英语本科毕业论文汤姆叔叔的小屋.doc

Abstract:Uncle Toms Cabin is written in 1851 in response to the passage of the Fugitive Slave law by Harriet Beecher Stowe.it is considered as the most influential anti-slavery novel in that period. As a woman writer, Harriet Beecher Stowe pays close attention to the severe effect of the slave system on women and their families. She not criticizes the slave system, but deeply reveals the Stowes ideal family and ideal maternal concept in the book ,and incisively and vividly depicted the maternal tenderness, love, compassion and loyalty to family and children. Uncle Toms Cabin is not only an antislavery novel, most importantly, it is a novel written by, for and about women. Stowe know that women are the main reader,so she wants to try to wake up womencompassion and call on women in United States against slavery to save social by emphasizing womenmoral force and describing ideally maternal love .Her work also shows women can take the place of men to become the strong force to redeem the whole nation.Taking the social background and limited experience and domestic life of women as a consideration ,Uncle Toms Cabin is an outstanding representative of the writer works at that time, to improve women social status and give women power to change society ,it undoubtedly played the important role of milestone. This paper mainly presents the great womenpower and motherly love.Key words: Uncle Toms Cabin ,Stowe, women, power, redemption,motherly love摘要斯陀夫人写于1851年的小说汤姆叔叔的小屋,作为对美国国会通过逃亡奴隶法的有力回应,历来被认为是废奴文学的经典之作。斯陀夫人作为一名女性作家,更加关注奴隶制对女性及其家庭所产生的影响。斯托在书中批判了蓄奴制，但也深刻揭示了斯托理想的家庭与理想的母性观念，书中淋漓尽致地刻画了母性的温柔，爱心，同情心和忠诚于家庭和孩子。汤姆叔叔的小屋不仅仅是一部反奴小说,更是一部女性小说,为女性所写,为女性所读。斯托夫人知道女性是她作品的主要读者，通过强调女性的道德力量，通过对母爱的理想化描述，斯托试图唤醒美国女性的同情之心，号召美国女性反对奴隶制拯救社会。她的作品也表明女性可以代替男性成为拯救社会的力量。考虑当时的社会背景及女性作家有限的经历,汤姆叔叔的小屋作为女作家作品的杰出代表,在当时为提高妇女社会地位、赋予女性强大的力量以此改变社会无疑起到了里程碑的作用。这篇论文主要阐述了女性力量及母爱的伟大。关键词:汤姆叔叔的小屋,斯陀夫人,女性,力量,拯救，母爱II1. Introduction: When Harriet Beecher Stowe Uncle Toms Cabin was first published in 1851, it went straight to the hearts of tens of thousands of people who had never before considered slavery except as a political institution for which they had no personal responsibility. The sufferings of Uncle Tom and the struggle of the Harris for freedom left a strong impression on the reading public and greatly appealed to their sympathy. It was the first American novel ever to sell over one million copies and its impact is generally thought to have been incalculable. All these evidence combines to show that Uncle Toms Cabin was the most influential antislavery book in that period. So this is the little lady who made the war was Lincolns compliment to Stowe in a meeting with her after the Civil war. Since her novel helped and convinced the nation to go to war and to free its slaves, it was regarded by the civil war novelist John De Forest as the Great American Novel in an 1868 essay in the Nation. However, during the years into the 20th century. Uncle Toms Cabin become the target of criticism and is misunderstood by many critics in the literary circle.Uncle Toms Cabin is not like an ordinary slave story which focuses on the life and struggle of a black slave. It is true that the stories of Uncle Tom, Eliza and George Harris are the major plots of the novel, but they are not sufficient to account for the novels special strength, without which Uncle Toms Cabin would have gone unnoticed like other antislavery stories.This novel is more concerned with what women should do to fight against the law and slavery as a whole. Its chief characteristic is that it is written by, for and about women.the great power endowed by Mrs. Stowe to its female characters and her calling to women to take actions against the great evil of the world. Stowe made a great appeal to the motherly love of her readers to redeem the world.2.Uncle Toms Cabin-Domestic Feminism under the social background It is useful for us to do some research on the background of the novel, which will be helpful for us to understand its significance.The novel that dramatizes women roles in the fight against chattel slavery in America owes debt to the two crucial events. One is the organization of a feminist movement in 1848 and the other is the passage of a new Fugitive Slave Law, forbidding the Northerners to help the runaway slaves, and requiring them to cooperate in the capture of fugitive slaves in1850.Beginning at the 1930s the 1st American feminist movement, reached its peak at the meeting at Seneca Falls, where feminists had spelled out their demands for full participation in American life, and there was public debate over the place of women in the life of the young republic. The world in the 19th century is very different from the modern world in which women independence is valued. Women can seek divorce in pursuit of happiness. Yet in the 19th century, a true womans position is at home. Good women are first of all caring mothers.Good women are submissive and domestic.2.1 The cult of true womanhood The ideology of femininity and domesticity emerged in the period following the American Revolution, In agrarian society, both men and women worked in and around the home, which meant that work and domesticity were more or less integrated; husbands and wives shared duties and responsibilities of many kinds, including management and instruction of children. In such a society, motherhood as a unique term did not exist.Around the beginning of the 1st century, as America was beginning to grow from an agrarian society into an industrial society, a new kind of ideology emerged-the ideology of motherhood, namely, the ideology of femininity. The rise of the ideology of femininity is closely related to the Industrial Revolution and the consequent changing pattern of social production. According to the cult of true womanhood, family is not only a private realm shielding for its members from pressures and dangers of outside, more importantly, it is a place where morals and religion are taught, and children are brought up. Women make the home a safe haven for their husbands, where they could spiritually fortify themselves before resuming the daily struggles of the lace, and for their children, where they could receive the moral guidance needed to eventually assume their own traditional roles in the adult world. This feminine modesty, purity, piety, patience, moral superiority and emotional responsiveness are the perfect qualities for mothering. Rupture the maternal bond and society would stand at risk. Support the work of mothers and a moral society would emerge. 2.2 The influence of the cult of true womanhood on Stowe Facing the public debate concerning women role in the fight against chattel slavery, Stowe announced her position thus: The first duty of every American woman at this time is to thoroughly understand the subject for herself, and to feel that she is bound to use her influence for the rightAbove all, it seems to be necessary and desirable that we should make this subject a matter of earnest prayer. Stowe held the belief that women should be largely restricted to the women sphere and they influenced the world by Christian example and moral instruction. In a word, within the process of defending Christian domestic values, Stowe laid emphasis on individual sympathy and on the doctrine of Higher Laws in fight against slavery, and celebrates more ordinary women who practice not feminism and abolitionism butdomestic feminism. Stowes commitment to the ideology of domesticity was also closely related to her own experience of motherhood. Stowe was said to have loved being a mother and appeared to have been an unusually caring one.Her experience of motherhood was difficult. She gave birth to twins within the first year of marriage, went on to have five more children, one of whom died as a baby despite everything she could do to save the child. Stowe mourned her childs death.When she created the character of Eliza, the slave mother, Harriet drew upon her own experiences. The concept of domestic feminism is not only created under the social background, but also consistent with the ideology of femininity and domesticity in the 19th century. So I will discuss the ideology of femininity and domesticity in the following parts. 3 .Stowes Dramatization of Women Power to Redeem the Fallen World 3.1 Women moral superiority over men In Uncle TomCabin, Stowes characters are defined by traits either masculine.feminine. In light of the incompatible masculine and feminine traits, the world is divided into two: masculine and feminine. Stowe stands on the side of feminine line, fighting chattel slavery as a most formidable practice rationalized by masculine world, the patriarchal institution.Stowe stands on the side of feminine line, fighting chattel slavery as a most formidable practice rationalized by masculine world, the patriarchal institution.(Stowe 8) The book opens with two men complicity in trade of the two black slaves that will result in destruction of the two families. This complicity, once coming out in the open, immediately meets strong opposition from a woman, Mrs. Shelby Thus, this conflict is cast not only in the conflict of slavery and family, but also man and woman, patriarchal institution and domestic institution. 3.2 Domestic Influence of Women According to the ideology of femininity and domesticity, men place is at the market, while women place is at the domestic center of home. Stowe accepts the standard definition of women confined to the domestic sphere, but she also displays a facility for converting essentially repressive concepts of femininity and domesticity into a positive alternative system of values in which women are more influential than and superior to men.The essential part of a womans task is moral instruction. Stowe announces at the beginning of the American Womans Home, The family state is the aptest earthly illustration of the heavenly kingdom and woman is its chief minister.Stowes belief that women should be able to work within the domestic circle is also reflected in the methods of female characters adopted to oppose slavery.It is worthwhile to examine what the white women do to fight against slavery. they do their best to influence their children and bring them up to be opponents of slavery. Mrs. Shelby is a good example. they protest against slavery and argue with their husbands who attempt to defend the system, e.g. Mrs. Bird. they do whatever they can to provide comfort to their black slaves and to help those in distress who come to their house for help, even if it means breaking the law. 3.3 Men failure to redeem the world Facing the evil practice of slavery and its influence on the people, how to solve the problem becomes Stowes focus.When I have been traveling up and down on our boats, or about on my collecting tours, and reflected at every brutal, disgusting, mean, low-lived fellow I met, was allowed by our laws to become absolute despot of as many men, women, and children, as he could cheat, steal, or gamble money enough to buy-when I have seen such men in actual ownership of helpless children, of young girls and women, I have been ready to curse my country, to curse the human race (Stowe 222).This is what Stowe most deplores in this white man, who could have done something to oppose slavery but did not. He knows he should oppose slavery indeed; but he always puts off action till it is too late for him to regret because he becomes most unsettling portrait of masculinity in the novel.Therefore,both men and the patriarchal institution established by them cannot take up the job to fight against the chattel slavery and redeem the fallen world. 4 .Redemption Through Women We know that violence or command is not women weapon to reform the world, instead, they use the power of sympathy to enable them to make a better world. The methods they use boil down to one thing-the change of heart by Christian love and self-sacrifice. For Stowe, Christian love and self-sacrifice is the sole answer to the reformation of the degenerate world. Christianity is a very important theme in Uncle Toms Cabin, which turns it into a spiritual novel.Since women are supposed to play an essential role in the family so as to defend Christian domestic values, what a woman does in the family is so important and that a home lacking motherly love and care can hardly be called a home because domestic rituals provide women with the weapon to redress evil. the Mother has the control over the whole world. In the envisioned new society, women are no longer regarded as a piece of property, but their own masters. They have the strong power to redeem the fallen world. 5. conclusion It is no doubt that Stowe had limitations concerning her views about women.The depictions of women have provoked skepticism and indignation among many feminist writers and critics.Uncle Toms Cabin is a miracle in American realism, It reflects deep thinking on the nature of human identity and responsibility. Stowe knew that overcoming an institution as firmly established as slavery, she had to destroy its key legitimate concepts. The first of these is summed up by an unnamed woman on a boat carr