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1852.]
UNCLE TOM’S CABIN.
(a review.)
* * So able do we consider the following re
view by John R. Thompson, the accomplished
editor of the Southern Literary Messenger, and
so important is it that the slanderous Northern
publication which it discusses should meet with a
clear and complete refutation at the South, that
we have departed from the general rule, which
appropriates this portion of our journal to lighter
literature, confident that the review, which shall
bo published without abridgement, will be more
interesting to the majority of readers, at the pre
sent time, than the most brilliant tale we could
furnish.
Macaulay, in the opening paragraph of
his Essay on the Life of Addison, dis
cusses the question whether lady authors
should or should not be dealt with ac
cording to strict critical justice. The
gallant reviewer gives us his opinion, that
while lady writers should not be permit
ted to teach “inaccurate hislory or un
sound philosophy” with impunity, it were
well that critics should so far recognize
the immunities of the sex as to blunt the
edge of their severity towards the offend
ers. And he instances, as pertinent to
the critic’s position, the case of the
Knight, who being compelled by duty to
keep the. lists against Bradamante, was
fain, before the combat commenced, to
exchange Balisarda for a lighter and less
fatal weapon, with which, however, he
fought well and successfully.
For ourselves, we are free to say that
we quite coincide with Mr. Macaulay, in
the exact terms of his proposition. But
we beg to make a distinction between
lady writers and female writers. We
cannot find it in our hearts to visit the
dulness or ignorance of a well-meaning
lady with the rigorous discipline which it
is necessary to inflict upon male dunces
and blockheads. But where a writer of
the softer sex manifests, in her produc
tions, a shameless disregard of truth and
of those amenities which so peculiarly
belong to her sphere of life, we hold that
she has forfeited the claim to be consid
ered a lady, and with that claim all ex
emption from the utmost stringency of
critical punishment. It will not indeed
suffice, to work this forfeiture, that she
merely step beyond the limits of female
delicacy. A Joan of Arc, unsexed though
she be, in complete armour mounted en
chevalier , and battling for the defence of
her native land, might, perhaps, come
within the rule of knightly courtesy. But
the Thalestris of Billingsgate, coarse of
speech and strong of arm, hurling unwo
manly oaths and unwomanly blows at
whom she chooses to assail, would pro
bably be met by a male opponent, (if he
could not run away from her,) in a very
different manner.
Mrs. Stowe —to whose work of “Uncle
SOUTHERN LITERARY GAZETTE.
Tom’s Cabin” we now propose to devote
ourselves—is neither one nor the other
of the characters we have described. She
is not a Joan of Arc. She is not a fish
woman. She is something less noble
than the Gallic heroine: she is certainly
a much more refined person than the vi
rago of the Thames. Yet with all her
cultivation she has placed herself without
the pale of kindly treatment at the hands
of Southern criticism. Possessed of a
happy faculty of description, an easy and
natural style, an uncommon command of
pathos and considerable dramatic skill,
she might, in the legitimate exercise of
such talents, have done much to enrich
the literature of America, and to gladden
and elevate her fellow beings. But she
has chosen to employ her pen for pur
poses of a less worthy nature. She has
volunteered officiously to intermeddle
with things which concern her not —to
libel and vilify a people from among
whom have gone forth some of the no
blest men that have adorned the race—
to foment heartburning and unappeasable
hatred between brothers of a common
country, the joint heirs of that country’s
glory—to sow, in this blooming garden
of freedom, the seeds of strife and vio
lence and all direful contentions. Per
haps, indeed, she might declare that such
was not her design —that she wished, by
the work now under consideration, to
persuade us of the horrible guilt of Sla
very, and w T ith the kindest feelings for us
as brethren, to teach us that our consti
tution and laws are repugnant to every
sentiment of humanity. We know that
among other novel doctrines in vogue in
the land of Mrs. Stowe’s nativity—the
pleasant land of New England—which
we are old-fashioned enough to con
demn, is one which would place woman
on a footing of equality with man, and
causing her to look beyond the office for
which she was created —the high and
holy office of maternity —would engage
her in the administration of public af
fairs ; thus handing over the State to the
dangerous protection of diaper diploma
tists and wet-nurse politicians. Mrs. !
Stowe, we believe, belongs to this school 1
of Woman’s Rights, and on this ground
she may assert her prerogative to teach
us how wicked we are ourselves and the
Constitution under which we live. But
such a claim is in direct conflict with the
letter of scripture, as we find it recorded
in the second chapter of tha First Epistle
to Timothy—
“ Let the woman learn in silence with
all subjection.
“But I suffer not a woman to teach , nor
to usurp authority over the man , but to be
in silence .”
But whatever her designs may have
been, it is very certain that she has
shockingly traduced the slaveholding so
ciety of the United States, and we desire
to be understood as acting entirely on
the defensive, when we proceed to expose
the miserable representations of her sto
ry. We shall be strong y tempted, in
the prosecution of this task, to make use,
now and then, of that terse, expressive,
little Saxon monosyllable which conven
tionalism has properly judged inadmissi
ble in debate, yet we trust we shall be
able to overcome the temptation, and in
the very torrent and tempest of our wrath,
(while declining to “carry the war into
Africa”) to “acquire and beget a tempe
rance which may give it smoothness.”
While we deem it quite unnecessary,
in this place, to lay before our readers in
detail the plot of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,”
still we shall best accomplish our pur
pose by running over the leading inci
dents of the novel. But even this will
not be the easiest thing in the world.
We have given Mrs. Stowe credit for dra
matic skill. Yet it will be seen that as
a dramatist she is, by no means, without
some glaring faults. It is a rule of art,
(judged by which Fielding’s Tom Jones
has been pronounced by the best critics
to be almost perfect,) that a work of fic
tion should be so joined together, that
every passage and incident should contri
bute to bring about an inevitable though
unexpected catastrophe. Mrs. Stowe’s
events have many of them no connection
with each other whatever. She has two
principal characters, for whom the read
er’s sympathy is enlisted, whose paths
never lie within a thousand miles of each
other. Whenever she brings UncleToin
forward, George Harris is moved back
ward : whenever she entertains us with
George Harris, Uncle Tom’s rights as a
hero are in abeyance, wherein Mrs. Stowe
reminds us of the ventriloqnial vaude
villes of the facetious Mr. Love, who, in
dividually representing the entire drama
tis personce, is compelled to withdraw as
Captain Cutandthrust, before he can fas
cinate his audience with Miss Matilda
Dte-away. Perhaps, indeed, Mrs. Stowe
has proceeded up n the principle laid
down by Puff'in the Critic —
“O Lord, yes ; ever while you live have
two plots to your tragedy. The grand
point in managing them is only to let
your under-plot have as little connection
with your main plot as possible.”
The tale opens with a dialogue be
tween a Kentucky planter, Mr. Shelby,
and a negro-trader called Haley, at the
dinner-table of the former at his planta
tion residence. Haley holds Mr. Shel
by’s I. O. U. for a considerable amount
which he is unable to settle, and takes
advantage of this indebtedness to compel
Mr. Sheloy to part with two of his slaves
—Uncle Tom, his general manager, and
a little mulatto boy, the child of Eliza
Harris, Mrs. Shelby’s maid. Eliza is the
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