"Uncle Tom's Cabin" and the Reading Revolution: Race, Literacy

“Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and the Reading Revolution explores a HOCHMAN transformation in the cultural meaning of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s influential book by addressing changes in reading practices and a shift in widely shared cultural assumptions. These changes reshaped interpretive conventions and generated new UncleT om's meanings for Stowe’s text in the wake of the Civil War. During the 1850s, men, women, and children avidly devoured Stowe’s novel. White adults wept and could not put the book down, neglecting work and other obli- gations to complete it. African Americans both celebrated and denounced the book. By the 1890s, readers understood Uncle Tom’s Cabin in new ways. Prefaces and retrospectives celebrated Stowe’s novel as a historical event that led directly to emancipation and national unity. Commentaries played down the evangelical and polemical messages of the book. c Illustrations and children’s editions projected images of entertaining and devoted abin servants into an open-ended future. In the course of the 1890s, Uncle Tom’s Cabin became both a more viciously racialized book than it had been and a less compelling one. White readers no longer consumed the book at one sitting; Uncle Tom’s Cabin was now more widely known than read. However, in the growing silence surrounding and slavery at the turn of the century, Stowe’s book became an increasingly important source of ideas, facts, and images that the children of ex-slaves and other free-black readers could use to make sense of their position in U.S. culture. THE “Always lucidly written, original, and deeply and broadly researched. Anyone R who teaches Uncle Tom’s Cabin will be grateful for Hochman’s contextualization of eading the variety of possible responses to the text.”—Patricia Crain, New York University Race, Literacy, Childhood, and Fiction, 1851–1911 “An impressive book. Hochman situates herself very effectively within the current debates surrounding the fields of ‘the history of the book’ and of reading.”—Christopher Wilson, Boston College R E BARBARA HOCHMAN is professor in the Department of Foreign Literatures and VO Linguistics at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel, and author of Getting at the luti Author: Reimagining Books and Reading in the Age of American Realism (University of Massachusetts Press). a volume in the series O Studies in Print Culture and the History of the Book N Cover design by: Sally Nichols Cover art: Detail from the engraving “Little Eva reading the Bible to Uncle Tom in the arbor.” From Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Boston: John P. Jewett, 1852. Private collection. UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS PRESS Massachusetts Amherst & Boston www.umass.edu/umpress HOCHMAN_cover_final.indd 1 5/18/11 2:53:29 PM UNCLE TOM’S CABIN AND THE READING REVOLUTION Studies in Print Culture and the History of the Book editorial advisory board Robert A. Gross Joan Shelley Rubin Michael Winship UNCLE TOM’S CABIN AND THE READING REVOLUTION Race, Literacy, Childhood, and Fiction, 1851–1911 Barbara Hochman University of Massachusetts Press amherst and boston Copyright 2011 by University of Massachusetts Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America LC 2011015730 ISBN 978-1-55849-894-5 (paper); 893-8 (library cloth) Designed by Sally Nichols Set in Granjon Printed and bound by Thomson-Shore, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hochman, Barbara. Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the reading revolution : race, literacy, childhood, and fiction, 1851–1911 / Barbara Hochman. p. cm. — (Studies in print culture and the history of the book) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-55849-894-5 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-55849-893-8 (library cloth : alk. paper) 1. Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 1811–1896. Uncle Tom’s Cabin. 2. Books and reading— United States—History—19th century. 3. Literature and society—United States— History—19th century. 4. African Americans in literature. I. Title. PS2954.U6H63 2011 813'.3—dc22 2011015730 British Library Cataloguing in Publication data are available. For Baruch, Mike, and Benjy—who know a good story when they hear one. Contents List of Illustrations ix Preface: On Readers xi Introduction: The Afterlife of a Book 1 1. Uncle Tom’s Cabin in the National Era: Recasting Sentimental Images 26 2. Imagining Black Literacy: Early Abolitionist Texts and Stowe’s Rhetoric of Containment 51 3. Legitimizing Fiction: Protocols of Reading in Uncle Tom’s Cabin 78 4. Beyond Piety and Social Conscience: Uncle Tom’s Cabin as an Antebellum Children’s Book 104 5. Sentiment without Tears: Uncle Tom’s Cabin as History in the Wake of the Civil War 131 6. Imagining the Past as the Future: Illustrating Uncle Tom’s Cabin for the 1890s 169 7. Sparing the White Child: The Lessons of Uncle Tom’s Cabin for Children in an Age of Segregation 205 Epilogue. Devouring Uncle Tom’s Cabin: Black Readers between Plessy vs. Ferguson and Brown vs. Board of Education 231 Notes 253 Bibliography 331 Index 363 L vii Illustrations 1. “The happy land” 5 2. Tom trying to comfort Lucy 39 3. Eva and Mammy reading 57 4. Tom reading to two slave women 69 5. Little Eva reading the Bible to Uncle Tom 70 6. Tom reading on the cotton bales 76 7. John the drover spitting at a runaway ad 92 8. Cover of Pictures and Stories 111 9. Little Harry with Haley and Shelby 113 10. Topsy in Ophelia’s shawl 117 11. Topsy bringing flowers to Eva 119 12. “The Mammy” 137 13. “The Cook” 138 14. “Mrs. Stowe’s Silver Inkstand” 150 15. “Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Other Works” 154 16. “Girls Who Became Famous” 155 17. “An Attractive Offer” 156 18. “Thinking of U.T.C.” 165 19. “Eliza comes to tell Uncle Tom that he is sold” 171 20. “The Freeman’s Defense” 171 21. Eva and Tom writing to Chloe 173 22. A Field Hand 176 23. “A Field Worker” 177 L ix Illustrations 24. Tom and St. Clare 178 25. “Recordare jesu pie” 180 26. Eva and Topsy 182 27. St. Clare and Miss Ophelia listen 182 28. “A Field Boy” 184 29. “Adolph” 186 30. “Slaves at Their Toil” 188 31. Eva and Tom meet on the ship 190 32. “Field Hands Coming In” 194 33. “Anne of Brittany and her Patron Saints” 198 34. Girl with Alphabet Book 202 35. “Miss Ophelia shows Topsy how to make a bed” 203 36. Topsy walks on her hands 212 37. Topsy makes doll jackets 216 38. “That makes a ‘q,’ don’t you know?” 223 39. “The Awkward Squad” 226 40. “afraid” 229 x K Preface On Readers When I began working on the project that became this book I thought that illustrations of Uncle Tom’s Cabin would help me interpret one specific textual feature: scenes of reading. But dramatic differences between illustrations before and after the Civil War soon led me to think about a transformation in the reception of Stowe’s book, and about ongoing changes in reading habits and print culture more broadly. As a result, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and the Reading Revolution retrieves neglected aspects of the novel’s appeal—for black and white men, women, and children—not only in the antebellum period but in the ongoing aftermath of slavery and the Civil War. “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and the Reading Revolution is first and last a book about reading in context. Uncle Tom’s Cabin gave many readers of the 1850s familiar satisfactions associated with sentimental fiction, reform fiction, sermons, and other genres. Stowe’s narrative fulfilled readers’ expectations not only about fiction but also about domesticity, race, child-rearing, and slavery. Yet the novel came as a surprise to many readers—absorbing them to an unprecedented degree while modifying well-worn sentimental images (dying child, grieving mother, fugi- tive slave). The initial popularity of Uncle Tom’s Cabin had less to do with feeling “right”—morally and politically—than with the contradictory plea- sures of absorption in a riveting tale that encouraged identification with other- ness. What made the novel so compelling, however, changed with time. As racial tensions increased in the 1890s, many commentators read it nostal- gically, as though it were a plantation romance, while others celebrated it as L xi Preface an agent of emancipation—as if the reunited nation no longer had to worry about the legacy of slavery. With the onset of segregation and the rise of liter- ary realism, many white readers grew indifferent to Stowe’s novel. At the same time marginalized readers, especially African Americans, found new uses for it. Any history of reading raises questions about evidence and interpretation. Scenes of reading, prefaces, illustrations, and reviews do not control reader response; yet they reflect commonly shared interpretive norms.T he decisions of illustrators, editors, and reviewers, no less than diary jottings, tell us what some readers had to say about a book—what they thought should be singled out, celebrated, or passed over. But written accounts also remake the initial reading experience, even when that experience is recent. Personal letters or journal entries, like the remarks of professional commentators, are shaped by generic conventions and by the image of an intended reader, however tenuous. Children leave few records of their reading, and retrospectives of childhood create additional problems of interpretation. Some African American responses to Uncle Tom’s Cabin have been reprinted so often that they have lost their interpretive power; others have been neglected. Juxtaposed synchronically and diachronically, my diverse mix of sources helps us understand why hun- dreds of thousands of mid-nineteenth-century adults were as susceptible as children to a piece of fiction.

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