Harriet Beecher Stowe

Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1811-1896

• Born in Litchfield, CT, to Lyman Beecher and his first wife, Roxanne
• The seventh child and fourth girl
• Mother dies when she is four, and her father quickly remarries
• Family eventually includes 13 children
• Beecher was a very famous Calvinist minister, stressing eternal damnation except for those who were predestined to be saved
• Harriet grows up in a lively intellectual environment, but also resents certain restrictions placed on her because of her gender
• Her father once said, “Hattie is a genius.  I would give a hundred dollars if she was a boy.”
• 1832: Family moves to Cincinnati, Ohio.  The slave state of Kentucky is across the river, so she has the chance to view slavery up close
• During this time, she is continuing to work as a teacher and writing short stories and essays
• 1836: Marries Calvin Stowe, a theology professor
• They have 7 children in 14 years; her married life isn’t ideal; Calvin never makes much money; at one point she leaves for a rest cure of sorts; only three of their seven children outlive her
• Struggles with how to reconcile her social/political concerns and ambitions with her duties as a wife and mother
• Finds power in the domestic sphere—the power of influence
• 1849/1850: Family moves to Maine; the Fugitive Slave Law is passed; Stowe’s one year old son dies
• Inspires Uncle Tom’s Cabin
• “‘The time has come when even a woman or a child who can speak a word for freedom and humanity is bound to speak’” (qtd. in Lauter 2547)
• 1852: Uncle Tom’s Cabin is published
• Works to make the idea of slavery concrete for Northerners
• Tries to evoke sympathy for slaves
• Shows Northern complicity with slave system
• Helps push abolition from the margins to the mainstream
• Public embraced it immediately
• First edition sells out in days
• By end of 1852, over 300,000 have been sold
• Over 1 million sold by end of century
• Translated into 22 languages between 1852 and 1860
• People bought Uncle Tom’s Cabin souvenirs based on favorite characters (Lauter 2548)
• Also inspired “anti-Tom” literature from the South
• 1853: A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin; a compendium of source material
• 1856: Dred; novel that explores the possibility of a violent revolution to end slavery
• Eventually the family settles in Hartford and Stowe begins writing New England regionalist texts:
• 1856: The Minister’s Wooing
• 1862: The Pearl of Orr’s Island
• 1869: Oldtown Folks
• Her reputation does not survive long after her death
• Most 20th century criticism saw her work as overly sentimental, mawkish—everything that modernism was against
• By 1980, though, her reputation enjoys a revival, in large part because of women critics like Jane Tompkins
• They argue that Stowe deserves critical attention for several reasons including: the book’s popularity, the cultural work it tries to do, its influence on other writers, and Stowe’s contribution to domestic fiction
• At the same time, critics have also had a hard time with the racial politics of Uncle Tom’s Cabin and how it relies on stereotypes

Works Cited and Consulted:
Baym, Nina, editor.  The Norton Anthology of American Literature: Volume A.  NY: W.W. Norton and Company, 2003.
Lauter, Paul, Editor.  The Heath Anthology of American Literature: Volume A.  Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006.