Augustine St. Clare of Uncle Toms Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe Essay

Harriet Beecher Stowes Uncle Toms Cabin leaves little room for interpretation of the authors moral stoppage of view. Yet, there remains matchless big moral question that is non as easily answered. This is the question of the character of Augustine St. Clare--a man who espouses great ideals on the evils of slavery, yet continues to pass water his own slaves. Is he a hero because of his beliefs or a villain because of his actions? And solely how important is this question to understanding and responding to the novel, as a whole? If St. Clare were a minor character, showing up in just a chapter or two, as another stereotype, i.e. the s give awayhern slave owner who doesnt like slavery, he could al intimately be dismissed as just another interesting element, one more point of view, on the restoration of slavery. But St. Clare dominates over one third of this book--his speeches are Stowes mouthpiece for her emancipationist politics. He and his moral ambiguity cannot be dismissed. In many ways, St. Clare is at the very center of this book. Not just literally and chronologically, but morally. Josephine Donovan calls St. Clare, one of the most interesting characters in the novel (79). Elizabeth Ammons goes even further and calls him the most tortured white man in the book (175). Here is a man who knows what is right and wrong, has the power to do something about it, but does not. In many ways, St. Clare is like Thomas Jefferson, a man who spoke out for freedom, who espoused many ideals and even publicly criticized the institution of slavery, but continued to hold all of his slaves up until his death. Jefferson... ... Uncle Toms Cabin. Criticism 31.4 (Fall 1989) 383-400. Lang, Amy Schrager. Slavery and Sentimentalism The Strange Career of Augustine St. Clare. Womens Studies 12.1 (1986) 31-54. Railton, Stephen. Mothers, Husbands, and Uncle Tom. The gallium Review 38.1 (Spring 1984) 129-144. Stowe, Harriet Beecher. A Key to Uncle Toms Cabin Presenting the Original Facts and Documents upon which the Story Is Founded. capital of the United Kingdom Thomas Bosworth, 215 Regent Street, 1853. Stowe, Harriet Beecher. Uncle Toms Cabin or, Life Among the Lowly. Anthology of American Literature gaudiness I Colonial through Romantic. Ed. George McMichael. New York Macmillan Publishing, 1993. 1735-2052.