The following chapters show once again how precarious the lives of the enslaved could be. While Augustine St. Clare finds himself ready to take action in his own life against the evils of slavery under a Christian conviction nurtured by Eva and by Tom, events coincide to complicate Tom’s life once again. In Chapter 31 we are introduced to Simon Legree, Tom’s third and final human master. Of the three, two are portrayed as “humane” and the third as a brute, but Stowe shows that kind master or evil, an enslaved human is at the mercy of a system that defines him as chattel.
Tag Archives: social commentary
Uncle Tom’s Cabin – Chapters 15, 16
Chapters 15 and 16 introduce Tom’s new owners, a New Orleans family by the name of St. Clare. Augustine St. Clare and his wife Marie have an angelic daughter named Eva, and Augustine’s cousin Ophelia has come from her home in New England to manage the household due to Marie’s apparent incapacity. The chapters illustrate the various attitudes toward slavery among slave holders, and through Ophelia, Stowe draws the consciences of readers in her native New England into the fray.
CHAPTER XV
Of Tom’s New Master, and Various Other Matters Continue reading Uncle Tom’s Cabin – Chapters 15, 16
Uncle Tom’s Cabin – Chapters 5, 7, 9, 12
Prior to Chapter 5, we are introduced to Mr. and Mrs. Shelby, farmers in Kentucky who own a fairly large estate and are presented as slaveholders who are kind to their enslaved workers. Eliza is the enslaved handmaid to Mrs. Shelby; she is light-skinned and is the mother of a young boy named Harry (her husband George Harris is enslaved on a neighboring farm). Chapter 4 introduces life in Uncle Tom’s cabin, where Tom, his wife Aunt Chloe, and their children live in the warmth of family and Christian devotion. We have also been introduced to Haley, a slave trader who has secured ownership of Shelby’s debt and is squeezing him to settle the account by selling some of his human property. The events in Chapter 5 illustrate how precarious the lives of “human property” can be even for those who live under “kind” masters.
from Uncle Tom’s Cabin
by Harriet Beecher Stowe
CHAPTER V
Showing the Feelings of Living Property on Changing Owners Continue reading Uncle Tom’s Cabin – Chapters 5, 7, 9, 12
The Snow Man
What do you think it means to have “a mind of winter” and “not to think / Of any misery in the sound of the wind, / In the sound of a few leaves”? What would the snow man be doing if he did think of “misery” in those things? The poem is all one sentence; why do you think Stevens did that? Why do you think he repeats “nothing” three times in the final stanza? Continue reading The Snow Man
Disillusionment of Ten O’Clock
Here the speaker is bored by all the monotonous “white nightgowns” in his neighborhood—nightgowns presumably worn by his fellow Hartford businessmen who all dress alike, without imagination. He longs for something fresh and unusual, to add interest to this routine life. Why do you think he uses the French word, “ceinture”? What is unusual about the combination of “baboons and periwinkles”? (Think of the sounds of those words.) How do you feel about the old, drunk sailor? Continue reading Disillusionment of Ten O’Clock
“A Mother’s Letters to a Daughter on Woman Suffrage” (1868)
A Mother’s Letters to a Daughter on Woman Suffrage
by Isabella Beecher Hooker
Tracts of Connecticut Woman Suffrage Association, No. 2
Hartford, Conn.
The facsimile below is from Harvard Library. To navigate from page-to-page, mouse over the document below and click on the arrow buttons that appear at the bottom left-hand side of the page: 
The document can also be read on the Harvard Library viewer. Continue reading “A Mother’s Letters to a Daughter on Woman Suffrage” (1868)
Shall Women Vote?
SHALL WOMEN VOTE?
A Matrimonial Dialogue
By Isabella Beecher Hooker
Scene: New York, February 18, 1860
Dramatis Personae: Mr. Smith and Mrs. Smith
Mr. Smith:
Did you read this Editorial in the Independent, on women’s voting? Continue reading Shall Women Vote?
The Constitutional Rights Of The Women Of The United States
The Constitutional Rights Of The Women Of The United States: An Address Before the International Council of Women, Washington D. C., March 30, 1888
by Isabella Beecher Hooker
In the month of August, 1774, that eminent statesman and true patriot, Thomas, Jefferson, in a little tract entitled “A Summary View of the Rights of British America,” used certain words which I will take for my text while addressing you to-day on the “Constitutional Rights of the Women Citizens of the United States.” They are these: Continue reading The Constitutional Rights Of The Women Of The United States
Speech in Honor of Cornelius Walford
The following speech was delivered at an October 15, 1874, dinner at Hartford’s premier hotel, the Allyn House, given by members of the city’s insurance industry in honor of Britisher Cornelius Walford. A resident of the city for four years, Clemens had its number. He refers to the Hartford Accident Insurance Co., a short-lived company of which he served as a director. Walford (1827-1885) was active in the British insurance industry and the author of an insurance encyclopedia. Continue reading Speech in Honor of Cornelius Walford
from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Shifting from Clemens’s comical letters, speeches and short pieces to his classic, we get a sense of the depth he brought to his work. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was composed largely at Quarry Farm, Olivia Clemens’s sister Susan Crane’s farm in Elmira, New York. The family spent most of their summers there during the time they lived in Hartford, and Crane had built a study for her brother-in-law high on a hill overlooking the farm and the city. Continue reading from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn