Baldwin's Criticism on Stowe

           James Baldwin’s criticisms argue that Harriet Beecher Stowe’s sentimentality throughout her novel is no more than just words. He believes that although Stowe may have intended for “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” to be a call of action, it is simply a mask for her own racism and belief that African-Americans are lesser humans that need to be saved.

Baldwin’s criticisms can be supported throughout the novel, specifically in the Shelby’s handling of the situation of selling Tom, Eliza and George:

“Mr. and Mrs. Shelby both felt annoyed and degraded by the familiar impudence of the trader, and yet both saw the absolute necessity of putting a constraint on their feelings. The more hopelessly sordid and insensible he appeared, the greater became Mrs. Shelby’s dread of his succeeding in recapturing Eliza and her child, and of course the greater her motive for detaining him by every female artifice” (51).

            Here, Baldwin would argue that this would exhibit Stowe’s masking an implicit racism. Here, the Shelby’s are displaying their dramatic concern for the well-being of their slaves being sold. By putting them on the opposition of the trader in charge of their slaves’ well-being, Baldwin would argue that Stowe is intentionally dehumanizing the slaves by demoting them to a level of human needing salvation.

I don’t think Stowe intended it as a mask, or that she had obvious racism that needed to be masked. For the time, her anti-slavery thoughts were progressive, despite their lack of a call to action. I think that the novel was her way of contributing and bringing awareness to the issue, in the way she knew how to.