What Causes The Controversy Around Uncle Tom'S Cabin Today?

I first encountered ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ in many different places throughout my life. There was a worn copy on my grandma’s bookshelf, references to the novel in film adaptations that I had watched, and even a heated discussion about the novel in a classroom where it was part of the curriculum. Today’s controversy about the novel stems from a large gap between what the author, Harriet Beecher Stowe, was trying to do with the novel, and how readers and audiences have perceived the characters and language that Stowe used in the novel. While some readers see the novel as being negative towards the North and sympathizing too much with the South, many others have seen aspects of the novel as being problematic in terms of stereotyping, and sentimentality, as well as the way in which the religion of the main character is portrayed.

A huge portion of the controversy stems from how the title character, Uncle Tom, has been transformed into a cultural slur over the decades, being minimally and very poorly represented in a myriad of forms of media and in stage versions that rely heavily on the minstrelization of Black people. Much of the problem with Stowe’s work stems from the question of voice and the issue of authority and who should tell the stories of Black people. The holier-than-thou, somewhat uncomfortable religiosity in the novel as well as its undeniable melodrama are, for many readers, to be abhorred.

Reading Uncle Tom’s Cabin with context would also be wise. Reading it in conjunction with other primary sources such as the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass would help to understand other perspectives on the same time period by people of color. Also reading works written after Tom’s Cabin such as Beloved would help to understand how to give fair and balanced portrayal of the struggles of Black people throughout history. History should not be canceled but rather understood with all of its flaws in order to see how one book helped to shape our country’s conversation about slavery.

This is one of the most controversial works of American literature, and the reason for this controversy is often portrayed as a battle between historical context and modern values. The simple title of ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ does little to prepare the modern reader for the hail of controversy that surrounds the simple title of ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’, for the modern ear the name of “Uncle Tom” elicits a number of images ranging from anger to begrudging respect, but they are all unwelcome.

The novel also gives great insight into the intent of the writer versus the impact that the writing had on readers. As Stowe aimed to shock her readers into sympathetic action for the slaves, the book actually achieved some anti-slavery sentiment. However, in order to elicit a strong reaction from readers, she relied on some of the typical novelistic tropes of the time including the depiction of a passive suffering character who is granted Christian redemption. Thus, many recommend reading Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel of abolition in slave times along with other Black works of that time period as well as documents from the time in order to gain a fuller sense of the novel’s importance as well as why it is still so unpopular today.

My experience with online discussions became especially rocky when someone called another person an “Uncle Tom” and the thread quickly devolved. Now, the title of ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ and the central character of Uncle Tom elicit immediate revulsion as he has become a racial insult that has very little to do with the original intentions of the novel. Instead, most people have experienced the novel through less-than-flattering theatrical adaptations and racial stereotyping in comedy and films that reduced complex characters to a set of cartooned features. For the modern reader of harrowing scenes of the cruelties of slavery in ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ these caricatured representations of long-dead characters provide a painfully troublesome glimpse into the past that is offensive in large part because of the readers’ differing expectations of how its characters were portrayed.

So much of what critics find problematic in Uncle Tom’s Cabin today stems from Stowe’s white, Christian reformist perspective, and how her depiction of slaves and their former owners can sometimes be reduced to a white savior story or played out with a lot of sentimentalism, while Black people are given little to no agency in the story. Thus, many educators are now pairing Uncle Tom’s Cabin with a variety of other texts by Black authors, as well as with scholarly criticism of the novel.

Read a critical edition of the book, paired with a Black memoir or novel, to see how a historical relic gets transformed into a conversation piece about how stories travel. We can explore how a story changes along the way, and why it is important to pay attention to who is telling the stories of others.