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A review by selfmythologies
Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
3.0
(im going through some books i read this year which i still havent reviewed and this is one of them)
I find this book hard to rate for the simple reason that it's undeniably flawed (even more so from a modern perspective), and there are things about it that outright annoy me - mostly the promotion and glorification of religion, and the direct appeals to the reader ('wow reader do you see that im making a point? just in case it wasnt clear im going to directly spell it out for you. im making a point!!!'), and yet....I still actually liked it? kinda?
The thing is...all of these flaws are somehow tied to the purpose of the book - it wasnt written #for the aesthetics but with a real political goal - to change people's minds about slavery, so everything in it is tied to its target audience, which is, well, white people. Sooooo.
As a direct or most likely indirect consequence of that, the white characters in this book are allowed to be all sorts of shades of grey - from the role model Good Slaveowners (whats a good slaveowner, anyway?), to the morally conflicted to the downright cruel. which is in itself quite interesting, except that the black characters arent allowed that complexity, theyre either pacifistic ideal Christians like Tom , or theyre bad people that can be turned good by Good Christian Education. its all very....hm. one-sided and kind of a bit embarrassing to read.
but, i mean, all of those points (and more) have been made countless times before by others. theyre undoubtedly true. and lets be real, you kinda expect it going into this book from the 1850s, and....not written by a POC. why did i still kinda like it?
well, for once, it's actually pretty engaging. sure, all of the characters are a bit too visibly constructed (to teach some sort of lesson), and the moral lessons to the readers are exhausting, but the story itself is interesting and heartfelt enough to keep you hooked. (maybe thats actually a point of criticism. i guess a book about slavery shouldnt be enjoyable to read. it should make you feel disgusted and angry, if it truly wants to achieve something, i guess. hm.)
anyway....it also happens to have a character that i really enjoyed and whose character development was quite amazing. It was Augustine St Clare - he's maybe the most morally ambiguous character (and you know how i love those! theyre my sons and daughters! all of them!) - he is against slavery himself but he doesnt actually ...do anything against it. it's the kind of attitude that most people have towards things we all know are wrong - we tell people it's wrong when we're asked, but we don't actually go out of our own way and our own comfortable lives to change it. And St Clare is like that....He's a fun and free spirited person, and a good father, and he actually has a good moral compass but he's kind of avoidant about topics that require strong opinions. I found him to be the most realistic and interesting character because he's genuinely likeable, but you also want to give him a kick in the ass constantly and be like 'come on!! be the good person we all know you can be!! stand up for the things you believe in !!'
Now, he's also sceptical about religion and i knew this would get resolved somehow because this book is the purest Christian propaganda, but his critcism was actually spot on and I enjoyed it immensely.
The other character I really liked was George. Because he was angry. He was the only nonwhite character who was allowed to be rightfully angry by the narrative instead of #forgiveness is the only way to heaven stuff. of course that gets resolved by the end as well (and its not like he doesnt deserve his happiness! i was actually quite content with how it was handled). And additionally, that guy is intelligent as hell. I think he was the one who raised the point about slavery and capitalism? I don't quite remember.
But that was the other thing i liked about the book thematically: It discussed hypocrisy. Like the idea that the British were better than the Americans bc they didnt have slavery (instead they had imperialism. ya, no one has the moral ground here), and there was that one paragraph that i dont remember entirely but loved, about how all of it ties back to the same roots of capitalism. (Marx wouldve been proud lmao). But also the hypocrisy of the northern states, thinking themselves #better than the Southerners but actually not treating POC like humans either, preferring to keep them as far away from themselves as possible ('what we dont see doesnt concern us!')
So that was actually nice. overall i probably still wouldnt recommend this book wholeheartedly but it was quite insightful. if you know what youre going into, you can get something out of it for sure!
I find this book hard to rate for the simple reason that it's undeniably flawed (even more so from a modern perspective), and there are things about it that outright annoy me - mostly the promotion and glorification of religion, and the direct appeals to the reader ('wow reader do you see that im making a point? just in case it wasnt clear im going to directly spell it out for you. im making a point!!!'), and yet....I still actually liked it? kinda?
The thing is...all of these flaws are somehow tied to the purpose of the book - it wasnt written #for the aesthetics but with a real political goal - to change people's minds about slavery, so everything in it is tied to its target audience, which is, well, white people. Sooooo.
As a direct or most likely indirect consequence of that, the white characters in this book are allowed to be all sorts of shades of grey - from the role model Good Slaveowners (whats a good slaveowner, anyway?), to the morally conflicted to the downright cruel. which is in itself quite interesting, except that the black characters arent allowed that complexity, theyre either pacifistic ideal Christians like Tom , or theyre bad people that can be turned good by Good Christian Education. its all very....hm. one-sided and kind of a bit embarrassing to read.
but, i mean, all of those points (and more) have been made countless times before by others. theyre undoubtedly true. and lets be real, you kinda expect it going into this book from the 1850s, and....not written by a POC. why did i still kinda like it?
well, for once, it's actually pretty engaging. sure, all of the characters are a bit too visibly constructed (to teach some sort of lesson), and the moral lessons to the readers are exhausting, but the story itself is interesting and heartfelt enough to keep you hooked. (maybe thats actually a point of criticism. i guess a book about slavery shouldnt be enjoyable to read. it should make you feel disgusted and angry, if it truly wants to achieve something, i guess. hm.)
anyway....it also happens to have a character that i really enjoyed and whose character development was quite amazing. It was Augustine St Clare - he's maybe the most morally ambiguous character (and you know how i love those! theyre my sons and daughters! all of them!) - he is against slavery himself but he doesnt actually ...do anything against it. it's the kind of attitude that most people have towards things we all know are wrong - we tell people it's wrong when we're asked, but we don't actually go out of our own way and our own comfortable lives to change it. And St Clare is like that....He's a fun and free spirited person, and a good father, and he actually has a good moral compass but he's kind of avoidant about topics that require strong opinions. I found him to be the most realistic and interesting character because he's genuinely likeable, but you also want to give him a kick in the ass constantly and be like 'come on!! be the good person we all know you can be!! stand up for the things you believe in !!'
Now, he's also sceptical about religion and i knew this would get resolved somehow because this book is the purest Christian propaganda, but his critcism was actually spot on and I enjoyed it immensely.
The other character I really liked was George. Because he was angry. He was the only nonwhite character who was allowed to be rightfully angry by the narrative instead of #forgiveness is the only way to heaven stuff. of course that gets resolved by the end as well (and its not like he doesnt deserve his happiness! i was actually quite content with how it was handled). And additionally, that guy is intelligent as hell. I think he was the one who raised the point about slavery and capitalism? I don't quite remember.
But that was the other thing i liked about the book thematically: It discussed hypocrisy. Like the idea that the British were better than the Americans bc they didnt have slavery (instead they had imperialism. ya, no one has the moral ground here), and there was that one paragraph that i dont remember entirely but loved, about how all of it ties back to the same roots of capitalism. (Marx wouldve been proud lmao). But also the hypocrisy of the northern states, thinking themselves #better than the Southerners but actually not treating POC like humans either, preferring to keep them as far away from themselves as possible ('what we dont see doesnt concern us!')
So that was actually nice. overall i probably still wouldnt recommend this book wholeheartedly but it was quite insightful. if you know what youre going into, you can get something out of it for sure!