"Uncle Tom's Cabin" Book Review by CalDR

This paper discusses the transformation of the novel "Uncle Tom?s Cabin", by Harriet Beecher Stowe into a cultural icon. It looks at how the creation and recreation of the text by its readers, adapters and its foremost opponents, helped to polarize the abolitionist debate. The paper suggests that the responses to and adaptations of the text of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" provided a means by which the novel assumed a principal role in American culture through various media--the theater, film, posters, paintings, follow-on writings, essays and press coverage. Finally, the paper suggests that the articulation and reconstruction of the text by its readers brought on a range of social and political meanings and results.

Background: The Origins of a Living Document
Introduction
North and South Polarized
Critics Respond
The Abolitionist Debates
The Tom Caricature
The Greatest Impact