, it is just saying that all the slave owners weren't bad. All in all Uncle Tom's Cabin was not my favorite book and I wouldn't tell anyone to read it, but you may like it. It was too long and had too much detail much like a Charles Dickens novel except not quite as bad. The rating I would give this book on a scale of one to ten on the plot of the book is an eight maybe even as far as a nine. However, if I rated it on how well it kept my interest I would probably say a one or two, any Charles Dickens books being in the negative numbers. So in all finality, the book has its ups and downs, but it is still not as bad as a Charles Dickens novel.
Rating: 
Summary: Terribly Predictable
Review: Harriet Beecher Stowe had the wonderful luck of writing this book when she did- at the peak of American antebellum dissent. The book was obviously intended to reach a very wide audience as it is very easy to read. I give the book a low rating because the reader can predict every next step in the book, and at times it seems that Mrs. Stowe was trying too hard to evoke emotion from the reader-audience. The plot is quite simply too far fetched (with many fantastical reunions and unreal characters). The characters are portrayed as either positively saintly (Uncle Tom), or absolutely demonic (Mr. Legree), with no median. Good story for a soap opera. Bad for a classic historical novel.
Rating: 
Summary: timeless
Review: This book is intense to say the least. It leaves no wonderment to know why this book has transcended both time and culture.. Uncle Tom and Eva capture the true spirit of Christianity. Benevolence, mercy and good cheer. There were parts of this book that brought nothing less than tears. The reaching out of Eva to the slave girl Topsy really reached deep in the heart of CHRIST as it were to pull a heart burning coal from HIS heart, in presentation to the reader. With a few shortcomings as any book, it still captivates the mind of the reader and displays the person of JESUS.. Without belabouring all I can say is buy one, pull up a chair, grab a cup of coffee and get ready to go on a all time journey of love and enrichment...
Rating: 
Summary: Going to the source
Review: I shall not attempt to compete with the comprehensive reviews already here, but wanted to add my opinion. I read this book after reading a discussion of UTC and Huckleberry Finn in Harper's magazine. All of us are aware of such epithets as "he's such an Uncle Tom", but I am astounded now at the ignorance and prejudices that abound about this book and the legacy it left. Not only is Uncle Tom not a mindless yes-man to the whites, he actually is beaten to death because he will not beat the other slaves in his appointed position as overseer. Reading this book was an incredibly enjoyable eyeopener. Yes the language and some of the attitudes are dated, but it is only the richer for this... it lets us into the mindset of the era and in a way that is passionate and compelling. I was completely swept up in the narrative whereas I was expecting to read for my literary and historic edification. It was also news to me that this book was such a runaway bestseller of the times, selling I believe millions of copies when such a thing was unheard of. It apparently swayed millions of households, and especially women, who of course did not have the vote, in favor of abolition. So it is a sort of prefeminist achievement as well as a political coup, which led to the civil war and the end of slavery. We can look down all we like on the supposed "women's hyperbola" of this book, but any novelist of this day wouldnt dare dream of writing such an influential book. Next to this book, Huckleberry Finn, which I read about the same time, is merely a boyish adventure novel, incredibly racist to boot, and completely falling apart plotwise at the end. Read this, for sheer pleasure as a novel, to counteract all the misconceptions, or to delve into history. But do read it, you won't be sorry.
Rating:
Summary: I LOVED this book!
Review: This was my favorite book of ALL TIME! Enough said. It was very, very, very good.
Rating:
Summary: Yet another surprised reader
Review: I too was surprised by "Uncle Tom's Cabin." I'd expected a poorly written melodrama with (at best) a tepid commitment to abolition and a strong undercurrent of racism. I was wrong. As a novel, I consider it to be better than many of its rough contemporaries (including "A Tale of Two Cities," "Vanity Fair," and "Sartor Resartus"). As an attack on slavery, it is uncompromising, well informed, logically sophisticated, and morally unassailable. It's also exciting, educational, and often funny. The book has flaws, of course. The quality of the writing is variable, as it is in the works of many greater talents than Stowe. Herman Melville is one of my favorite writers, but I'd be hard-pressed to defend some of his sentences--or even some of his books--on purely literary grounds! There are indeed sentimental passages in "UTC." So what? There are plenty in Hawthorne, Dickens, Ruskin, and the Brontes, too...and lord knows our age has its own garish pieties. There are also a couple (only a couple!) of unfortunate remarks on the "childlike" character of slaves, but nothing so offensive as to render suspect Stowe's passionate belief that blacks are equal to whites in the eyes of God and must not be enslaved. (She also says that differences between blacks and whites do not result from a difference in innate ability, and argues that a white person raised to be a slave would show all the characteristics of one). By contrast, Plato wrote reams in defense of slavery and racialism, and yet people who point this out are considered spoilsports, if not philistines. The reviewer who claimed to have learned from Stowe that "slavery is no worse than capitalism" has totally misunderstood Stowe, who says that slavery is AS terrible as capitalism. To be precise, Stowe equates the horrors of wage slavery under Victorian Britain's capitalist system of production with those of chattel slavery in the American South. Her definition of capitalism agrees perfectly with that of Karl Marx, who was a pro-abolitionist correspondent for the New York Daily Tribune (and was familiar enough with Stowe to have written a piece on her). Marx said that true capitalism is defined by "the annihilation of self-earned private property; in other words, the expropriation of the labourer." Marx did not consider America a capitalist state, because American workers had at least theoretical upward mobility and could acquire property. This was not at all true of the British working class when "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was written, as Stowe well knew. And there was nothing idiosyncratic about her opinion; contemporaneous books such as "The White Slaves of England" made the same connection between American chattel slavery and British wage slavery. The cruelty of both systems is what led Stowe to claim in an essay that the Civil War was not merely a war against slavery, but "a war for the rights of the working class of society as against the usurpation of privileged aristocracies." As for the claim that Stowe says Christianity justifies slavery, this is either willful misreading or wishful thinking...she says the opposite so many times, and at such length, that to remove every expression of it would probably shorten the book by half (to the delight, apparently, of most of our nation's English students). Not sure who to believe? If you're interested enough in "Uncle Tom's Cabin" to have slogged through this meandering review, why not read it and see for yourself what Stowe does, and doesn't, say?
Rating:
Summary: A Feminist Reaction to Uncle Tom's Cabin
Review: Uncle Tom's Cabin was written in an empathetic tone, forcing the American public to view black slaves as human beings, at least for reading the novel. A Southern slave owner who read the book would be compelled to slip into the lives of his slaves, perhaps unwillingly, and view the institution of slavery from the viewpoint of a slave. In this respect, Stowe was successful. She appealed to the maternal emotions of her readers and characterized the blacks with qualities that were similar to those of innocent children. Black characters were also portrayed as being overwhelming loyal, clever and pious. For the most part, many of the white women in the novel act as a moral authority, compensating for the "sins" of their husbands, fathers, and brothers. Both sets of characters were exaggerated which helped to arouse the emotions of the novels readers. Characters were either exceedingly virtuous or awfully depraved. Paragons of Christian values can be found in Uncle Tom and the angel-like Little Eva. While the moral opposite of these characters can be found in the less agreeable characters of Simon Legree and Mr. Haley. These characterizations made for a powerful argument against slavery as Stowe had created a tone of victimization. The novels tone was important because at the time many people did consider slaves to be an inferior race, most readers had never before realized that these plantation hands were actually victims of a primarily white society.
Rating:
Summary: Greatest Ever?
Review: This is a book that I have read numerous times and with each reading come away with something new. It is written in a plain style, the story is very easy to follow, and the message Stowe wants to relate is very simplistic, but the novel is such an emotional and powerful portrayal of antebellum life that it is a must read. I would not necessarily rate Stowe as one of the great writers in American literature, but she certainly is one of the best at developing characters and emotional scenes, which more than makes up for any of her shortcomings. If you have not read this book before or may have once years ago, it is certainly worth reading again.
Rating:
Summary: Great historical document. Bad book.
Review: This book was the most popular protest novel against slavery of its time and the play adaption lived on for almost a century after its writing. It is the only work of fiction that Malcolm X read when he was educating himself. African American Studies professors will use motiffs from this book as a common understanding. It's still not a very good book. Stereotypical characterizations, badly drawn characters and an overall melodrama are good points. I will give some credence to the fact that a modern reader will be spoiled by today's literature and look for it in classic literature. However, the main weakness is what is always considered the strength of this book. It's preachiness had its place in the history of our country and there are many other books saying the same thing, but why should I have to read over 400 pages to learn that slavery is bad. It's kind of a given in this day and age - especially the slavery that happened in the American South which had that extra racism dimension. The only reason why I am giving this book 3 stars is because I didn't finish it (skimmed it after the first 100 pages) and there might be something worthwhile later on the book. But as Shaw said "you don't have to eat the whole egg to know it's rotten".
Rating:
Summary: A rather Dickensian novel
Review: I don't give this book five stars, only because of three things: 1)It is rather overtly preachy, which is understandable, given the subject matter, but is still a source of potential improvement; if there were fewer asides to the reader, overtly making the point that the story makes quite adequately on its own, it would have been better; 2)the typical nineteenth-century style is occasionally ponderous, although less extremely so than most novels from that era, and 3)the author does, occasionally, reveal herself to be a woman not unaffected by the prejudices of her time, in spite of her good intentions; there are occasional references, offensive to modern ears, to "inborn traits of the African race", which are actually the author's comment, not that of a character. Admittedly, the traits in question are never negative ones; still, any suggestion that there are personality traits inborn and shared by an entire race ought to be an idea of the past, even if it isn't. In spite of all that, this is a very impressive work on many levels: purely as a story, it is a fine, compelling story peopled with many compelling characters, and if some of those characters are too one-dimensional to be true, either purely good or purely evil, that is understandable in a novel that intends to be a tale of good and evil, and at any rate, not all or even most of the characters can be said to be so. Most are surprisingly well-balanced for a novel of that time period, particularly one with the sole purpose of teaching a moral lesson. Further, the novel is important as a historical piece; it is extremely worthwhile for everyone who is in any way affected by the "race issue" (which is to say, just about everyone) to be reminded of just WHY we still have a race issue in this country, 150 years later. Granted, no white person alive today has ever owned a slave (as a friend of mine comments, "You've obviously mistaken me for someone much older",) but it is useful to be reminded of just how much hatred was sown for white, mainstream society by the institution of slavery, and just how understandable it is that those who are still, generations later, at a disadvantage from the criminal treatment of their ancestors would be resentful and bitter. At the same time, while it would do little to lessen that bitterness for blacks to read this book and be reminded of just how brutal that institution was, it might be a worthwhile reminder for those who exaggerate the current level of racism as to just how much HAS changed in those 150 years. Society may be far from just, but it would be a mistake and an insult to those who suffered slavery to suggest that "nothing has really changed", an idea which the more vehement occasionally suggest. All in all, this is a very important historical novel of a time that we as a country should never be allowed to forget, and the fact that it manages to do so while still being a remarkably readable book is merely icing on the cake.
|
