The proposition of motherhood is brought to the story line consistently throughout the novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe. However, Stowe’s depiction of being a mother through the lens of a white woman, and being a mother through the lens of a black woman during the times of slavery, are obviosuly incredibly distant circumstances. Although I am not a mother, I do understand that once a person becomes a mother, their entire life is altered as their main duty in life becomes protecting and nourishing their child at all costs. During the times in which Uncle Tom’s Cabin takes place, however, this is not an option, and hence, left black mothers to believe they had no point to live anymore. Taking one’s child away, only to know that they will be subjected to a lifetime of harm, is equivalent to stripping one of their humanity. There is simply no other way to describe it; I can imagine nothing worse than being as helpless and vulnerable as a black woman with a child they love so dearly during this time.
Stowe does a tremendous job in depicting white mothers during this time. I do not think she is trying to put them down, but is in a way trying to show the reader just how brainwashed they truly are. She makes a point at the beginning of chapter twelve to show that these women do not have bad intentions, when the boy of a white mother explains how there are slaves on the ship that they are on.
“O, mamma,” said a boy, who had just come up from below, “there’s a negro trader on board, and he’s brought four or five slaves down there.”
“Poor creatures!” said the mother, in a tone between grief and indignation.
“What’s that?” said another lady.
“Some poor slaves below,” said the mother.
“And they’ve got chains on,” said the boy.
“What a shame to our country that such sights are to be seen!” said another lady.
Yes, the white mothers say they do not believe in slavery, but doing nothing is inexcusable. In modern day, people who face everyday prejudice use their voices to provoke action against racial inequality. If Martin Luther King Jr. had not had the courage to speak up, where would our country be now? Stowe does not completely condemn white women, but she does not glorify them either. Later in this scene, a white mother on the ship says “I’ve been south, and I must say I think the negroes are better off than they would be to be free.” This is an example of the brainwashing in which these women had accumulated over time. Although completely incorrect, Stowe is working to show just how helpless these women were in this time given the circumstances and how little say any woman had at all. I think Stowe is arguing that they were born with good intentions, but in being ill-advised their whole lives, were brainwashed into thinking life as they knew it was okay. However, this is no excuse for saying nothing as these cruel actions took place.
As Stowe continues with this chapter, the utterly grotesque action of the slave trader when he steals a black woman’s baby while both are sleeping is beyond anything humane. As this happens right after the conversation between the white mothers and their sons, it leaves the reader appalled at the differences in which these people, both of which are torn from the same cloth, live their lives. I do not think Stowe is working to condemn these mothers for their actions, but that she is moreso working to emphasize the differences in which black mothers and white mothers could go about their lives.
Works Cited
Stowe, Harriet Beecher. “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” W. W. Norton & Company, 2018.