Date: Fri 01-Mar-1996

Publication: Bee

Author: SHANNO

Illustration: C

Location: A-11

Quick Words:

Beecher-Stowe-Tom's-Cabin

Full Text:

(Women's History Month/Harriet Beecher Stowe feature, 3/1/96)

Celebrating Women's History Month 1996-

A Connecticut Original: Harriet Beecher Stowe

(with photos, dropquote)

"Slavery, it is true, was to some extent introduced into New England, but it

never suited the genius of the people, never struck deep root, or spread so as

to choke the good seed of self-helpfulness... People, having once felt the

thorough neatness and beauty of execution which came of free, educated and

thoughtful labor, could not tolerate the clumsiness of slavery."

-Harriet Beecher Stowe,

from "The Lady Who Does Her Own Work," Atlantic Monthly, 1864

By Shannon Hicks

Born June 14, 1811, in Litchfield, the seventh of nine children born to the

Rev Lyman Beecher and Roxanna Foote, Harriet Beecher [later Stowe] is best

remembered for her inflammatory novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin . An anti-slavery

novel penned in less than a year, Uncle Tom's Cabin consolidated the

anti-slavery opinion of the North, deeply angered the South, and is almost

always counted as one of several factors which led to the Civil War.

It is said that during the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln greeted the

visiting Harriet Beecher Stowe to the White House with the words, "So this is

the little lady whose book started this big war." Critics continue to argue

the book's literary merits, but whatever defects it may or may not possess,

Uncle Tom's Cabin is a powerful literary creation, penned by Connecticut

native Harriet Beecher Stowe.

March is Women's History Month, which allows one reason to review the life of

Harriet Beecher Stowe - the most widely read American author of her time, male

or female. Uncle Tom's Cabin sold 300,000 copies within its first year of

publication, while Melville's Pierre and Hawthorne's Blithdale Romance were

gathering dust on the shelves. Its American publishers were John P. Jewett &

Company (Boston) and Jewett, Proctor & Worthington (Cleveland, Ohio). The

fictional account captured a generation of readers in the United States and

abroad, making the novel the first international best-seller.

Stowe is counted in literary circles as a key figure between the most prolific

writing periods of J.C. Cooper and Mark Twain, in that she began loosening

plot structure in favor of character developments and dialogue.

Much of what is considered Stowe's "best" work was published during the

American Renaissance (1850-55); Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly ,

first published serially in the National Era , a Washington, DC-based

anti-slavery newspaper, in 1850-51, then appearing in book form in 1852, came

in the midst of this period. In 1856 she published her second anti-slavery

novel, Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp . Beecher has long been

considered the most successful author on slavery.

A broad-minded religious writer at times, Stowe was also an American humorist

and a sentimentalist; she knew how to use sentimentalism in her novels to show

how others could find in their feelings patterns for their lives. In addition

to her anti-slavery accounts, Stowe should also be remembered for her books

depicting New England Puritanism, including The Minister's Wooing (1859),

Pearl of Orr's Island (1862), Oldtown Folks (1869), Sam Lawson's Oldtown

Fireside Stories (1872) and Poganuc People (1878), her final novel.

This year marks the centennial of Harriet Elizabeth Beecher Stowe's death.

Even before her mother's death in 1816 from galloping consumption, when

Harriet was just five years old, Harriet Beecher was already sensitive to

death - a trait she would continue to possess her entire life. This was

exonerated, perhaps, by the fact her parents gave her the name, room, crib and

bedding of another child who had died three years before Harriet was born.

Later in life, Harriet would recall her mother's death as "the tenderest,

saddest and most sacred memory of [her] childhood." Harriet also lost a

step-brother, Freddy, to scarlet fever, of which she nearly died soonafter,

and later lost two of her sons. One of these deaths would ultimately provide

Stowe with the inspiration for Uncle Tom's Cabin .

Harriet Beecher Stowe enjoyed reading and writing her entire life. As a child,

she saw the two as more than past-times, using them to create and visit a

different world than the one in which she lived. Harriet was a well-read

child, having worked her way through most of the literary figures of the 17th

and 18th Centuries in addition to loving fairy tales as a younger child.

Harriet's father, the Reverand Lyman Beecher, was considered the most powerful

Puritan preacher of his generation in the United States, another factor which

would always affect Harriet's life.

A melancholic child, sometimes severely depressed, after her mother's death

Harriet was raised by her father and her eldest sister, Catharine. Harriet

battled severe depression much of her young life, and at the age of 13 she was

brought to Hartford by Catharine to live in the Hartford Seminary, a small

private school for young women Catharine had established. Harriet was first a

student, and later a teacher at the school.

She lived in Hartford for nine years, at which point the Beecher family headed

west when Rev Beecher accepted the presidency of the newly-founded Lane

Theological Seminary at Cincinnati. Harriet then lived in Cincinnati for

nearly 18 years. She and her sister set up the Western Female Institute in

Cincinnati, based on the Hartford seminary in Connecticut.

In 1836, Harriet married Calvin Ellis Stowe, a seminary professor whose wife

Eliza, a close friend of Harriet's, had died three years prior.

Harriet was an assistant at the Institute, which remained open until 1837.

During this time, Harriet participated actively in the school's literary

productions, contributing stories and sketches to local journals. She also

compiled a complete school geography.

Harriet's first collection was published in 1843. The Mayflower, or Sketches

of Scenes and Characters among the Descendandts of the Pulgrims , included

some very autobiographical works, including many depicting women suffering

"the road to salvation," she once stated, such as "Earthly Care A Heavenly

Discipline"; "The Ministration of Our Departed Friends," which depicts a dead

mother's influence over the living; "The Sabbath"; and "Conversation on

Conversation," which debates the role of Sunday school.

Living in Cincinnati, Harriet was separated only by the Ohio River from a

slave-holding community. Because of this, Harriet was in frequent contact with

fugitive slaves; this was how she came to learn of life in the South. Harriet

Stowe saw slavery as an "organic sin" - a state of society into which one was

born.

When Calvin was elected to a professorship at Bowdoin College, the Stowes

packed up and moved their family to Brunswick, Me. Harriet was at this point

suffering one of the lowest points in her life, having lost her sixth-born

child, Samuel Charles, to cholera in 1849.

Mourning her son and working through inner religious conflicts, Harriet began

to identify herself with the fugitive slaves fleeing the violence and

injustice they were forced into. She once said she began to understand the

feeling of a Negro mother separated from her child while standing at the foot

of her own child's grave. It was then that Harriet Beecher Stowe vowed to do

some kind of service on behalf of slaves.

The inspiration for Uncle Tom's Cabin came during a Sunday communion service;

Harriet tried to imagine the death of a pious black man at the hands of a

white minister. The book did not cause the sensation over slavery which

ultimately gripped the country. Uncle Tom's Cabin merely confirmed its

existence and put a dramatic focus on the cruelty of slavery. Many generations

have found it impossible to imagine slavery without the "pictures" Stowe

created with her pen and resulting words.

Another semi-autobiographical piece, Stowe infused her own feelings of

separation, victimization and motherly self-sacrifice into the writing. These

feelings went into the title character: Uncle Tom was loosely based on

"Father" Josiah Henson, a well-known, devout, fugitive slave Stowe knew. The

white master was fashioned after a burly white man Harriet's brother Charles

met while in New Orleans.

Though touted as fiction, Stowe's lionized work was based on hard facts too

many people in the country did not want to face or accept. The year after

Uncle Tom's Cabin was released in book form, Stowe backed up her work and

defended questions of her accuracy with A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin , in which

she accumulated a large number of documents and testimonies against slavery.

The Stowes lived in Maine for only two years. Their next move was to Andover,

Mass., when Calvin accepted a professorship in the theological seminary there.

The family made its home in Massachusetts until Calvin Stowe retired in 1863,

at which point they moved to Hartford. At the close of the Civil War, Harriet

purchased a home in Florida, where she spent many winters.

From the mid 1860s until 1878, when she wrote her final novel, Poganuc People

, Harriet continued to write of New England because she firmly believed in the

region's significance for the growth of the nation. It was also around this

time she discovered the perspective of her own native Down East humor; Sam

Lawson's Oldtown Fireside Stories tells humorous stories by opening grim

incidents and unlocking frozen personalities she saw as typical to her region.

The autobiographical touch she infused into many of her writings stayed with

her throughout her career; in Poganuc People , Harriet cast herself in the

role of Dolly Cushing so she could talk about her own growth. Much of the

novel's description came straight from her childhood home: Catharine is Mrs

Cushing, Harriet's mother reappears as the wife of Zepheniah, and her father

is personified in Parson Cushing.

After the death of Calvin in 1886, Harriet lived in the seclusion of her

Hartford home at 73 Forest Street until she also died, a decade later. Harriet

and Calvin Stowe are buried in adjoining plots in Andover.

Katharine Seymour Day purchased 73 Forest Street, the former home of her

great-aunt, Harriet Beecher Stowe, in 1924. Three years later, she took up

residence in the home, where she remained until her death in 1964. In 1937,

the Stowe, Beecher, Hooker, Seymour, Day Family Memorial & Historical

Foundation, Inc., was established by Mrs Day.

Today, the last residence of Harriet Beecher Stowe provides an intimate

glimpse into the life and style of the Stowe family. Open to the public

year-round, guided tours reveal some of Mrs Stowe's paintings, her writing

table, family and professional memorabilia, period furnishings and historical

gardens. Seasonal displays showcase Christmas, other holiday settings and

household events.

The Stowe-Day Library includes various abolitionist publications from the

1770s through the 1850s; autobiographies and biographies of former slaves

(1840s-70s); assorted manuscripts and letters; "Tomitudes" - the fictional

works supporting slavery, published in response to Uncle Tom's Cabin ;

spinoffs, such as Uncle Tom's Cabin Almanac , an almanac with abolitionist

notes and statistics; dramatizations of Uncle Tom's Cabin ; sheet music; and

of course, numerous American editions, translations and criticisms of HBS's

best-known work itself.

Uncle Tom's Cabin has been translated into 62 languages or dialects. Its

earliest translations appeared in 1852 (French and German), only months after

its American release. The newest translations of the book, appearing since

1990, have been published in Mandarin Chinese and Yiddish, both of which have

been obtained by the Stowe-Day Library. The collection also includes versions

of the book in Portugese, Danish, Italian, Swedish, Dutch, Spanish, Norwegian,

Russian, Hebrew and Greek. A recent addition to the Library is a first edition

Russian translation, published in Moscow in 1858; it is the only copy known to

exist in the United States.

The Stowe Center will offer an open house in recognition of Women's History

Month on Sunday, March 24, from 12-4 pm. Admission to the house will be free

all afternoon, and free house tours will be offered by docents. Special

displays from the house's library and museum collections, along with an

ongoing video and refreshments, will be offered.

To get to the Harriet Beecher Stowe House (adjacent to the Day House and the

Mark Twain House), follow I-84 to Exit 46/Sisson Avenue; turn right at the end

of the ramp, towards Farmington Avenue; second right, onto Farmington Avenue;

then the fourth right onto Forest Street. Signs are posted.