Uncle Tom's Cabin: Christianity, Slavery & Women's Revolution - Essay Sample

Introduction

Slavery of the 19th century lacked moral values resulting in mistreatment, abuse, and violence, among other unjust deeds against the slaves; hence the conflict between Christianity and slavery is well represented. As the African-Americans got sold from one slave owner to another, they met a variety of challenges that contributed to their suffering and pain. Uncle Tom's Cabin played a significant role in women's revolution against slavery. The slaves found solace and strength in the church, and through their faith, they managed to face the challenges daily. The African-Americans faced violence, racism, women were brutally beaten and violated, families were separated, and they contrasted their religions with their masters.

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Harriet Stowe wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin as her first book, and yet it got so famous. Uncle Tom's Cabin has become quite influential today among Africans and Americans. On the other hand, Martin Delany also wrote the hit book Blake or Huts Of America in bits. Stowe intended to creatively transmit and help abolish slavery within the society she lived in. At the time, slave articles became more popular as the new genre in America (Burduck, 2016). Stowe intended to change the perspective of her readers and the society at large. She communicated the suffering and the injustice faced by the African-American slaves in the hands of their masters. On the other hand, Blake was a slave in the Franks plantation, where he began his revolution against slavery. Despite being a free man, the slave owner disregarded that and treated him like any other slave; he got separated from his wife Maggie, who got sold. Blake incited others to go against slavery and later was sold into slavery, where he managed to escape (Halpern, 2017). He reunited with his wife but did not stay with her; instead, he went back home from Cuba to the West Indies.

Stowe represented the issue of slavery as a horrifying situation the African-Americans underwent. Due to the pain and suffering the slaves were experiencing, Tom and most of the female characters struggle to cope. Most importantly, they lost their families as a result, either to slavery or death. Before the world's revolutionary war, the abolitionist and the feminist used the book to end slavery. The wives and mothers struggled with the idea of their children being sold into slavery and having to kill their children or separated from them like Cassy's case. The slaves suffered in pain under the white supremacy, being tortured and made to withstand atrocious living situations while they were still attending their owners (Boutelle, 2016). The slaves had only God, their salvation, who they believed could guide them into a better life where they could no longer be slaves-believing in God, the white masters contrasted with their religion like Tom, who ended up being killed.

The slaves suffered as they were forced to work for their masters in plantations and homes against their will. Whenever they questioned anything done wrong, their masters felt angered and punished them with violence and cruelty. In Delany's Blake, a small ten-year-old boy is forced to perform a parlor trick for the plantation owners, and when he tried to protest, he was brutally whipped and eventually died (Springs, 2015). Women and children faced mistreatment and abuse form plantation owners. Henry, who was not afraid of then, angered his master intentionally and steered up the protest against the auctioning of slaves and found himself getting sold. Delany depicted Blake as an influential intellectual, militant who caused a revolutionary because he knew it was wrong and dared to do it compared to his counterparts in the plantation who suffered because they were afraid to say or do anything to anger their masters.

In Uncle Tom's Cabin, Stowe criticized the materialistic value of slaves, which was against the moral values taught in Christianity. The people suffered in pain as their masters objected to them rather than seeing them as human beings. The masters owned them as properties and felt they were inferior to them. Tom, did not accept being someone's property, and therefore he tried his best to become more intelligent by reading, and in the end, he died to obtain the freedom of other slaves (Boutelle, 2016). Despite Stowe agreeing that suffering was a purifying spiritual process, she was against slavery since it caused bitterness, anguish, and exile from Christin's beliefs.

The people underwent physical suffering, mistreatment, and cruelty under their masters. Stowe depicted all the different ways the slaves suffered. At the beginning of the story, due to debt Arthur Shelby, the Kentucky farmer forfeited his farm and was forced to sell his slaves, Tom and Eliza, against his will. Eliza ran away but was hunted down, while Tom was sold and sailed to Mississippi. Stowe wrote: "Oh! Mamma, slavery is the most cursed thing in the world!" Stowe, in an attempt to be fair, in chapter one of her novel, there is the mildest form of slavery (Springs, 2015). She depicted Tom as saintly and dignified, which created room for affection between the slaves and their master, St. Claire. Tom saved Little Eva since that is what he believed to be the right thing to do as a Christian. As a result, St. Clair, a slave owner, acquired Tom who became an acquaintance to Eva, although the health of Eva deteriorated, and finally, she died. She asked her father to give liberty to all his slaves(Davis & Mihaylova, 2020). Augustine St. Claire planned to fulfill her daughter's wishes, but he was murdered, and the ruthless Simon Legree became the new proprietor of Tom.

Simon Legree was against the Christianity faith the slaves upheld unto and he used it against some of the slaves like Tom. The slaves experience a lot of suffering as depicted by Delany Martin's Blake. Tom was given an order by Legree to whip his fellow slaves, and when he refused, he was viciously beaten, and Legree resolved to crush his faith. The Christianity faith was the only thing that the slaves had in the hands of their masters. It gave them the strength to keep working for their masters. The slaves who do not listen were crushed down spiritually by their masters. In the plantation, Tom encountered Cassy, a slave to Legree, who was detached from her son and daughter. The African-Americans who were owned as slaves suffered in pain from the separation they encountered from their families. The masters lacked empathy when they had these slaves separated from their families but rather made them work tirelessly.

The strong Christians like Tom despite being treated with cruelty, they continued to believe in God and hope that one day they will be saved from slavery and be free. Stowe used the book to incite the people who are against slavery to help abolish it, especially in South America, where slavery was predominant (Springs, 2015). She hoped that the readers could empathize with the suffering slaves and take the concrete actions to relieve their suffering. Some of the slaves would rather kill their children than enduring to see them being taken into slavery. Cassy, Legree's slave, did kill her third child to prevent her from being taken into slavery since two of her children had been forcefully taken.

Tom Loker returned changed after he was treated by the Quakers, the African American slaves. While some slaves George, Eliza, and Harry managed to escape to Canada where they obtain their freedom, Tom was still in slavery in Louisiana, succumbing to hopelessness. He felt that God was testing his faith through the plantation hardships but still kept hoping for the best. When Tom attempted to help Cassy and Emmeline to escape, Legree got angry and ordered for his death. Legree's overseers beat him to death. Stowe represented the African-Americans' suffering during slavery in the 19th century who suffered physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. From Uncle Tom's Cabin, the slaves suffered brutal whippings and beatings, were raped and sexually violated, and some even murdered when they did not heed to their masters.

Viscerally they were separated from their families and their human spirits degraded. Death was quite predominant among the slaves; a mother kills herself and her child rather than allowing their master to sell them apart. The families underwent horror and trauma of being separated, they were deprived of children or sometimes forced to watch them die. In Prue's case, she was forced to lose her baby. She was whipped to death for being drunk regularly despite her reasons being due to the loss of her baby. Stowe did not represent slavery accurately but gave a depiction of what was happening then. She wanted to be fair to both the slave and the masters. She could have left some content out to protect the masters so as not to portray them as being vicious throughout the novel.

Just like Uncle Tom's Cabin, among other anti-slavery articles, Blake was forcibly separated from his family and taken into slavery. Henry marries Maggie, who was later sold by her father because she refused his sexual advances. Henry was born free to wealthy West Indies tobacco planters, although he found himself in slavery due to confusion in the ship carrying slaves instead of fighters. Blake's protest in the ship ends up in vain and he was sold into slavery to Frank. In the plantation, he met Maggie, married her, and had a son. Slavery separated the families, making them undergo agony. The plantation owners did not like to see any slave being treated with familiarity. Mrs. Ballard watched as Mrs. Frank touched her maid's hair, Maggie with care, and sets it in place nicely. Mrs. Ballard found the incident quite unusual, and there was an air of hauteur in the maid's demeanor. Mrs. Ballard told Colonel Frank, who agreed with her, and charged her with being disobedient and unruly. Maggie, Henry's wife, got sold to another slave owner, which angered Henry leaving him in distraught.

Henry was an educated slave, managed to talk and interview other slaves about their living conditions. In both Uncle Tom's Cabin and Delany's Blake, the slaves are living in worse conditions except a few who fell into the hands of good masters like St. Claire. As a result, Henry sought to help the slaves. The slaves had been promised to be set free during the American revolution of 1775-1783 but were still in slavery in North Caroline and Virginia (Brittan, 2019). Being intellectual, he planned a huge revolution to trusted slaves in each state, unlike in Uncle Tom's Cabin, who did it in small groups. The slaves managed to escape to Canada from Frank's plantation. Being separated from his family had still antagonized him and many other slaves. Henry tries to locate Maggie, helps her buy her freedom, and reunites with his cousin Placido.

Henry plans to help the suffering Africans in slavery return back home but is faced with challenges. There is a revolutionary cause in which an Army of the Emancipation of the oppressed men women of Cuba. Women and men kept being oppressed by their masters against their will. The people had no say in what was happening in their lives, but their masters dictated everything (Halpern, 2017). Both Uncle Tom's Cabin and Blake did adequately represent or portray what was happening but still manages to give a hint of what happened during the slavery period.

Significance of the Slaves' Suffering and Pain in Uncle Tom's Cabin and Blake

Even though the slaves were mistreated with cruelty and violence and suffered a lot, their humanity remained sane thanks to the support they received from the new families they formed and friends and religion, although some masters were against it. Slavery was a dehumani...