A Stick of Dynamite

Two big questions today: 1) What are you doing about the holes in your education? and …

2 ) Are you on the right side of the defining issues of our times?

I heard an interview a little over a month ago on the Diane Rehm show with David Reynolds, a scholar who has written a new book about Harriet Beecher Stowe and Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Reynolds called Uncle Tom’s Cabin the most influential and important American novel ever written. After all, upon meeting Stowe, Abraham Lincoln supposedly said, “So this is the little lady who made this big war.”

I felt a pang of uneasiness listening to the interview because I’d managed to make it into my 5th decade without ever reading the book.

Not anymore. I finished it a few hours ago. There were a couple of surprises. First, I had always imagined Uncle Tom’s character would be like an “Uncle Tom,” a black person who kisses up to white people for favor. That is not true. Instead, Uncle Tom is a Christ-figure, someone who selflessly suffers for the good of others, both black and white. He is a model of non-violent resistance and every good thing about Christianity. The second surprise is the Christian message of the book. I was prepared for what Stowe would say about slavery. I was not prepared for what a mighty evangelical preachment the book would be. I imagine this frustrates as many readers as it inspires, but in the 1850’s I believe it was truly inspirational. She veers into overwrought sentimentality at times, especially in the account of the death of a child in the middle of the book. Apparently, she borrowed heavily from the melodramatic constructions of her British contemporary Charles Dickens, who has a child named Little Nell die in a similar manner in a serialized novel of his called The Old Curiosity Shop. Oscar Wilde, in referring to the Dickens work, said, “It would take a heart of stone not to laugh at the death of Little Nell,” and one tends to believe that applies to Beecher’s book, too.

But for all that – the sentimentality and evangelical fury, and even her misguided portrayals of black people as super-sensitive spiritual beings – Uncle Tom’s Cabin is a powerful book, a veritable stick of dynamite. What Stowe got right was her indictment of the system of slavery and how that system befouled both the North and the South. She correctly saw that it made no difference that there were nice and gentle slave owners – the morality of the individual people involved was inconsequential next to the evils of the system. Stowe felt she was divinely-inspired to write the book, and, while one might argue with the fervor of her theology, I’m led to think God did move her to write this book to help put an end to America’s original sin.

So back to my questions. The first is from my own awareness of the holes in my education. Oh, I’m sure you wonder how anyone who is a product of the Flint, Michigan Public Schools could say this. Be that as it may, what I’ve decided is to do something about it, rather than lament it. There’s nothing wrong with being self-educated. All you have to do is turn off whatever reality show is on and pick up something you know is a classic. The next hole in my education I plan to fill in is Middlemarch by George Eliot. How about you?

My second question comes from thinking a bit more about Harriet Beecher Stowe. She took a stand against slavery when it was controversial. She didn’t wait to figure out which way public opinion was going to go on the issue. And she got it right. I wonder what you think today’s issues are, and what you are doing about them?