Religious Consciousness of Uncle Tom’s Cabin--论文代写范文

51Due论文代写平台assignment代写范文:“Religious Consciousness of Uncle Tom’s Cabin”，这篇论文主要描述的是在托斯夫人的《汤姆叔叔的小屋：卑贱者的生活》小说当中，描述了奴隶制度对于社会进步的危害，也正是这一部小说加快了美国奴隶制度的崩溃，对于美国社会历史的进步具有很大的贡献，文中所包含对于奴隶制度的描述和批判都是非常重要的，这部小说也包含着一些宗教色彩，是一部非常有历史意义的小说作品。

Uncle Tom’s Cabin is the most important one of Mrs. Stowe’s works. To the collapse of American slavery, this novel made great contribution. Some people even think it changed the process of American history. For a long time, people have done myriad research on the significance of its anti-slavery function. The works of a certain writer are related to the society he lives in and his own background. Social conflicts and her Christian identity urged what Mrs. Stowe want to say with the novel are not only condemning slavery. Behind the obvious themes, she also paid attention to American society and religion. This thesis focuses on the obvious religious consciousness of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. With the application of the renowned Canadian literary critic Northrop Frye’s theory of archetype,  this thesis attempts to analyze various characters, like Tom, little Eva, in terms of Biblical archetype. Further more, this thesis will discuss Mrs. Stowe’s reconsideration of American society and her criticism on the southern church.

Contents

CHAPTER1 INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Mrs. Stowe’s Life and Her Major Works 1

1.2 The Background of Uncle Tom’s Cabin 2

1.3 A Brief Introduction to the Novel 2

1.4 Literature Review 3

CHAPTER2 THE THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVE -NORTHROP FRYE’S THEORY OF ARCHETYPE 5

CHAPTER3 CHARACTERS IN THE NOVEL 7

3.1 Uncle Tom—a True Black Christian, Jesus Christ with Black Skin 7

3.2 Evangeline St. Clare --- an Evangelist, the OnlyTrue White Christian 8

3.3 Sambo, Qimbo and George Harris ---Those Once Lost Souls 9

3.4 Eliza –-the Most Fortunate and Beloved Woman 9

CHAPTER4 MRS. STOWE’S RECONSIDERATION OF AMERICAN SOCIETY AND CRITICISM ON “RELIGION” 11

CHAPTER5 INFLUENCE OF THIS NOVEL 13

5.1 Crisis of Christianity Reflected by the Novel 13

5.2 Its Influence on the Liberation of the Blacks: from Slaves to the President 13

CHAPTER6 CONCLUSION 15

REFERENCES 16

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 17

Chapter 1 Introduction

1.1 Mrs. Stowe’s Life and Her Major Works

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811—1896), a 19th century female novelist and abolitionist, was born in a family of religion at Litchfield, Connecticut on the 14th of June 1811. Her father, Lyman Beecher was one of America’s most celebrated clergymen and the principal spokesman for Calvinism in the 19th century. Her father dedicated his life to his religion and to helping others. Her mother was a woman of prayer who died when Harriet was four years old. The community in which she spent her childhood was one of the most intellectual in New England. Stowe received her formal education at Hartford Female Seminary. The school had been opened and operated by Stowe's sister, Catharine Beecher. Stowe was fond of reading and began to write when she was 9 years old. After graduating, Stowe became a teacher at the seminary. In 1832, the Beecher family moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, where Lyman Beecher had accepted a position as president of Lane Theological Seminary. Harriet accompanied her father. While in Cincinnati, she met Calvin Stowe, a professor at the seminary. The two people fell in love and later were married. Naturally, a woman with such dominant Christian background is doomed to be a pious Christian. She had her own deep understanding of the Bible and the Bible or God guided her thoughts and deeds all through her life.

Without doubt, among Mrs. Stowe’s works the most famous novel was Uncle Tom's Cabin.  As a woman of letters, she made great achievements and her works are far more than Uncle Tom’s Cabin. In 1843 she published The Mayflower, a collection of tales and sketches. In Brunswick, Maine, she wrote for serial publication in The National Era, an anti-slavery paper of Washington, DC, the story of "Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life among the Lowly." The publication in book form (1852) was a factor which must be reckoned in summing up the moving causes of the war for the Union. The book sprang into unexampled popularity, and was translated into at least twenty-three languages. Mrs. Stowe used the reputation thus won in promoting a moral and religious enmity to slavery. She reinforced her story with A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin. In 1856 she published Dred; a Tale of the Dismal Swamp, in which she threw the weight of her argument on the deterioration of a society resting on a slave basis. The establishment of The Atlantic Monthly in 1857 gave her a constant vehicle for her writings, he wrote ten novels, of which The Minister's Wooing (1859) and Old Town Folks (1869) are the most popular.

Mrs. Stowe other works include The Pearl of Orr's Island (1862), Men of Our Times (1868), Little Pussy Willow (1870), My Wife and I (1871), Pink and White Tyranny (1871), Woman in Sacred History (1873), Palmetto-Leaves (1873), We and Our Neighbors (1875), Poganuc People (1878), The Poor Life (1890).

Among her works, Uncle Tom’s Cabin is the greatest and has the highest historical status. Uncle Tom's Cabin was the best-selling novel of the 19th century and the second best-selling book of that century, following the Bible. [1]

1.2 The Background of Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Mrs. Stowe passed eighteen years in Cincinnati under conditions which constantly thrust the problem of human slavery upon her attention. Cincinnati is near Ohio, which still advocated slavery in the 19th century.  The two states are only separated by a river.  Slaves were continually escaping from their masters, and were harbored, on their way to Canada, by the circle in which Mrs. Stowe lived. Since the middle of 19th century American racial problem became more and more serious. Slavery lied in the central of racial problem. In Cincinnati Mrs. Stowe witnessed many tragedies caused by slavery. The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 was an immediate cause of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. If this law was put into effect, running slavers should be caught and returned to their “owners”. Nearly all people of Justice adopted various means to fight against the law. Mrs. Stowe was not an exception. As a pious Christian, she treated fighting with slavery as her responsibility and her relatives also encouraged her to “write something to show how evil slavery is”.

Partly, Stowe was inspired to create Uncle Tom's Cabin by the autobiography of Josiah Henson, a black man who lived and worked on a tobacco plantation in North Bethesda, Maryland. Henson escaped slavery in 1830 by fleeing to the Province of Upper Canada (now Ontario), where he helped other fugitive slaves arrive and become self-sufficient, and where he wrote his memoirs. Stowe evidently acknowledged that Henson's writings inspired Uncle Tom's Cabin.

In 1851, Uncle Tom's Cabin first appeared as a 40-week serial in National Era, an abolitionist periodical.  Because of the story's popularity, the publisher contacted Stowe about turning the serial into a book. The publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin (At that time, it was called “Uncle Tom’s Cabin or the Man that Was a Thing”) was a great success.  Just in Britain, one million copies were sold. Mrs. Stowe and her book became world-famous. Mrs. Stowe was equal to the spokeswoman of anti-slavery force.  This novel also greatly promoted the liberation of slavers and speeded up the collapse of slavery.  Even President Abraham Lincoln is said to have remarked when meeting Mrs. Stowe for the first time in the White House “So you are the little woman who started this Great War!”

1.3 A Brief Introduction to the Novel

Tom was a slave of Mr. Shelby who was a slaveholder in Kentucky. Once Mr. Shelby was encumbered by debt, he decided to sell Tom and another female slave and her son. Knowing the news, Eliza and her son ran away immediately but Tom would stay to be sold to Haley－ a slaver. As a result, he was sold to New Orleans by Haley.

On board the boat bound for New Orleans, Tom saved the life of young Eva.   St. Clare, Eva’s father, purchased Tom with gratitude. In St. Clare’s home, Tom lived a happy life for two years. Eva and he became good friends. But after Eva and her father’s death, Tom’s fate was changed again. He was sent by Eva’s mother to an auction market to sell. Tom was bought by a slaveholder named Legree. Legree was cruel to slaves and addicted to alcohol. At last, when Tom protected two female slaves from being captured, he was beaten to death viciously by Legree. When he was dying, his former master’s son－George Shelby got the plantation and bought Tom’s body with huge wealth.

At the same time, Eliza and her son met her husband－George Harris, who disguised himself as a Spaniard and brought a gun with himself. He shot a chaser on his way to Canada. At last, he and his family got together in the Canada----a free country.

1.4 Literature Review

As the first widely read political novel in the United States, Uncle Tom's Cabin greatly influenced development of not only American literature but also protest literature in general. Later books which owe a large debt to Uncle Tom's Cabin include The Jungle by Upton Sinclair and Silent Spring by Rachel Carson.

Many critics have praised the novel. Edmund Wilson stated that "To expose oneself in maturity to Uncle Tom's Cabin may … prove a startling experience." Jane Tompkins states that the novel is one of the classics of American literature and wonders if many literary critics aren't dismissing the book because it was simply too popular during its day.

Over the years scholars have postulated a number of theories about what Stowe was trying to say with the novel. For example, as an ardent Christian and active abolitionist, Stowe placed many of her religion's beliefs into the novel. [3] Some scholars have stated that Stowe saw her novel as offering a solution to the moral and political dilemma that troubled many slavery opponents: whether engaging in prohibited behavior was justified in opposing evil. Was the use of violence to oppose the violence of slavery and the breaking of proslavery laws morally defensible? Which of Stowe's characters should be emulated, the passive Uncle Tom or the defiant George Harris? [4] Stowe's solution was similar to Ralph Waldo Emerson's: God's will would be followed if each person sincerely examined his principles and acted on them.

Scholars have also seen the novel as expressing the values and ideas of the Free Will Movement. In this view, the character of George Harris embodies the principles of free labor, while the complex character of Ophelia represents those Northerners who condoned compromise with slavery. In contrast to Ophelia is Dinah, who operates on passion. During the course of the novel Ophelia is transformed, just as the Republican Party (three years later) proclaimed that the North must transform itself and stand up for its antislavery principles.[5]

Ironically, in the 20th century the novel has also been dismissed by a number of literary critics as "merely a sentimental novel,” while critic George Whicher stated in his Literary History of the United States that "Nothing attributable to Mrs. Stowe or her handiwork can account for the novel's enormous vogue; its author's resources as a purveyor of Sunday-school fiction were not remarkable. She had at most a ready command of broadly conceived melodrama, humor, and pathos, and of these popular cements she compounded her book."

Stowe's moral and theological views and domestic discourse were accepted as being progressive in the nineteenth century. It is ironic that in the twentieth century, she has come to exemplify both impotent white liberalism and the source of racist preconceptions about African Americans. [6]

Chapter2 The Theoretical Perspective -Northrop Frye’s Theory of Archetype

In Greek, ‘arch’ means ‘first’, ‘typos’ means ‘form’ or ‘type’. So, ‘archetype’ means first type/form or original type/form. In the theories of Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961), archetypes are primordial mythic forms that embody psychological drives and forces that originate in the collective unconscious. For the Canadian literary critic Northrop Frye (1912-1991), archetypes are the socially-concerned organizing forms and patterns of literature that originate in myth and which unify and reveal literature as an imaginatively-inhabitable world. His great work, such as The Secular Scripture (1976), The Great Code (1982) and Words with Power (1990) all center on the study of the Bible. In Frye’s system, the organizing principles that give literature coherence and structure are derived from the archetypal imagery found in the Bible and the myths of ancient Greece. He suggests that all literature is based on displacements of these myths. Archetypal criticism focused on characters, images, symbols, metaphors, plots, events and themes. [7]

In Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the Bible was mentioned more than 70 times. Mrs. Stowe quoted many sentences from the Bible and almost all the people of the justice side are pious Christians. So some critics even think it is a novel of religion. Without doubt, her strong religious background brought deep religious consciousness to her novel. Christian spirit also acts as an important reason of the great success of this book. The moral spirit out of Christian charity and humanity advocated by Uncle Tom’s Cabin has the greatest impact.

The Civil War awarded slaves the identities of free citizen. But in reality, they were still slaves. American society crawled towards racial equality in 19th and the first half of the 20th century. The situation changed greatly in the 1960s through the Civil Rights Movement led by Martin Luther King. Racialism was struck and since then America had been moving from segregation.

Chapter 6 Conclusion

Religious consciousness is a unique element of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Christianity played the most important role in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s writing which inevitably influenced greatly the portraiture of characters in Uncle Tom’s Cabin and also Mrs. Stowe’s own solution to slavery and her attitudes towards some social phenomenon. Through these characters, through their deeds and experience, Mrs. Stowe shows us the evil of slavery and the spirit of Christianity. The author of this thesis intends to interpret Uncle Tom’s Cabin from the perspective of religious consciousness instead of anti-slavery to show a new outlook on it. Christianity is an indispensable part of western cultures and an important element in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, it is still so powerful in western world, but most Chinese readers are not familiar with it. So the author in this thesis hopes to help Chinese readers appreciate it better more through the discussion about religious consciousness in it. And more important, this thesis makes discussion of what Mrs. Stowe was trying to say with the novel. Aside from the obvious themes, like condemning slavery, Mrs. Stowe also wanted to express her satire and criticism on American society.

People never forget President Lincoln’ great sacrifice and contribution to the emancipation of slaves. We should also remember Mrs. Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin for it “started the war” and we have learned a lot from the novel, about American society of 19th century and religion. The blacks are not helpless and hopeless any more, the former Uncle “Toms” are becoming lawyers, scientists, professors and even president-President Obama. That is exactly Mrs. Stowe’s dream: blacks and whites are equally talented and both are God’s chosen people.

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