Significance Of Mother-Love In Uncle Tom's Cabin Essay Example

Harriet Beecher Stowe always believed that the entire American race should look up to mothers as an example, and that only women could save America from slavery. Perhaps that is why novel is overflowing with mothers, including many major and minor characters, such as Aunt Chloe, Cassy, Eliza, Madame de Thoux, Marie St. Clare, Mrs. Bird, and Mrs. Shelby. Even the unmarried Miss Ophelia becomes somewhat of a surrogate mother to her slave Topsy. The deceased mothers of Augustine St. Clare and Simon Legree are also frequently mentioned in the novel. Even Stowe was a mother and after lost her son to cholera, got inspired to write about slavery. It is obvious that Stowe focuses on maternal affection, but in order to understand it, it becomes necessary to examine slavery as a patriarchal institution.
Considering the fact that Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” is a 19th century sentimental novel, so its readers were white northern women, a majority of whom were most likely mothers. However, in the 19th century, slave owners in the South were regarded as fathers of their household of slaves. It is quite patronizing that these slave owners were considered patriarchs, responsible for caring and providing for the childlike servants in their plantation.
It is notable that Tom, who is actually an older man, is frequently referred to as “boy” by St. Clare. Treating slaves as if they are children is not only insulting; juxtaposing the master-slave relationship with a father-child relationship actually makes the institution of slavery appear positive or productive. Even when the liberation of the slaves is imagined by Stowe, she seems to be inclined toward the paternal care of the slave’s former masters in educating them for the world. Here, paternalism is source of affection, but it is also humiliating and patronizing, and it helps the slave owners maintain control.
Thus, Stowe responds to the patriarchal system of slavery in the South by setting up a network of motherly affection in her novel. The kindness and selfless love of a mother like Eliza becomes more powerful than the cruelty and hostility of men like Tom Loker. Moreover, Stowe suggests that white mothers in the north can support the cause of abolition through their influence by understanding the way in which black families are separated by slavery. Readers will probably realize that St. Clare would have most likely had a more active conscience had his mother not died when he still a child. Simon Legree would not have been so corrupted if he had submitted to the earnest appeals of his mother.
Within the novel, it is also reveal the pivotal role played by the affection of mothers in shaping the beliefs, personality and values of their sons. In “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” Stowe asserts that motherly love is sacred, which they demonstrate in pity, prayers and tenderness, but at the same time, mothers themselves are also agents of power. The way St. Clare reveres the attitude of his mother illustrates this quite well. St. Clare “revered and respected [his mother] above all living things” (Stowe). Similarly, Rachel Halliday's children reminisce how they always felt comforted by the sound of their mother’s rocking chair and associate their mother’s affection to that chair.
In “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” mothers have been portrayed by Harriet Beecher Stowe as bold, loving and virtuous women. It is arguable that it was because of the profound influence of such motherly affection or its lack thereof that shaped their sons into the men that they became as well as the beliefs, ideas and values that they possessed. Indirectly, the motherly affection of the women in Stowe’s novel influenced the decisions that affected the world surrounding them. Of course, with such a powerful influence, the motherly love becomes more significant in Stowe’s as a response to the patriarchal notion of slavery.