iii. Sambo&Qimbo
Sambo and Qimbo, Simon Legree's two cruel henchmen, are obviously the images of the two criminals taken from the Bible who are crucified at the same time beside Jesus Christ when we see their roles in the process of Tom's death. With the command of Legree, these two flog Tom near to the point of death. Yet, Tom's forgiveness, patience and fortitude even moves these two villainous men, and they ask him who Jesus is that's been a standin" by him so, all this night (P.384). Then, Tom introduces Jesus Christ to them, and they are converted immediately. In the Bible, one criminal is also moved by Jesus and believes him, and his soul is saved at that moment. In fact, these two overseers take two different archetypes from the Bible, the one who flog Jesus Christ and the other who is saved through Jesus. So, Sambo and Qimbo possess two different roles at the same time.
iv. Eliza
The above four images-Tom, Eva, Sambo and Qimbo–are easy to find their respective archetypes in the Bible. Another more indirect one is Eliza who is like Israelites running away from Egypt where they are slaves to Canaan where they will have a new free happy life. Eliza's running is guided by God all the way, as Israelites are guided by God who appears "in the pillars of cloud and fire"8. Israelites' passing through the Red Sea which "was turned into dry land by strong east wind"9 is a miracle. So is Eliza's escape through jumping from one ice flow to another, which can't be done without the "strength such as God gives only to the desperate" (P.57). If we say the Ohio River is like the Red Sea, then the lake between America and Canada is like the river Jordan that lies between terrible wilderness and wonderful Canaan. I call the Ohio River the Red Sea, not the the river Jordan, because Eliza still has to endure many pains after her crossing of the Ohio River, just like Israelites still have to suffer much in the wilderness. While after crossing the lake, the land of freedom——Canada waits for her and her families. Eliza is an intriguing character. She is submissive to her master and mistress, yet her child's imminent danger and her desire for her child's freedom and well-being overrides her loyalty to them. Israelites betray Pharaoh for they also long for freedom and well-being.
v. Pious, Ideal Christian Mothers
A mother of seven children, Mrs. Stowe herself was a loving Christian mother. In Uncle Tom's Cabin, she depicted many pious, ideal Christian mothers, such as St.Clare's mother, Legree's mother, Mary Bird, Mrs. Shelby and Eliza etc. In essence, these respectable mothers are the ones that "by the 1850s in the America, middle-class ideology had elevated one image of woman—the home–loving woman, pleasing, conservative, and virtuous, a comfort and delight to her husband, an ideal to her children—into a national model"10. It is interesting to notice that these national models are quite the same with the "angels in the house" in England at the Victorian Age.
St. Clare's mother, in his words, "…was divine…there was no trace of any human weakness or error about her…"(P.208). Though gentle and submissive to her husband, she opposed the institution of slavery covertly by helping redress the wrongs done to the blacks and caring them. She also instills into St. Clare that every man, including niggers has spirit, thus greatly influences Clare's attitude towards slavery. Though St. Clare doesn't dare to break it, he loathes it and shows his sympathy for black people by indulging the slaves in his house.
Legree's mother is another virtuous, pious and forgiving mother. The only difference between she and St. Clare's mother is that she is heart-broken because her exhortations fall onto deaf ears and cold heart. Her hard-working nurture can't eradicate her son's vicious and tough nature. He not only disregards her admonitions, but also treats her cruelly. When she "in the last agony of her despair, knelt at his feet', he "spurned her from him, throw her senseless on the floor, and, with brutal curses, fled to his ship" (P.345).
Mary Bird, the Senator's wife, is "a timid, blushing, little woman of about four feet in height…she ruled more by entreating and persuasion than by command or argument…"(P.74). Such a gentle woman would be aroused to great indignity when talking about the slavery system. She even says courageously to her husband, "…and I'll break it, for one, the first time I get a chance; and I hope I shall have a chance, I do…"(P.75) when she hears her husband has just vote for the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. When Eliza and her son Harry appears on their doorsteps, she does get the chance and she does break it.
Mrs. Shelby, a kind-hearted woman who thought by kindness, and care, and instruction, she could make the condition of hers better than freedom (P.33), at last believes the system "-a bitter, bitter, most accursed thing! -A curse to the master and a curse to the slave…"(P.33) when she found she couldn't protect her beloved slaves, Tom and Harry.
Eliza, an amiable, pious mother who doesn't want to disobey her master and mistress until her own son faces the danger of being sold. She opposes the system by action——running away from her once beloved "home".
A common trait among those loving, pious mothers is that they are all Christians and are all against the institution of slavery except it is not so obvious in the case of Legree's mother. To their soft hearts, slavery is too cruel a thing to be allowed to exist. It's against the Christian principle of loving one's neighbors. Besides opposing slavery, those mothers are often spiritual guiders for their sons and husbands. To St. Clare, his mother "was a direct embodiment and personification of the New Testament "(P.208). To Harris, when he turns away from God, his wife is always the one whose "gentle sprit ever restores him" (P.402).
In fact, all the characters in Uncle Tom's Cabin can be put into four categories: perfect Christians, imperfect Christians, half-Christians and non-Christians. Tom and Eva are those rare real Christians or perfect Christians who really live up to the principles of the Bible. Imperfect Christians include those like Mrs. Shelby and Miss Ophelia etc. They believe God, but their selfishness or hypocrisy prevents them from being good Christians. For example, Mrs. Shelby rationalizes her actions by "gild(ing) it over" with "kindness and care" (P.33). She is angry about her husband's sale of Tom and Harris because she doesn't know how she can ever hold up her head again among them (P.32). Miss Ophelia, though has missionary zeal, dares not to tough Topsy, the slave girl she is reforming for she still has the sense of white superiority at the bottom of her heart. There are also some half-Christians or going-to-be Christians, such as St. Clare and Gorge Harris. St. Clare is always skeptical towards religion and doesn't believe God until his daughters and his own deaths. Harris is another example. He is rebellious at first, but when his family reunion comes to a reality, he becomes more content and comes nearer to God. While Simon Legree is a typical example of non-Christian whose tough nature refuse to be touched by any good word. He doesn't repent even at his last minute. This kind of categorizing might be oversimplifying. Yet, this is a pattern that I found in Uncle Tom's Cabin. So in this sense, Uncle Tom's Cabin is a book soaked with spirit of Christianity.
III. Mrs. Stowe's Solution to Slavery Now, let's come to the question of Mrs. Stowe's way of solving slavery. "So you are the little woman who started this Great War!" Abraham Lincoln is said to have remarked when meeting Harriet Beecher Stowe for the first time in the White House. When in a small hotel George Harris says to Mr. Wilson, "I'll fight for my liberty to the last breath I breath. You say your fathers did it; if it was right for them, it is right for me" (P.106), it seems that the author Mrs. Stowe herself agreed with George. Then does this mean Mrs. Stowe advocated slaves to fight for their freedom through violence? Or the aim of her writing the book was to spark the Civil War? We are almost temped to say "yes" to both questions with the two "evidences" cited above if we do not exam the whole book thoroughly. First, let's not forget that Mrs. Stowe herself was a devout Christian who wouldn't advocate any form of violence. Second, we should notice that Mr. Wilson advised Harris he'd better not shoot (P.106). Third, we should also notice that Mr. Simeon, the fervent Quaker, regards fighting with flesh as a temptation though he believes Harris has the right to do it. In fact, Harris himself would rather "…be let alone-to go peacefully out of it [America]"(P.106). So, in the case of George Harris, Mrs. Stowe only advocated limited passive resistance when the law of sacred family bond was violated by the system of slavery. But on the whole, she held with the view of nonviolent resistance. To be specific, she praised slaves' spiritual and moral victory over slavery which can be seen from her most carefully portrayed protagonist Tom, a pious, submissive Christian, who was her ideal black. Moreover, for Mrs. Stowe, the solution to slavery lied mainly in the white, not in the black, which, of course, is rather absurd. By informing her white fellowmen of the evils of slavery, she wanted the Southern slave owners to free slaves voluntarily through Christian love, just as George Shelby does. Of course, this childish, utopian idea can't come to true for the economy of South is based on the slavery system. Those plantation owners couldn't give up their property voluntarily, could they? She also wanted Northerners, especially the Church of the North to shoulder the responsibility of educating those future freed men. It is clearly shown in the Concluding Remarks, which goes like this, "…receive them to the educating advantages of Christian republican society and schools…"(P.412). So she didn't praise violent way of liberating slaves and didn't intend to spark the war between the South and the North, rather, she gave her readers her own solution to this problem. But her way of liberating slaves and saving the Union failed when the Civil War broke out.
Conclusion
To sum up, Christianity played a very important role in Harriet Beecher Stowe's wring which inevitably influenced greatly the portraiture of characters in Uncle Tom's Cabin and also Mrs. Stowe's own solution to slavery. The author of this thesis intends to interpret Uncle Tom's Cabin in the light of Christianity rather than anti-slavery and feminism to show a new outlook of it. Christianity is an indispensable part of western cultures and an important element in Uncle Tom's Cabin, yet most Chinese readers are not familiar with it. So the author in this thesis hopes to help Chinese readers appreciate it better by informing them more about Christianity in it.
