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Uncle Tom's Cabin Unit of Study
The Character of Uncle Tom Lesson Plan
By David J. Cope
Overview
Few literary characters have caused such a stir, both in the time of the publication and later, as that of Uncle Tom. Harriet Beecher Stowe's depiction of her main character was controversial in her day among her readers, her supporters and her detractors. Over time, the characteristics that Stowe held dear for Uncle Tom became a stereotype. Students will explore the background story of Josiah Henson and compare the real-life Uncle Tom to the fictional one. Other parts of the lesson will explore the criticism of the character and allow the students to determine whether Harriet Beecher Stowe's depiction was fairly or unfairly treated.
Time Required
Three to four days, including background readings and discussions
Materials Needed
The Lesson
Anticipatory Set
- Inform the students that famous people's names are often used as descriptors. A generation ago, a wacky inventor might create a Rube Goldberg, while today industrious repairmen "MacGyver" together a solution.
- Have students arrive at a consensus about a well-known individual they perceive as a positive role model and another they perceive as a negative role model. Write both names on the board and create a list by soliciting adjectives to describe them.
- Discuss with the class how the attributes students selected could lead to the individual's name becoming a descriptor in the future.
Procedures
- Put the final line from Chapter Forty-Four on the board. "Think of your freedom, every day you see Uncle Tom's Cabin; and let it be a memorial to put you all in mind to follow in his steps, and be as honest and faithful and Christian as he was."
- Ask students what they think Harriet Stowe's intent was with this final line.
- Then, inform students that, from the beginning, Harriet Beecher Stowe's central character in Uncle Tom's Cabin has been one of the most controversial creations in American literature. While multiple episodes moved many readers to tears and action, an appreciation for Uncle Tom provided a major stumbling block. Stowe infused Tom with her own Calvinistic beliefs of endurance and redemption. In the worst situations, Tom appeared religiously aloof, far too passive, and often unbelievable. Abolitionists and free blacks much preferred the swaggering courage of George Harris or the defiant abrasiveness of Cassy. Within a short time, Uncle Tom became a derogatory term describing an individual who complacently accepts whatever comes without complaint.
- So they can discover and analyze the character Uncle Tom, give each student the "Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom" handout(link to below). After a period of silent reading, tell the students to create a composite picture of Uncle Tom and share their pictures with the class. Ask students these questions:
- Is Uncle Tom a positive role model, and who would view him as such?
- Is Uncle Tom a negative role model, and who would view him as such?
- Re-exam the last line of the book on the board and the class' earlier analysis.
- Discuss with the class that Frederick Douglass consistently remained one of the great defenders of the Uncle Tom character. He wrote in My Bondage and Freedom, "there, too, was my dear old father, the pious Lawson, who was, in christian graces, the very counterpart of "uncle" Tom. The resemblance is so perfect, that he might have been the original of Mrs. Stowe's christian hero." Ask students: Why would Frederick Douglass, one of the most respected and renowned free fugitives of the 1800s, defend the character of Uncle Tom with such a personal story?
- Briefly tell students the story, below, of Josiah Henson, Harriet Beecher Stowe's true role model for Uncle Tom:
Josiah Henson was born on June 15, 1790, on a Charles County, Maryland, plantation. In his autobiography, he tells a shocking incident from his childhood. An overseer tried to force himself on Josiah's mother, and his father attacked the white man. Josiah's mother pleaded that he not kill the overseer, and the white man said that no harm would come to the slave. However, Josiah's father felt the full force of the law: 100 lashes on his back and his right ear nailed to the whipping post. Before the age of 18, Josiah was sold three times. In 1830, Henson attempted to purchase his freedom from the $350 he'd saved. The master informed him that the price increased to $1,000. Furious, he escaped to Canada with his wife and four children. He became a Methodist minister and founded a cooperative colony for former slaves.
Ask students: What major differences are there between Josiah Henson and Uncle Tom? (Uncle Tom never even tried to escape.)
- An unsigned letter appeared in William Lloyd Garrison's The Liberator on March 26, 1852, criticizing Harriet Beecher Stowe's creation of Uncle Tom. Give each student a copy of "The Liberator Letter" handout(link to below). After a period of silent reading, have the students locate portions from the "Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom" handout(link to below) that support or disprove the letter-writer's view. Have the students write an editorial replay to the letter. Then, ask students to research Martin Luther King's views on non-violence and compare them to ideas of the letter-writer.
- Mary Henderson Eastman, a self-styled "member of one of the [First Families of Virginia] F.F.V's, as a mother, and as a Christian," wrote the most widely read "anti-Tom" novel, Aunt Phillis's Cabin or Southern Life As It Is. In her "Concluding Remarks," Eastman takes up the issue of Uncle Tom's character. Give each student a copy of the "Aunt Phillis's 'Concluding Remarks'" handout(link to below). Ask them to write a sentence answering the following:
- Is there a passage from Uncle Tom's Cabin that supports this accusation?
- Does the unsigned author of The Liberator letter make the same or a similar point?
- Mary Eastman claimed that Aunt Phillis's Cabin portrayed the Peculiar Institution "As It Is." While many people blasted Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom, few bothered with Eastman's Aunt Phillis. Ask the class to read the "A Portrait of Aunt Phillis" handout(link to below) and create a composite picture of Aunt Phillis and share their pictures with the class. Ask them to answer these questions:
- Is Aunt Phillis a positive role model, and who would view her as such?
- Is Aunt Phillis a negative role model, and who would view her as such?
- How are Uncle Tom and Aunt Phillis the same? How are they different?
- Which character, Uncle Tom or Aunt Phillis, if either, is the most believable and why?
Assessment
Assess students through observations made during the class discussions and through the written assignments and projects provided in the Procedures section.
Related Works
The King Center web site, accessible at http://www.thekingcenter.org
Interdisciplinary Links
The lesson on the character Uncle Tom allows for great interdisciplinary links with the English curriculum and character education.
This lesson was submitted by David J. Cope, honors teacher at Titusville Senior High School, Titusville, Pennsylvania.
Uncle Tom's Cabin Unit of Study
The Character of Uncle Tom Lesson
Handout One: Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom
Chapter One:
Mr. Shelby to Haley, the trader, "'Well, Tom's got the real article, if ever a fellow had', rejoined the other. 'Why, last fall, I let him go to Cincinnati alone, to do business for me, and bring home five hundred dollars. 'Tom,' says I to him, 'I trust you, because I think you're a Christian--I know you wouldn't cheat.' Tom comes back, sure enough; I knew he would.'"
Mr. Shelby continues that some people questioned the slave, "'Tom, why don't you make tracks for Canada? 'Ah, master trusted me, and I couldn't.'"
Chapter Seven:
Mr. Shelby has sold Tom to Haley, "'Tom,' said his master, kindly, 'I want you to notice that I give this gentleman bonds to forfeit a thousand dollars if you are not on the spot when he wants you; he's going today to look after his other business, and you can have the day to yourself. Go anywhere you like boy.'" Tom spends the day with his wife, Aunt Chloe, and his children.
Chapter Eleven:
"Yes, Tom, we must confess it, was rather proud of his honesty, poor fellow, not having very much else to be proud of...."
Chapter Fourteen:
"Partly from confidence inspired by Mr. Shelby's representations, and partly from the remarkably inoffensive and quiet character of the man, Tom had insensibly won his way far into the confidence even of such a man as Haley."
"Ever quiet and obliging, and more than ready to lend a hand in every emergency which occurred among the workmen below, he had won the good opinion of all the hands...."
Chapter Thirty-Three:
"He saw enough of abuse and misery to make him sick and weary; but he determined to toil on with religious patience, committing himself to Him that judgeth righteously, not without hope that some way of escape might yet be opened to him."
Legree asks, "'An't yer mine, now, body and soul?'" Tom replied, "No! no! no! my soul an't yours, Mas'r! You haven't bought it, ye can't buy it! It's been bought and paid for, by one that is able to keep it; no matter, no matter, you can't harm me!"
"'I can't!' said Legree, with a sneer; 'we'll see, --we'll see!'...They dragged him unresisting from the place."
Chapter Forty:
Legree is about to kill Tom with a whipping, "'Mas'r, if you was sick, or in trouble, or dying, and I could save ye, I'd give ye my hart's blood; and, if taking every drop of blood in this poor old body would save your precious soul, I'd give 'em freely...."
Uncle Tom's Cabin Unit of Study
The Character of Uncle Tom Lesson
Handout Two: Aunt Phillis's 'Concluding Remarks'
- "No master would be fool enough to sell the best hand on his estate.... No master would be brutish enough to sell the man who had nursed him and his children.... But Mr. Shelby does, according to Mrs. Stowe.... Preposterous!"
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- "And such a saint as Uncle Tom was, too! One could have thought his master...would have kept him until he died and then have sold him bone after bone to the Roman Catholics."
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- "I have never heard or read of so perfect a character."
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- "He was, or considered himself; a missionary...."
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Uncle Tom's Cabin Unit of Study
The Character of Uncle Tom Lesson
Handout Three: A Portrait of Aunt Phillis
Chapter Nine:
"She is a tall, dignified, bright mulatto woman, named Phillis."
"Phillis would have been truly happy to have obtained her own freedom, and that of her husband and children; she scorned the idea of running away, or of obtaining it otherwise than as a gift from her owner."
"She was a firm believer in the Bible."
"She had on one occasion accompanied her master and Mrs. Weston to the North." (There, abolitionists ask her why she doesn't run away.) "Why do you not take your freedom? You are in a free state." Phillis replied, "I am an honest woman, and am not in the habit of taking anything. I'll never take my freedom. If my master would give it to me, and the rest of us, I should be thankful. I am not going to begin stealing, and I fifty years of age."
Phillis was a mother of 12 children who "tried to keep them in the house with white people as much as possible, that they might acquire good manners."
"She had a great deal of family pride; there was a difference in her mind between family servants and those employed in field labor. For 'the quality' she had the highest respect; for 'poor white people' only a feeling of pity."
Chapter Ten:
"Her house could be hardly called a cabin, for it was very much superior to the others on the plantation, though they were all comfortable."
"Her neatly white-washed cottage was enclosed by a wooden fences in good condition.... All kinds of small flowers and roses adorned the front of the house.... The back of the lot was arranged for the accommodation of her pigs and chickens; and two enormous peacocks, that were fond of sunning themselves by the front door, were the handsomest ornaments about the place."
Phillis' master questions her about anyone on the plantation shielding Jim, a runaway from a neighboring plantation. Phillis admits, "I hope you will not be angry with me, master but I can't tell a lie; I let Jim stay in my room that night" (as it was thundering and lightening) "I told Jim he had better go back to his master, that he wouldn't have any comfort, always hiding himself, and afeard to show his face...." The master lectures Phillis on Virginia law and then warns her, "see that such a thing never happens again.... Phillis went back to her ironing, assured her master was not angry with her."
Uncle Tom's Cabin Unit of Study
The Character of Uncle Tom Lesson
Handout Four: The Liberator Letter
Uncle Tom's character "triumphantly exemplifies the nature, tendency and results of CHRISTIAN NON-RESISTANCE."
"We are curious to know whether Mrs. Stowe is a believer in the duty of non-resistance for the white man, under all possible outrage and peril, as well as for the black man;"
"It is for them, though despoiled of all their rights and deprived of all protection, to 'threaten not, but to commit the keeping of their souls to God in well-doing, as unto a faithful Creator.'"
"But, for those whose skin is a different complexion, the case is materially altered. ... talk not then of a non-resisting Saviour--it is fanaticism!"
"Talk not of overcoming evil with good --it is madness!"
"Is there one law of submission and non-resistance for the black man, and another law of rebellion and conflict for the white man?"
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