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The Power of Uncle Tom’s Cabin Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, has had a tremendous impact on American culture, both then and now. It is still considered a controversial novel, and many secondary schools have banned it from their libraries. What makes it such a controversial novel? One reason would have been that the novel is full of melodrama, and many people considered it a caricature of the truth. Others said that she did not show the horror of slavery enough, that she showed the softer side of it throughout most of her novel. Regardless of the varying opinions of its readers, it is obvious that its impact was large.
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For instance many of the characters in the book have become the stereotypes of slavery in the South. An example of this is Uncle Tom himself, whose name was eventually degraded into a nickname for blacks who were too subservient to whites. He became the stereotype of the passive slave who would do anything his master told him, because it was his duty as a slave. However few remember how the strength of his faith was what allowed him to tolerate the horrors that were enacted upon him.
Another example of the stereotyping of Stowe’s characters is Aunt Chloe, Uncle Tom’s wife, and her children. Aunt Chloe is an excellent example because she has become the “Aunt Jemima” stereotype. She had a “round, black, shining face” and wore a checkered headscarf, and she worked in the kitchen, took care of the kitchen, and basically ran the household. Not to mention for many years black children were still stereotyped as mischievous like Mose, Pete, and, later in the novel, Topsy.
Even the slave owners and traders are stereotypes now. Mr. Shelby and his wife have become the “gentlemen and lady” slave holders, who see themselves as good Christian people and attempt to take good care of their slaves, but still don’t see black people as equal to whites. Simon Legree has become the stereotypical cruel master, who let his estate go to hell, but continued to work his slaves too hard and beat them senseless (or, in Tom’s and other’s cases, to death) when they did not behave as he thought they should.
However there are other ways this novel has been influential to American culture. After its publishing it helped spread the ideas of the abolitionist movement.
