Approaches to Teaching Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin

• Published in: Legacy 2001, Vol.18 (1), p.111-112
• Main Author: Rosenthal, Debra J.
• Format: Review
• Language: English
• Subjects: Beecher, Catharine (1800-78); Child, Lydia Maria Francis (1802-1880); Children; History; Literature; Nonfiction; Novels; Political factors; Rhetoric; Stowe, Harriet Beecher (1811-1896); Teaching methods; Tone; Writing instruction
• ISSN: 0748-4321; 1534-0643; 1534-0643
• DOI: 10.1353/leg.2001.0014

In the opening essay, editor [Susan Belasco] addresses the historical context of [Harriet Beecher Stowe]'s composition of Uncle Tom's Cabin, arguing that "[h]elping students understand Stowe's central position in the literary marketplace of the nineteenth-century [sic], as well as the rich historical, political, social, and literary context of the novel, is a useful first step toward meaningful discussion of the complex moral questions that it so effectively raises" (21-22). This wide-ranging essay effectively sets the tone for the subsequent five essays. For example, Susan Nuernburg examines controversial fictional representations of race. Some of the usual suspects appear: Catharine Beecher and Lydia Maria Child's domestic works figure prominently in Lisa Logan's insightful essay, which models useful ways of posing questions to students about the text's reliance on the cult of true womanhood. Because the religious aspect of Uncle Tom's Cabin is so central, Stephen R. Yarbrough and Sylvan Allan study Stowe's religious rhetoric to show how she is both reactionary and radical in her goal to save black and white souls. Editor [Elizabeth Ammons]'s essay teaches strategies for understanding colonization and imperialism in relation to Stowe and her novel, while Paul C. Gutjahr shows us that the novel's manufacture and marketing influence how we read it.