History Literature / UncleTomsCabin

** There is also Simon Legree, [[PoliticallyIncorrectVillain although in his case]], “jerkass” [[TheSociopath doesn’t even]] '''begin''' {{Sadist to cover it}}.

* EvilGloating: Simon Legree, seeing that George Shelby cared deeply about Tom, gloats about how there's no evidence the courts will accept and adds, "[W]hat a fuss, for a dead n***." TalkToTheFist [[BerserkButton ensues]].

** There is also Simon Legree, although in his case, “jerkass” [[TheSociopath doesn’t even]] {{Sadist'''begin'''}} [[PoliticallyIncorrectVillain to cover it]].

** There is also Simon Legree, although in his case, “jerkass” [[TheSociopath doesn’t even]] '''begin''' {{Sadist to cover it}}.

** There is also Simon Legree, although [[TheSociopath in his case]], “jerkass” doesn’t even ''begin'' to cover it.

* HateSink: Simon Legree is a [[SlaveryIsASpecialKindOfEvil slavedriver]] who remorselessly abuses his slaves with reckless abandon. When the titular Uncle Tom refuses to bend to Legree's will, Legree doubles down on his efforts to subjugate Tom. Harriet Beecher Stowe deliberately wrote Legree as a treatise against the idea of humans as property.

* {{Jerkass}}: George's owner is a jealous, petty, mean-spirited man who drastically worsened his treatment of George when he realized that George was smarter than him.

* ScoobyDooHoax: Cassie's ingenious plan to escape relies on an elaborate ghost hoax. [[spoiler:She encourages a preexisting legend about a ghost in the garret and starts making odd and frightening things happen until even Simon is afraid to go near the place. On the night she and Em “escape,” they double back to the house and hide comfortably in the tower until the search for them is called off. They even emerge at night to steal necessities and torment Simon in [[RefugeInAudacify white sheets]].]]

* EvilGloating: Simon Legree, seeing that George Shelby cared deeply about Tom, gloats about how there's no evidence the courts will accept and adds, "[W]hat a fuss, for a dead n-----." TalkToTheFist [[BerserkButton ensues]].

* HeelFaceTurn:[[spoiler:Tom Loker, the slave hunter; Sambo and Kimbo at Legree's plantation]].

* BitterSweetEnding: [[spoiler: George Shelby arrives too late to save Tom, and he dies in his arms. But the lives he touched and the souls he saved are forever changed. And if it weren’t for Tom’s cruel fate, George would never have been in a position to reunite Eliza and George’s extended family when he meets the women on the boat home.]]

* DrivenToSuicide: The sad story of Lucy on the riverboat. [[spoiler: Haley cruelly sells her baby out from under her and only tells her after the babe is gone. A few nights later she throws herself into the river.]] Tom realizes what has happened, but decides it a mercy to let the poor woman leave her misery behind.

* EvenEvilHasStandards: Legree is willing to do almost any inhumane and cruel thing to make a buck, but he refused to take George Shelby’s money when he asks how much for [[spoiler: Tom’s body]]. He is actually momentarily offended and says he has never dealt in [[spoiler: dead bodies]] and tells George to do as he likes.

* GenerationXerox: Eliza’s daughter looks so exactly like her that [[spoiler: her mother, Cassie, on seeing her look exactly like her daughter the last time she saw her, quite forgets the decades that have passed since they were parted and is momentarily convinced that her granddaughter is her daughter.]]

* HopeSpot: George Shelby finally makes good on his promise to track Tom down and bring him home. [[spoiler: He arrives two days too late. Tom has been beaten savagely and left to die in a wood shed. All George can do is hold his friend’s hand as he dies.]]

* {{Jerkass}}: George’s owner is a jealous, petty, mean-spirited man who drastically worsened his treatment of George when he realized that George was smarter than him.

* OneSteveLimit: Averted, with many white and black characters sharing names. At least two separate women named Lucy appear briefly [[spoiler: and the tendency dissuades the reader from guessing the relations revealed at the end, as many main characters are shown to have common names.]]

* RapeIsASpecialKindOfEvil: White owners raping female slaves is brought up on multiple occasions and the evil of having sex with a woman you own and fathering children condemned to slavery by it is vehemently condemned. Em’s mother is particularly fearful of what might happen to her daughter when sold because of her beauty. She was right to fear as Cassie mentions being replaced as Simon’s “companion” and cast out into the cotton field when he buys Em. Rescuing the girl from him is a huge motivator in her plan to run away.

* ReversePsychology: Sam and Andy convince Haley to get hopelessly lost in the countryside during the hunt for Eliza. Sam mentions a second road leading to the river and muses that Eliza would probably want to stay off the main one. Haley immediately refuses the idea and Sam and Andy launch into rambling speeches about how right he is to choose the main road. Haley falls for it and thinks they must be protecting her real route at that point, and they waste half a day’s pursuit going down a dead end and having to back-track.

* ScoobyDooHoax: Cassie’s ingenious plan to escape relies on an elaborate ghost hoax. [[spoiler:She encourages a preexisting legend about a ghost in the garret and starts making odd and frightening things happen until even Simon is afraid to go near the place. On the night she and Em “escape,” they double back to the house and hide comfortably in the tower until the search for them is called off. They even emerge at night to steal necessities and torment Simon in [[RefugeInAudacify white sheets]].]]

-->''It was sung very boisterously, and with a forced attempt at merriment; but no wail of despair, no words of impassioned prayer, could have had such a depth of woe in them as the wild notes of the chorus. As if the poor, dumb heart, threatened,—prisoned,—took refuge in that inarticulate sanctuary of music, and found there a language in which to breathe its prayer to God! There was a prayer in it, which Simon could not hear.''

* SympatheticSlaveOwner: Deconstructed. While some slaveholders are shown to be genuinely nice people, the fact remains that their slaves are still slaves, which inherently enables terrible abuse. The Shelbys may treat their slaves well enough, but as soon as finances oblige Mr. Shelby to sell Tom and Harry, all the Shelbys’ previous kindness is basically moot.

* UncleTomFoolery: This book inspired the ''name'' of the trope, but this was due to a case of 'complaining about novels you haven't read.' Tom actually remains subservient because of his strong Christian values, but he was still a strong, respected figure — in fact, a DoomedMoralVictor. It was the plays and movies that came out during the Jim Crow / segregation years that edited Tom to be less "threatening" to white audiences, making him older and turning his Christian meekness into outright groveling.
* VictorianNovelDisease: [[spoiler: Little Eva eventually succumbs to this.]] Based on her [[IncurableCoughOfDeath symptoms]], it's probably tuberculosis.

* AuthorFilibuster: Stowe will stop the action in its tracks to have characters partake in moral debates about slavery. She uses this to present the counter-arguments to the points that she is making and almost all of them begin the next part of the story with a ContrivedCoincidence of the main characters happening into the scene which was just discussing their current dilema. Most notably is when Senator Bird and his wife are discussing the new laws against aiding runaways and she vehemently chastises him for being an unchristian hypocrite who wouldn’t be able to stand up to his own political philosophy when it came down to it. Almost on cue, Eliza arrives at their door, freezing, bleeding, starving, and begging for help with her child in her arms. Senator Bird immediately folds and goes above and beyond to help her.

The eponymous Uncle Tom has been subject to ''serious'' AudienceColoringAdaptation thanks to MinstrelShows. A modern reader could be forgiven for being shocked to learn that, far from a villainous traitor or a bumbling fool, Tom is a wise figure, self-sacrificing in the extreme. Thanks to the determined propaganda of the Sons and Daughters of Confederate Veterans spreading the myth of the Lost Cause, and a surge in white supremacist racism following UsefulNotes/WorldWarI, MinstrelShows turned Uncle Tom into a by-word for servile clowns across the nation, giving him a terrible reputation in the black community. He is thus the TropeNamer for the trope UncleTomFoolery, in which a black performer acts the fool to entertain white audiences.

At the opening of the story, Uncle Tom, Eliza, and her son Harry are all living relatively happily on a large farm in Kentucky. They have a good and kind master, Mr. Arthur Shelby. Tom is a well liked and trusted manager of the farm and is raising his family with his wife, Chloe. Eliza has a relatively easy life, living in the house as Mrs. Shelby’s servant and is allowed visits from her husband, George, who lives on a nearby farm.

Then Mr. Shelby gets into debt, and a slave trader gets his hands on a mortgage on the farm. He proposes to settle the debt with Mr. Shelby in exchange for his best slave. Uncle Tom is sold to the trader who will then sell him "down the river"[[note]]slang for "being sold to masters further in the South, where conditions were generally harsher"[[/note]]. Little Harry is included in the deal, and his mother happens to eavesdrop on the conversation. Rather than have her child ripped from her, Eliza scoops him up and makes a run for freedom. She tells Tom and Chloe about everything she heard and Chloe urges Tom to go with her. Tom refuses to go on hearing that his sale will fix Shelby’s financial woes, else he will have to break up the farm and sell all the slaves. Knowing his suffering will save the others, Tom resigns himself to his fate and Eliza slips off with Harry.

Eliza makes a daring escape across the Ohio River and lucks into the care of the Underground Railroad. She and Harry make the dangerous trip North, all the while hoping to find her husband, George, who told her his intent to run away from his cruel master and flee to Canada, where he plans to work to buy her and Harry’s freedom.

For several years, Tom is happy with the St. Clares and patiently awaits the day he can return home. In the meantime, his Christian love and kindness [[MagicalNegro touches everyone there.]] Augustine resolves to set Tom free, but before the papers are drawn up, tragedy strikes and the entire estate is broken up and sold off, including the human assets.

The eponymous Uncle Tom has been subject to ''serious'' AudienceColoringAdaptation thanks to MinstrelShows. A modern reader could be forgiven for being shocked to learn that, far from a villainous traitor or a bumbling fool, Tom is a wise figure, self-sacrificing in the extreme. Thanks to the determined propaganda of the Sons and Daughters of Confederate Veterans spreading the myth of the Lost Cause, and a surge in white supremacist racism following UsefulNotes/WorldWarI, MinstrelShows turned Uncle Tom into a by-word for servile clowns across the nation, giving him a terrible reputation in the black community. He is thus the TropeNamer for the trope UncleTomFoolery, in which a black performer acts the fool to entertain a white audiences.

Tom is bought by Augustine St. Clare after saving the life of his [[IllGirl daughter]], Evangeline. Tom is taken to live on their estate in New Orleans, and sends word home that he is safe and with a good family. Chloe and Mrs. Shelby resolve to raise the money and buy him home. They calculate it should only take about… four years.

* {{Ojou}}:
** Evangeline
** Miss Ophelia
** Mrs. Alice Shelby
** Mrs. Bird

* ReversePhychology: Sam and Andy convince Haley to get hopelessly lost in the countryside during the hunt for Eliza. Sam mentions a second road leading to the river and muses that Eliza would probably want to stay off the main one. Haley immediately refuses the idea and Sam and Andy launch into rambling speeches about how right he is to choose the main road. Haley falls for it and thinks they must be protecting her real route at that point, and they waste half a day’s pursuit going down a dead end and having to back-track.
* RippedFromTheHeadlines: Stowe wrote the story in installments and many elements were taken from real events happening at the time (see VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory, below), but also from the tragically common personal ads in Southern newspapers saying something like, "$5 reward for escaped slave. Probably headed for Atlanta, where wife and children were sold to." Hence inciting the incident of Eliza fearing to lose her son Henry in exactly that fashion.

* OneSteveLimit: Averted.

* GenerationXerox: Eliza’s daughter looks so exactly like her that [[spoiler: her mother, Cassie, on seeing her look exactly like her daughter the last time she saw her, that she quite forgets the decades that have passed since they were parted and is momentarily convinced that her granddaughter is her daughter.]]

* DrivenToSuicide: The sad story of Lucy on the riverboat. [[spoiler: When Haley cruelly sells her baby out from under her and only tells her after the babe is gone. A few nights later she throws herself into the river.]] Tom realizes what has happened, but decides it a mercy to let the poor woman leave her misery behind.