Critical Commentary:

For this section of the book I chose to read Sentimental Power: Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the Politics of Literary History, pages 539-561.

Throughout the article Jane P. Tompkins really expresses her understanding on sentimental fiction and brings examples to support her claims that she makes. For example, she talks about motherhood and the way that Eva showed Miss Ophelia that it is okay to love a child who doesn’t know that she can be loved has she never had a mother, father, or friend to love her. Thompkins brings in text that is from the book to show this happening:

          “Topsy, you poor child,” she said, as she led her into her room, “don’t give up! I can love you, though I am not like that dear little child. I hope I’ve learnt something of the love of Christ from her. I can love you; I do, and I’ll try to help you to grow up a good Christian girl.”

                Miss Ophelia’s voice was more than her words, and more than that were the honest tears that fell down her face. From that hour, she acquired an influence over the mind of the destitute child that she never lost. (P. 273)

As the article continues, and near the end it talks about gender roles. Throughout Uncle Tom’s Cabin we can see many gender roles that are followed throughout the book like how women are into their religion and the right that all people should follow the religion of good Christians, while the men are strictly there for the work and labor part to become more successful in the world of business. Here is what some of the article points out;

          “Men provide the seed, but women bear and raise the children. Men provide the flour, but women bake the bread and get the breakfast. The removal of the male from the center to the periphery of the human sphere is the most radical component of traditional values: religion, motherhood, home, and family. Exactly what position men will occupy in the millennium is specified by a detail inserted casually into Stowe’s description of the Indiana kitchen. While the women and children are busy preparing breakfast, Simeon Halliday, the husband and father, stands “in his shirtsleeves before a little looking-glass in the corner, engaged in the anti-patriarchal activity of shaving” (page 128).

This signifies what Stowe was trying to show with the role of the genders back then in history. It showed that women did most of the work while men made themselves look good, minding their own business off somewhere away from where the work was being done.

With Jane P. Thompson’s interpretation and examples she leaves the reader, it helps more interpret the text a little bit by showing with motherhood that the things that they did in the story didn’t go unnoticed and the fact that sentimental fiction is most definitely underlined in this article helps me understand more in depth what it really is. When we learned about sentimental fiction in class it was very helpful to have the spheres in which the gender roles are categorized. Women were at home, the domestic, and were more private, while the men were public and were dealing with the business and government decisions. The article clarifies just that and goes to say more about what other authors in this century also have written through sentimental fiction.

I agree with the author’s interpretation because with sentimental fiction it has emotion, story of a heroine, and spiritual/religious overtone. With religion being the overtone through the females in this book it definitely gives motherhood a bigger picture. The fact that because Miss Ophelia (as quoted above) was able to take from Eva and be a motherly figure to Topsy and bring her up to be a good Christian girl makes the statement of motherhood and religion very powerful. In this book you can see that mothers or mother-like figures carry power in more ways than one.