Harriet Beecher Stowe and the Balance of Power: A Woman's Quest

Abstract

Although she has been criticized for her overwrought sentimentality and elaborate romance, Harriet Beecher Stowe has been acknowledged as one of the most popular writers, male or female of the nineteenth century. Stowe uses the novel to bring to the forefront the woman's role in the male-dominated arenas of politics and religion. Assuming the distinctions between the male, who represents the "thinking individual," and the female, who represents the "emotional individual," she asserts that in a world dominated by the rational man, room needs to be made for the emotions of the woman. In order to emphasize the importance of the woman's position Stowe draws her main female characters in accordance with nineteenth-century stereotypes, as strongly pious women who possess a "divine link," and the events that shape their lives appeal to the emotions of the reader. In her novels: Uncle Tom's Cabin; or Life Among the Lowly, The Minister's Wooing, and The Pearl of Orr's Island, she stresses a balance between the "head" and the "heart" in dealing with the issues of slavery and the religious question. [From introductory section]