Thanks for your patience during our recent outage at scalar.usc.edu. While Scalar content is loading normally now, saving is still slow, and Scalar's 'additional metadata' features have been disabled, which may interfere with features like timelines and maps that depend on metadata. This also means that saving a page or media item will remove its additional metadata. If this occurs, you can use the 'All versions' link at the bottom of the page to restore the earlier version. We are continuing to troubleshoot, and will provide further updates as needed. Note that this only affects Scalar projects at scalar.usc.edu, and not those hosted elsewhere.
Final ProjectMain MenuIntroductionExploring Integration and Free Black Perspectives in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's CabinThe EndingThe Fate of Black Characters at the Close of Uncle Tom's CabinImagining AmericaWhite Characters' Viewpoints on Emancipation and IntegrationUncle Tom's Cabin and African ColonizationShould They Stay or Should They Go?The Missing Black PerspectiveAfrican-American Perspectives on Integration and ColonizationWorks CitedCaitlin Downey521f243cb92cfaab1942063a8e5df11231bf5acc
Conclusion
12016-12-13T12:56:26-08:00Caitlin Downey521f243cb92cfaab1942063a8e5df11231bf5acc141103plain2016-12-16T07:46:15-08:00Caitlin Downey521f243cb92cfaab1942063a8e5df11231bf5accStowe neglected to account for the free black experience in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, excluding free black characters from the novel. At the end of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the black characters end up where all but a few of the white characters would have wanted them: dead, enslaved, in a position of servitude, or on a different continent. Stowe claimed that her novel was an accurate representation of slavery, but left out a crucial component of the slave’s story: building a new life as a free person. Instead of demanding their freedom and charting a course as an independent African-American, the free black characters behave in ways that would be acceptable to a white, middle-class, female audience: working as hired help for a white person or moving to Liberia, away from “white” American society. Stowe’s reluctance to consider an integrated future for the United States is demonstrated through the black characters’ fate at the end of the novel and the white characters’ ambivalence or opposition towards emancipation. As evidenced by the autobiographies of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, free black persons did thrive in America despite a culture of oppression and racial discrimination. Whatever Stowe’s reasons for writing this ending were, it was not a complete representation of the black American experience.