Much of the attention that readers and critics have given to Uncle Tom’s Cabin has been directed to its content—the development of its themes, the significance of its characters and incidents. Increasingly, however, there has been focus on the book’s structure, which is generally now recognized as strong and balanced. Above all, we can see ways in which that structure is effectively and integrally related to features of the novel’s plot movements and thematic conflicts—including ironically revealing symmetries and juxtapositions of incident.
Stowe herself was aware of the relationship between her structural choices and her purposes. Although the manner of its initial publication (in serial form) was certainly a determining factor in the novel’s episodic nature, Stowe knew that—in order to persuade readers actively to oppose slavery—she would have to touch their emotions. Thus she chose to write what she called “a series of sketches” (Stowe’s emphasis; quoted in Donovan’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”: Evil, Affliction, and Redemptive Love). Having had considerable success in this popular literary form, Stowe must have felt confident with it; but she used the term sketches metaphorically as well in this case, for she went on to say “there is no arguing with pictures” (Donovan 30). Stowe had, in fact, been trained as a visual artist, and it is easy to see her eye for detail, color, movement and composition in her written work. She knew, too, that the reason “there is no arguing with pictures” has to do with the fact that people take in visual stimuli on a much more basic level than they do intellectual arguments; as much as possible, she wanted to hit her audience hard and directly at that level.
But if a “series of sketches” is a linear composition (as any conventional novel must to a great extent be), Stowe also thought of her composition in Uncle Tom’s Cabin as an overall design. In another statement that compares the book to visual art, she said she thought of it as a “mosaic” of “stones” (Donovan 30), in which all the pieces (or “fragments”) contribute to the overall whole. Stowe’s comparison here is later echoed by critic Elaine Showalter in her essay “Piecing and Writing” (in The Poetics of Gender), who views the book’s structure as similar to that of a patchwork quilt—fittingly, one made in the popular “Log Cabin” pattern. In both the mosaic design and the quilt images, we see parts, each with its own shape, color, and perhaps interior design, fitted together to make a larger piece of art. The effect is not linear but overall, and it includes the possibilities of balance, direction, and movement.
We can begin to see—literally—the sort of design that is present in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, if we arrange the book’s 45 chapters in a more-or-less symmetrical shape, using some arbitrary symbols to identify them: say, an X for each chapter in the “Eliza” plot, an O for each one in the “Tom” plot, and an 8 for each in which the two plots are combined. (Chapter XLV, “Concluding Remarks,” not part of the original serial publication, can be a <> at the design’s base.) Here it is:
8
XXO8XX
XXOXOX
OOOXOOO
OOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOO
XOOOOO8
O
<>
Although not exactly symmetrical, it is balanced, with the Eliza plot, thematically less weighty but more conventionally “exciting” to readers and certainly more cheerful (both important considerations in a work that aims at popularity), presented more often in the first third of the novel, while the Tom plot, appearing alone only three times in the first thirteen chapters, dominates the second two-thirds of the book. If our design were drawn in more detail—subdividing the two plots into large and small X’s and O’s to show, for example, the Quaker sections of the Eliza plot and the St. Clare sections of the Tom plot—we would see a more various pattern emerging. And if the X’s and O’s were in color, with brighter colors for the chapters in which the dominant moods were hopeful, darker ones for those in which despair and pain dominate, then—well, the reader may imagine that visual effect. It would be striking.
