Diluting The Message of Stowe's Book
"Tom shows" were so popular that there were even pro-slavery versions. Among the most popular was Uncle Tom's Cabin as It Is: The Southern Uncle Tom, produced in 1852 at the Baltimore Museum. Lott mentions numerous "offshoots, parodies, thefts, and rebuttals" including a full-scale play by Christy's Minstrels and a parody by Conway himself called Uncle Pat's Cabin, and records that the story in its many variants "dominated northern popular culture… for several years".
According to Eric Lott, even those "Tom shows" which stayed relatively close to Stowe's novel played down the feminist aspects of the book and Stowe's criticisms of capitalism, and turned her anti-slavery politics into anti-Southern sectionalism. Francis Underwood, a contemporary, wrote that Aiken's play had also lost the "lightness and gayety" of Stowe's book. Nonetheless, Lott argues, the plays increased sympathy for the slaves among the Northern white working class (which had been somewhat alienated from the abolitionist movement by its perceived elitist backing).
Read more about this topic: Tom Shows
Famous quotes containing the words message, stowe and/or book:
“No it is better not. She would only ask me to take a message to Albert.”
—Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881)
“All places where women are excluded tend downward to barbarism; but the moment she is introduced, there come in with her courtesy, cleanliness, sobriety, and order.”
—Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896)
“To me a book is a message from the gods to mankind; or, if not, should never be published at all.... A message from the gods should be delivered at once. It is damnably blasphemous to talk about the autumn season and so on. How dare the author or publisher demand a price for doing his duty, the highest and most honourable to which a man can be called?”
—Aleister Crowley (1875–1947)