If there were also some way to show, in our design, degrees of conflict within the chapters, both the complexity of the overall picture and of the patterns of movement within it would be further enhanced. Throughout her absorbing study of the novel, Josephine Donovan emphasizes its dialectic structure: the tension between such opposites as the Shelby farm (with Tom and Chloe's cabin and Shelby's great house themselves at its heart) and Legree's plantation, the northward escape of Eliza's family and Tom's southward journey, the cool organization of the Quaker farms and the hot chaos of the New Orleans household, the "heavenly" sanctuary of Canada and the hell of Legree's plantation. Within these greater tensions are dozens of lesser ones; in the St. Clare chapters alone, for example, we find, among other dialectical oppositions, those between Marie St. Clare and Cousin Ophelia, between St. Clare and his twin brother, between the cook Dinah and the "upstairs" servants. And over the whole "design" presented by the book are the great tensions between slavery and freedom, evil (materialism, the objectification of human beings) and good (self-realization, spirituality, Christian love).
Sometimes these dialectical oppositions are shown as actual conflict (as, for example, the physical conflict in Chapter 17 between George Harris and Tom Loker — or, in Chapter 38, the verbal conflict between Tom and Legree and the spiritual conflict within Tom himself). Sometimes the tension is simply presented without a great deal of comment or actual confrontation (as, for example, the ironic oppositions of "the cabin of the man" to "the halls of the master" — including the relationships of the people who inhabit both dwellings — on Shelby's farm). If we could, within our design, somehow depict these oppositions (conflicts, tensions) in their growth, their rising and falling, their resolutions (if any), we might see an even more various and intriguing pattern of composition and movement.
