Christianity in Uncle Tom's Cabin(1)

 摘要：本文作者采用加拿大著名文学批评家诺思洛普 弗莱的原型批评理论，从圣经原型的角度出发, 试图分析《汤姆叔叔的小屋》中的各类人物形象，比如汤姆叔叔、小伊娃、萨姆波和昆波以及几位虔诚的理想基督教徒母亲，以揭示这部小说中的宗教理念，并探讨斯托夫人解决奴隶制的办法。本文作者希望这篇论文对中国读者能从新的角度来欣赏这本经典著作有所帮助。

关键词：圣经原型 人物形象 基督教理念

Abstract: With the application of the renowned Canadian literary critic Northrop Frye’s theory of archetype, the author in this thesis attempts to analyze various characters, such as Uncle Tom, little Eva, Sambo and Qimbo and some pious, ideal Christian mothers in Uncle Tom’s Cabin in terms of Biblical archetype, to reveal the Christianity in this novel, and to probe into Mrs. Stowe’s solution to the institution of slavery. She hopes this thesis will be of any help to Chinese readers to appreciate this classic novel in a new way.

Key Words: Biblical archetype character Christianity

Introduction

It is well known that western literature is based on two pillars--the Greek culture and the Hebrew culture. In the Hebrew culture, there is a book, namely, the Bible that accumulates its rich cultural heritage. Most western authors are influenced by those two literary origins consciously or unconsciously.

They, without doubt, also influenced Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896), a nineteenth century American female writer. Yet, with her strong religious background, she tended to be influenced deeper by the latter than by the former. Born into a family of religion, Harriet’s father, Lyman Beecher was one of America’s most celebrated clergymen and the principal spokesman for Calvinism in the nineteenth century; her mother, was a woman of prayer who died when Harriet was four years old; her brother, Henry Ward Beecher, was the best known pulpit orator of his times. In 1836, she was married to Calvin Stowe, a Biblical scholar. In a word, Harriet Beecher Stowe was bred, and lived all her life at the atmosphere of Christianity that inevitably influenced her masterpiece Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

It’s commonly agreed that Uncle Tom’s Cabin is an anti-slavery novel. In fact, it is for the cause of abolitionism that Mrs. Stowe took up her pen. Yet, anti-slavery spirit is not contradictory or incompatible with spirit of Christianity. In fact, they co-exist quite harmoniously in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Feminism is also quite evident in this book. Many articles have been written to discuss the anti-slavery spirit or feminism in it. However, this thesis will mainly focus on Christianity in Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

I. Northrop Frye’s Theory of Archetype

In Greek, ‘arch’ means ‘first’, ‘typos’ means ‘form’ or ‘type’. So, ‘archetype’ means first type/form or original type/form. In the theories of Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961), archetypes are primordial mythic forms that embody psychological drives and forces that originate in the collective unconscious. For the Canadian literary critic Northrop Frye (1912-1991), archetypes are the socially-concerned organizing forms and patterns of literature that originate in myth and which unify and reveal literature as an imaginatively-inhabitable world. His great work, such as The Secular Scripture (1976), The Great Code (1982) and Words with Power (1990) all center on the study of the Bible. In Frye’s system, the organizing principles that give literature coherence and structure are derived from the archetypal imagery found in the Bible and the myths of ancient Greece. He suggests that all literature is based on displacements of these myths. Archetypal criticism focused on characters, images, symbols, metaphors, plots, events and themes1. The thesis attempts to use this theory to analyze the characters in Uncle Tom’s Cabin in terms of Biblical archetype to reveal Christianity in it and to probe into Mrs. Stowe’ solution to the institution of slavery.

II. Character Analysis i. Tom

Tom, the protagonist of this novel, is obviously the Christ figure with black skin. Tom’s experience is quite similar to that of Jesus Christ. When Tom’s first master, Mr. Shelby sells Tom to the coarse slave-dealer in financial straits, he betrays the loyalty of his most loyal slave since boyhood. Jesus is sold by his apostle Judas who is prompted by his avarice for money. So they are all betrayed and sold by the ones who are close to them. While he struggles with his faith, as Jesus does in the last hours of his life when he says, ‘my God, why have you forsaken me?’2, he never loses his simple faith. Tom’s death scene also has striking likeness with that of Jesus Christ. Tom is flogged near to death, so is Jesus before his crucifixion. When Jesus dies, there are two criminals crucified together with him, one of who believes Jesus is Messiah and is saved at the very moment and spot. Sambo and Qimbo, Degree’s two cruel overseers who in every sense are equal to criminals, are moved by Tom’s Christian fortitude and patience and are converted at the very moment and spot. Jesus is crucified to redeem sinners while Tom dies for the two runaway slaves, Cassy and Emmeline. They are all innocent, but all die for others. In essence, they all die for their faith and religious devotion. In fact, Tom dies as a ‘martyr’ which is revealed by the title of chapter forty.

Tom is not only similar in his experience to Jesus Christ. More important, his temperament is like that of Jesus Christ. He is loving, faithful, forgiving and obedient.

Tom is full of love for his neighbors, blacks and whites. While he is at St.Clare’s home, he meets that pitiful, wretched old slave Prue whose only left child is starved to death because she devotes all her time to tend her mistress and loses her milk, yet her mistress refuses to buy milk for her baby. Tom offers to carry her basket for her and sends the Gospel to her. Just as when Jesus sees sinners, he pities them, helps them, cures them and tells them ‘the good news’. Tom not only loves his fellow slaves, but white people. When he sees his second young handsome flighty master St Clare go to those wining parties, Tom goes down on his knees and pleads with him not to attend those revelries again by quoting from the Bible, ‘it biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder’3. His love comes to full display when he says on his deathbed to his first young master George Shelby: “…Give my love to mas’r, and dear good missis-and everybody in the place! Ye don’t know. ’Pears like I loves’em all! I loves every creatur’, every what! -It’s nothing but love…”4. Here, Tom is the incarnation of love, just like Jesus is identified with love.

Tom is faithful to God and man. Facing his third cruel master Simon Degree’s threatening and flogging, he doesn’t give up his faith in God and insists that his soul belongs to Him, not to him, though he bought him with twelve hundred dollars. Tom is also very faithful to man, such as his first and third masters who give him all their property to manage. Once, Mr. Shelby let him to go to Cincinnati alone to do business for him, Tom doesn’t run away, instead, he comes back because he thinks, ‘Ah, master trusted me, and I couldn’t!’ (P.4). Just as he himself asks Mr. Shelby, “… have I ever broke word to you, or go contrary to you, ’specially since I was a Christian?” (P.53). St. Clare, a careless master, who gives Tom a bill without looking at it, trusts Tom so much that ‘Tom had every facility and temptation to dishonesty’, yet ‘nothing but an impregnable simplicity of nature, strengthened by Christian faith, could have kept him from it’ (P.189).

Tom’s another distinctive characteristic is forgiveness, which is so extraordinary that it’s almost divine, and which we can see in Jesus Christ. Jesus forgives those who persecute him for he prays, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do’5. Tom also forgives his third cruel master Legree and Legree’s two overseers who harshly flogged him by saying, ‘I forgive ye, with all my soul!’ (P.384)

Tom is submissive and obedient but only to God and according to his conscience. When Jesus is facing his immediate bitter death, he prays in the Mount of Olives, ‘…yet, not my will but yours be done’6. Tom says similar words, ‘The Lord’s will be done!’ (P.299) when he learns he will be sold to the south after the unexpected death of St. Clare. Yet his obedience is not to everyone. For example, once Legree requires Tom to flog a weak slave woman, Tom refuses, saying, ‘…but this yer thing I can’t feel it right to do; and mas’r, I never shall do it-never!’ (P.336) So his obedience is no blind. He only obeys what he believes right.

Why Mrs. Stowe depicted Tom as a Christ-like figure? Perhaps she wanted to elicit sympathy from her readers most of who were whites. She wanted to inform her readers that such pious good man died under the slavery, thus hoped them to realize it was wrong to keep such an evil system in a Christian country. In a word, she intended to win the support of her readers by striking their strings of emotions.

Most of us who have read this book will agree that Tom, an almost perfect, immaculate character without any human weakness is too good to exist in real life. So the portrait of Uncle Tom tends to be rather pale. Besides, the image of Tom is a stereotype with typical African features, typical African American accent and supposed typical good disposition of that race. Thus, Tom is more a representative of a kind of person rather than an individual.

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