Hold Me Tight and Don’t Let Go

In Chapter I, “Childhood,” the author is giving a description of her “early formative years,” and through this, provides a lot of information regarding her family’s experience with slavery (Jacobs, p. 7). Linda first introduces her grandmother’s youngest son, Benjamin, stating that, “There become so little distinction in our ages that he seemed extra like…

The Internalization of “Value”

In Chapter I, Childhood, the author begins to introduce her family dynamic. She speaks of her grandmother’s youngest son, Benjamin, describing him, and his experience being sold, as such: “He become a brilliant, good-looking lad, almost white: for he inherited the complexion my grandmother had derived from Anglo-Saxon ancestors. Though handiest then years vintage, seven…

Your Laws, Not Mine

Throughout Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe uses the examples of supposedly kind and good-natured white men to show that structural, rather than solely individual, change is needed to dismantle the institution of slavery. Furthermore, Stowe uses these characters to show how religion, when misinterpreted and treated as a series of laws can contribute to…

The Weight of Unseen Wounds

Throughout the novel, Stowe presents varying accounts of slaves – some had “kind” masters, some had their children stolen from them, some had their families separated, and some incurred physical abuse – but no experience is more profound than that of Prue’s. Towards the end of chapter XVIII, Prue is introduced as a gruff, scowling,…