Two embedded narratives appear in Chapters 18 through 21, one the story of the unnamed, supposedly incorrigible slave freed by St. Clare, whose life was subsequently saved by the man at the cost of his own life. The first embedded narrative is Prue's story, again featuring a mother from whom every child has been taken. One difference in Prue's case is that the woman had one more child, after being sold away from the master who had taken each of her others, but Prue's new mistress required Prue to leave her sick baby, and the child consequently died. This embedded narrative becomes especially effective when we learn of Prue's death, a horrifying death not only because of the physical circumstances but because Prue has told Tom she would rather go to hell than to heaven, if heaven is where white people go. By Tom's (and Stowe's) lights, as we know from the episode of St. Clare's drunkenness, Prue's chances of salvation are bleak; thus on top of everything else slavery did to this poor woman, it has endangered her soul's salvation.
The first three of these chapters, although Ophelia's experiences take center stage, are more concerned with St. Clare's opinions, as Ophelia insists that he reveal them. The friendly but sharp exchanges between the two cousins become a method by which Stowe can voice many of the different arguments concerning slavery that were current when she wrote. St. Clare's argument was a common one, no doubt, not only among intelligent and thoughtful slaveowners, but even among northerners who disapproved of the system. It rests on two premises: first, that there is a difference of degree, not kind, between American racial slavery and the sort of oppression of the powerless that has always taken place everywhere in the world (nineteenth-century England is given as an example); second, that I know, as an individual, that I myself cannot end this oppressive system, so the best (in fact the only) action I can take is to behave decently within the system.
