The quote from Uncle Tom’s Cabin, “You ought to be ashamed, John! Poor,
homeless, houseless creatures! It’s a shameful, wicked, abominable law, and
I’ll break it, for one, the first time I get a chance; and I hope I shall have
a chance, I do! Things have got to a pretty pass, if a woman can’t give a warm
supper and a bed to poor, starving creatures, just because they are slaves, and
have been abused and oppressed all their lives, poor things!” “But, Mary, just
listen to me. Your feelings are all quite right, dear . . . but, then, dear, we
mustn’t suffer our feelings to run away with our judgment; you must consider
it’s not a matter of private feeling,—there are great public interests
involved,—there is a state of public agitation rising, that we must put aside
our private feelings.” “Now, John, I don’t know anything about politics, but I
can read my Bible; and there I see that I must feed the hungry, clothe the
naked, and comfort the desolate; and that Bible I mean to follow.”
This is Senator Bird and his wife talking. This text is saying how Senator
Bird’s wife is trying to convince her husband that slavery is wrong and that
they should help out the slaves if they come to them, which Eliza does come to
them right after this discussion that they have. This quotation sums up many of
the main themes found throughout the novel as to how slavery is not to be
associated with
Christianity. Mrs. Bird is pretty much saying that if you are involved with slavery, you are condemned. It also seems to be saying that the women in this novel are portrayed as more loving and compassionate than their male partners. Mrs. Bird is using her Christianity and telling her husband that she won’t go along with slavery, but with her Bible because slavery, in her eyes is immoral.
Christianity. Mrs. Bird is pretty much saying that if you are involved with slavery, you are condemned. It also seems to be saying that the women in this novel are portrayed as more loving and compassionate than their male partners. Mrs. Bird is using her Christianity and telling her husband that she won’t go along with slavery, but with her Bible because slavery, in her eyes is immoral.
This text was very clearly, to me produced during Harriet Beecher Stowe’s
time. It is because it was right around the time of the Fugitive Slave Act,
which said no matter where you are, North or South or whether you’re white you
must help get a fugitive slave back to its owner if you are asked. This Act
angered many people and gave the black people less hope for being free. I feel
that this quote was supposed to be said in her time because Mrs. Bird is
talking so strongly about how slavery is unfair and how against it she is.
In reality Stowe thought that the Fugitive Slave Act should be tolerated because
it would be helpful and it would be in the public’s best interest to have this
Act. I think she thought this because she maybe thought that it would help keep
things in order and then the blacks would be in better control. I definitely don’t
agree with this at all. I don’t think that any black or any person for that
matter should have to be a slave, and I don’t think that white people in the
North or South should have to help look for a slave if they are asked. Slavery wasn’t
fair and was totally unjust and I think that there shouldn’t have been slavery
in the first place.
