The Gothic elements virtually disappear after the novel's climax, at the beginning of Chapter 38 ("The Victory"), when Tom's vision and his renewal of faith render even Legree harmless (harmless, that is, to Tom's soul); the villain stamps and curses, but he senses his own ineffectuality, and the "haunted house" scheme that Cassy cooks up is a parody of the Gothic. Ironically, only Legree is frightened now, and his bad dreams (helped along by the liquor he takes to dull them) quickly kill him — a horrible death, the narrator tells us, but one that she doesn't even glorify by describing. Still, while they dominate the chapters from 32 through the beginning of 38, the Gothic elements are effective in deepening the spiritual darkness that confronts and threatens Tom. But serving the novel's atmosphere is not their only function.
Seeing Uncle Tom's Cabin, if not as a Gothic novel per se, then as a novel that shares in certain elements of the Gothic, may help us to understand some aspects of the book more clearly. Cassy, as Gilbert and Gubar point out, is indeed stereotypical in certain ways of a Gothic figure, the "dark woman" who is threatening to the hero and heroine either through her sexual appetites or her "madness," or both. The specific "dark woman" who Cassy brings to these readers' minds is Bertha Mason, Rochester's first wife in Emily Brontë's Jane Eyre. Bertha, a Creole woman from the West Indies, is violently insane, murderous (she frequently escapes from her tipsy keeper and tries to kill Rochester), and her insanity is said to result from her having inherited a family tendency (on her mother's side) to excess — alcoholism is stated, sexual excess is implied. In Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea, Bertha — here called Antoinette, the Brontë character's first name — is portrayed as a normal but troubled young woman whose brother arranges her marriage to Rochester. The sexual passion their union inspires frightens Rochester, as does almost everything about his bride's culture, and he takes her back to England and imprisons her. Like Cassy, Antoinette / Bertha is the victim of an economic system that uses her as an object (Rochester marries her for her dowry) and punishes her for her sexuality.
