Do you think the author Karen Fisher Younger makes a good case that Uncle Tom’s Cabin was a conservative response to slavery? Explain.
Questions:
1. What was the dilemma of the Beecher sisters and how did Angelina Grimke contribute to the
dilemma?
2. The article argues that Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin was a reflection of
her own conservative values. How is it possible that the book was both conservative and, at the
same time, radical (at least to Southerners who believed abolishing slavery was ‘radical.’)?
Do you think the author Karen Fisher Younger makes a good case that Uncle Tom’s
Cabin was a conservative response to slavery? Explain.
3. There is a line in Shakespeare’s Hamlet that goes like this: “The lady doth protest too much,
methinks.” It has come to mean that a person is making an argument with such vehemence and
defensiveness that, ironically, he or she convinces you that the opposite is true.
Do you think there are examples in this article where Catharine Beecher “doth protest too
much”? What might some of these examples be?
4. The author argues that the Beecher sisters were anti-slavery, but they were not abolitionists.
What is the distinction that Younger makes between the two? Do you think the authors of the
textbook we use in class, The African-American Odyssey, make this same distinction between
anti-slavery and abolition? Why or why not?
5. Harriet Beecher Stowe received a great amount of criticism for the ending of Uncle Tom’s
Cabin. So much so, that Stowe clarified her herself by saying: “I am not a colonizationist.”
Younger tells us, the reader, “And I believe her.” (p. 50)
Why does Younger believe Stowe’s assertion? Do you think Younger is right?
6. In what ways does Younger argue that the Christian Church failed African Americans after the
Civil War? Explain if you think the author demonstrates a strong linkage or not between the
discussion of the Beecher sisters to the moral failings of a racist Christian Church?
7. What would have been the consequences had the Beecher Sisters truly bucked convention and
participated in the public (and male) sphere when it came to their anti-slavery activities?
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