Literary Analysis

When reading Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Beloved at first it was hard to see that motherhood was a prominent theme in both of them, but as I picked motherhood for UTC it was more eye opening on what mothers really do in our lives. Then, when reading Beloved my whole thought process on motherhood was turned around. It was hard to grasp at first what was really happening. Without the stereotypes of mothers that we know today, some of the pieces of this story wouldn’t hold strong beliefs towards the way mothers acted throughout both of the books.

For Uncle Tom’s Cabin within the first few chapters we learn about Harry and Eliza. How Harry is Eliza’s only living son and she would do absolutely anything for him. The fact that Eliza overheard the Shelby’s talking about selling Harry, she did what any mother would do—protect their child from danger.

“It is impossible to conceive of a human creature more wholly desolate and forlorn than Eliza, when she turned her footsteps from Uncle Tom's cabin…But stronger than all was maternal love, wrought into a paroxysm of frenzy by the near approach of a fearful danger. Her boy was old enough to have walked by her side, and, in an indifferent case, she would only have led him by the hand; but now the bare thought of putting him out of her arms made her shudder, and she strained him to her bosom with a convulsive grasp, as she went rapidly forward (Stowe 45).”

This is the first quote that I find really explains and gives us a good feeling of what the author wanted us to know about Eliza. She was a mother first, and then a slave in the eyes of Harriet Beecher Stowe. With the stereotypes we have with women in today’s world Eliza meets the “requirements” that we pin on the women who are mothers around us. When we discussed this in class I remember many people said that they believed Eliza did the right thing as a mother to save Harry from the bad guys. Even throughout the book their story helps people who are proslavery, see some of the negatives of slavery. After all, this book was written for the purpose of abolishing slavery.

The first thing that comes to my head from the examples with their story being passed on as their journey is happening to the north is with Senator Bird and his wife, Mrs. Bird. Mrs. Bird was also a mother in the book, as we learn through a quote, “Her husband and children were her entire world, and in these she ruled more y entreaty and persuasion than by command or argument. There was only one thing that was capable of arousing her, and that provocation came in on the side of her unusually gentle and sympathetic nature;--anything in the shape of cruelty would throw her into a passion, which was the more alarming and inexplicable in proportion to the general softness of her nature (Stowe 72).” The stereotype of motherhood we also see here with Mrs. Bird—gentle and sympathetic nature. This is just the beginning of what we know about Mrs. Bird, but also helps us understand why she brings up to Mr. Bird what he really thinks of the Fugitive Slave Law after he hears Eliza’s story and why she is running with her boy, Harry.

Some of you may ask what is the Fugitive Slave Law? Well, according to History.com,  the Fugitive Slave Laws were laws passed by Congress in 1793 and 1850 to provide for the return of runaway slaves within the territory of the United States. This is an important piece where the Birds come in because Mr. Bird is a senator who was said to sign a part of the laws to be passed without knowing what was really going on. How would he know what was going on though? He wasn’t a slave. He later feels guilty of doing and feeling the way he does once his wife points out what is happening and hearing Eliza’s story.

In the book Beloved we get a totally different feel for motherhood. Our hearts are jabbed out with horror of what happens and we know that the stereotype of motherhood does not match what we see Sethe do throughout the book. But without Sethe being Beloved’s mother, we wouldn’t have the book we do. So, for this, I believed that motherhood was the most important theme. This is also because the book is completely about the life of Beloved, which is Sethe’s daughter, and Sethe’s story through the hardships of slavery.

As we know, Sethe had a lot of decisions she had to make as a mother. When trying to escape with her three children from slavery and got caught she thought she didn’t have much choice but to kill them to save them. Now, we know that this seems really harsh to say the least, but maybe necessary in that situation? We don’t really know individually what the right choice would’ve been at that time, although many of us have strong opinions on what is right because of the stereotypes for mothers and women today.

Even Paul D. had some very strong opinions that we saw in the book. For example we have a conversation that happens on the bottom of page 193, “Your love is too thick”. “Too thick?” she replies, “Love is or it ain’t. Thin love ain’t love at all.” We all know that love cannot be “too think”, that love is love. Yes, you can love somebody a lot—with everything you’ve got, but then you have a love for your own blood child that no one could ever take from you. What we saw Sethe do was for her child, but as we look deeper into what has happened we can see that this isn’t what we expect a mother to do now a days. We only see the soft, gentle side of mother’s like Mrs. Bird versus the one’s that would do anything for their child whether it be the unthinkable or not. This just isn’t the motherhood that we are used too, and that is probably why it shocks us all so much. It was so apparent that Sethe wasn’t about to let her children live through the horror of slavery alone, and she sure wasn’t going to give up her motherhood to anyone who was out there to do so.

From these two books there are far more examples to find and discuss, but I’ll leave that to the rest of you if you decide to look at motherhood as the theme. I don’t want to give all of the good motherhood moments in these books away.