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1、I 编编 号号 本本科科生生毕毕业业设设计计（ 论论文文 ） 题目：题目：Religious Consciousness of Uncle Toms Cabin 外国语 学院 英语(师范) 专业 学 号 学生姓名 指导教师 二九年六月 摘要 I 摘摘 要要 汤姆叔叔的小屋是斯托夫人最为重要的作品。在推动奴隶制瓦解上，这本小说 有不可磨灭的贡献，甚至可以说它改变了美国历史的进程。长期以来，人们多是研究该 小说的废奴意义。一名作家的作品，必定与他的个人经历与生活的时代紧密相联。处在 十九世纪矛盾重重的美国社会，身为虔诚基督徒的斯托夫人通过该小说想表达的不仅仅 是奴隶制的罪恶。本文关注该小说浓厚的宗
2、教意识，运用文学批评家诺思洛普 弗莱的原 型批评理论，从圣经原型的角度出发, 试图分析汤姆叔叔的小屋中的各类人物形象， 比如汤姆叔叔、小伊娃等。通过对这些人物的经历与性格的分析，本文也将探讨作者试 图表达的对当时美国社会的反思，及对利用宗教维护奴隶制度的批判。 关键词：关键词：宗教意识；基督教；原形；人物 Abstract II ABSTRACT Uncle Toms Cabin is the most important one of Mrs. Stowes works. To the collapse of American slavery, this novel made great c
3、ontribution. Some people even think it changed the process of American history. For a long time, people have done myriad research on the significance of its anti-slavery function. The works of a certain writer are related to the society he lives in and his own background. Social conflicts and her Ch
4、ristian identity urged what Mrs. Stowe want to say with the novel are not only condemning slavery. Behind the obvious themes, she also paid attention to American society and religion. This thesis focuses on the obvious religious consciousness of Uncle Toms Cabin. With the application of the renowned
5、 Canadian literary critic Northrop Fryes theory of archetype, this thesis attempts to analyze various characters, like Tom, little Eva, in terms of Biblical archetype. Further more, this thesis will discuss Mrs. Stowes reconsideration of American society and her criticism on the southern church. Key
6、words: religious consciousness; Christianity; archetype; character Contents III Contents CHAPTER1 INTRODUCTION1 1.1 Mrs. Stowes Life and Her Major Works.1 1.2 The Background of Uncle Toms Cabin.2 1.3 A Brief Introduction to the Novel 2 1.4 Literature Review.3 CHAPTER2 THE THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVE -NO
7、RTHROP FRYES THEORY OF ARCHETYPE.5 CHAPTER3 CHARACTERS IN THE NOVEL7 3.1 Uncle Toma True Black Christian, Jesus Christ with Black Skin7 3.2 Evangeline St. Clare - an Evangelist, the OnlyTrue White Christian .8 3.3 Sambo, Qimbo and George Harris -Those Once Lost Souls.9 3.4 Eliza -the Most Fortunate
8、and Beloved Woman9 CHAPTER4 MRS. STOWES RECONSIDERATION OF AMERICAN SOCIETY AND CRITICISM ON “RELIGION”11 CHAPTER5 INFLUENCE OF THIS NOVEL13 5.1 Crisis of Christianity Reflected by the Novel 13 5.2 Its Influence on the Liberation of the Blacks: from Slaves to the President13 CHAPTER6 CONCLUSION.15 R
9、EFERENCES .16 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.17 Religious Consciousness of Uncle Toms Cabin 1 Chapter 1 Introduction 1.1 Mrs. Stowes Life and Her Major Works Harriet Beecher Stowe (18111896), a 19th century female novelist and abolitionist, was born in a family of religion at Litchfield, Connecticut on the 14th o
10、f June 1811. Her father, Lyman Beecher was one of Americas most celebrated clergymen and the principal spokesman for Calvinism in the 19th century. Her father dedicated his life to his religion and to helping others. Her mother was a woman of prayer who died when Harriet was four years old. The comm
11、unity in which she spent her childhood was one of the most intellectual in New England. Stowe received her formal education at Hartford Female Seminary. The school had been opened and operated by Stowes sister, Catharine Beecher. Stowe was fond of reading and began to write when she was 9 years old.
12、 After graduating, Stowe became a teacher at the seminary. In 1832, the Beecher family moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, where Lyman Beecher had accepted a position as president of Lane Theological Seminary. Harriet accompanied her father. While in Cincinnati, she met Calvin Stowe, a professor at the semin
13、ary. The two people fell in love and later were married. Naturally, a woman with such dominant Christian background is doomed to be a pious Christian. She had her own deep understanding of the Bible and the Bible or God guided her thoughts and deeds all through her life. Without doubt, among Mrs. St
14、owes works the most famous novel was Uncle Toms Cabin. As a woman of letters, she made great achievements and her works are far more than Uncle Toms Cabin. In 1843 she published The Mayflower, a collection of tales and sketches. In Brunswick, Maine, she wrote for serial publication in The National E
15、ra, an anti-slavery paper of Washington, DC, the story of “Uncle Toms Cabin; or, Life among the Lowly.“ The publication in book form (1852) was a factor which must be reckoned in summing up the moving causes of the war for the Union. The book sprang into unexampled popularity, and was translated int
16、o at least twenty-three languages. Mrs. Stowe used the reputation thus won in promoting a moral and religious enmity to slavery. She reinforced her story with A Key to Uncle Toms Cabin. In 1856 she published Dred; a Tale of the Dismal Swamp, in which she threw the weight of her argument on the deter
17、ioration of a society resting on a slave basis. The establishment of The Atlantic Monthly in 1857 gave her a constant vehicle for her writings, he wrote ten novels, of which The Ministers Wooing (1859) and Old Town Folks (1869) are the most popular. Mrs. Stowe other works include The Pearl of Orrs I
18、sland (1862), Men of Our Times (1868), Little Pussy Willow (1870), My Wife and I (1871), Pink and White Tyranny (1871), Woman in Sacred History (1873), Palmetto-Leaves (1873), We and Our Neighbors (1875), Poganuc People (1878), The Poor Life (1890). 江南大学学士学位论文 2 Among her works, Uncle Toms Cabin is
19、the greatest and has the highest historical status. Uncle Toms Cabin was the best-selling novel of the 19th century and the second best-selling book of that century, following the Bible. 1 1.2 The Background of Uncle Toms Cabin Mrs. Stowe passed eighteen years in Cincinnati under conditions which co
20、nstantly thrust the problem of human slavery upon her attention. Cincinnati is near Ohio, which still advocated slavery in the 19th century. The two states are only separated by a river. Slaves were continually escaping from their masters, and were harbored, on their way to Canada, by the circle in
21、which Mrs. Stowe lived. Since the middle of 19th century American racial problem became more and more serious. Slavery lied in the central of racial problem. In Cincinnati Mrs. Stowe witnessed many tragedies caused by slavery. The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 was an immediate cause of Uncle Toms Cabin
22、. If this law was put into effect, running slavers should be caught and returned to their “owners”. Nearly all people of Justice adopted various means to fight against the law. Mrs. Stowe was not an exception. As a pious Christian, she treated fighting with slavery as her responsibility and her rela
23、tives also encouraged her to “write something to show how evil slavery is”. Partly, Stowe was inspired to create Uncle Toms Cabin by the autobiography of Josiah Henson, a black man who lived and worked on a tobacco plantation in North Bethesda, Maryland. Henson escaped slavery in 1830 by fleeing to
24、the Province of Upper Canada (now Ontario), where he helped other fugitive slaves arrive and become self-sufficient, and where he wrote his memoirs. Stowe evidently acknowledged that Hensons writings inspired Uncle Toms Cabin. 2 In 1851, Uncle Toms Cabin first appeared as a 40-week serial in Nationa
25、l Era, an abolitionist periodical. Because of the storys popularity, the publisher contacted Stowe about turning the serial into a book. The publication of Uncle Toms Cabin (At that time, it was called “Uncle Toms Cabin or the Man that Was a Thing”) was a great success. Just in Britain, one million
26、copies were sold. Mrs. Stowe and her book became world-famous. Mrs. Stowe was equal to the spokeswoman of anti-slavery force. This novel also greatly promoted the liberation of slavers and speeded up the collapse of slavery. Even President Abraham Lincoln is said to have remarked when meeting Mrs. S
27、towe for the first time in the White House “So you are the little woman who started this Great War!” 1.3 A Brief Introduction to the Novel Tom was a slave of Mr. Shelby who was a slaveholder in Kentucky. Once Mr. Shelby was Religious Consciousness of Uncle Toms Cabin 3 encumbered by debt, he decided
28、 to sell Tom and another female slave and her son. Knowing the news, Eliza and her son ran away immediately but Tom would stay to be sold to Haley a slaver. As a result, he was sold to New Orleans by Haley. On board the boat bound for New Orleans, Tom saved the life of young Eva. St. Clare, Evas fat
29、her, purchased Tom with gratitude. In St. Clares home, Tom lived a happy life for two years. Eva and he became good friends. But after Eva and her fathers death, Toms fate was changed again. He was sent by Evas mother to an auction market to sell. Tom was bought by a slaveholder named Legree. Legree
30、 was cruel to slaves and addicted to alcohol. At last, when Tom protected two female slaves from being captured, he was beaten to death viciously by Legree. When he was dying, his former masters sonGeorge Shelby got the plantation and bought Toms body with huge wealth. At the same time, Eliza and he
31、r son met her husbandGeorge Harris, who disguised himself as a Spaniard and brought a gun with himself. He shot a chaser on his way to Canada. At last, he and his family got together in the Canada-a free country. 1.4 Literature Review As the first widely read political novel in the United States, Un
32、cle Toms Cabin greatly influenced development of not only American literature but also protest literature in general. Later books which owe a large debt to Uncle Toms Cabin include The Jungle by Upton Sinclair and Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. Many critics have praised the novel. Edmund Wilson sta
33、ted that “To expose oneself in maturity to Uncle Toms Cabin may prove a startling experience.“ Jane Tompkins states that the novel is one of the classics of American literature and wonders if many literary critics arent dismissing the book because it was simply too popular during its day. Over the y
34、ears scholars have postulated a number of theories about what Stowe was trying to say with the novel. For example, as an ardent Christian and active abolitionist, Stowe placed many of her religions beliefs into the novel. 3 Some scholars have stated that Stowe saw her novel as offering a solution to
35、 the moral and political dilemma that troubled many slavery opponents: whether engaging in prohibited behavior was justified in opposing evil. Was the use of violence to oppose the violence of slavery and the breaking of proslavery laws morally defensible? Which of Stowes characters should be emulat
36、ed, the passive Uncle Tom or the defiant George Harris? 4 Stowes solution was similar to Ralph Waldo Emersons: Gods will would be followed if each person sincerely examined his principles and acted on them. 江南大学学士学位论文 4 Scholars have also seen the novel as expressing the values and ideas of the Free
37、 Will Movement. In this view, the character of George Harris embodies the principles of free labor, while the complex character of Ophelia represents those Northerners who condoned compromise with slavery. In contrast to Ophelia is Dinah, who operates on passion. During the course of the novel Ophel
38、ia is transformed, just as the Republican Party (three years later) proclaimed that the North must transform itself and stand up for its antislavery principles.5 Ironically, in the 20th century the novel has also been dismissed by a number of literary critics as “merely a sentimental novel,” while c
39、ritic George Whicher stated in his Literary History of the United States that “Nothing attributable to Mrs. Stowe or her handiwork can account for the novels enormous vogue; its authors resources as a purveyor of Sunday-school fiction were not remarkable. She had at most a ready command of broadly c
40、onceived melodrama, humor, and pathos, and of these popular cements she compounded her book.“ Stowes moral and theological views and domestic discourse were accepted as being progressive in the nineteenth century. It is ironic that in the twentieth century, she has come to exemplify both impotent wh
41、ite liberalism and the source of racist preconceptions about African Americans. 6 Religious Consciousness of Uncle Toms Cabin 5 Chapter2 The Theoretical Perspective -Northrop Fryes Theory of Archetype In Greek, arch means first, typos means form or type. So, archetype means first type/form or origin
42、al type/form. In the theories of Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung (1875- 1961), archetypes are primordial mythic forms that embody psychological drives and forces that originate in the collective unconscious. For the Canadian literary critic Northrop Frye (1912- 1991), archetypes are the socially
43、-concerned organizing forms and patterns of literature that originate in myth and which unify and reveal literature as an imaginatively-inhabitable world. His great work, such as The Secular Scripture (1976), The Great Code (1982) and Words with Power (1990) all center on the study of the Bible. In
44、Fryes system, the organizing principles that give literature coherence and structure are derived from the archetypal imagery found in the Bible and the myths of ancient Greece. He suggests that all literature is based on displacements of these myths. Archetypal criticism focused on characters, image
45、s, symbols, metaphors, plots, events and themes. 7 In Uncle Toms Cabin, the Bible was mentioned more than 70 times. Mrs. Stowe quoted many sentences from the Bible and almost all the people of the justice side are pious Christians. So some critics even think it is a novel of religion. Without doubt,
46、 her strong religious background brought deep religious consciousness to her novel. Christian spirit also acts as an important reason of the great success of this book. The moral spirit out of Christian charity and humanity advocated by Uncle Toms Cabin has the greatest impact. 8 Consciously or unco
47、nsciously, we can sense Christian spirits and values on various characters like Uncle Tom and little Eva. Under Mrs. Stowes pen, these characters all have their respective counterpart in the Bible. Through these characters, Mrs. Stowe expressed her thoughts publicized her solutions to slavery. In te
48、rms of Biblical archetype, we will analyze those characters like Uncle Tom and little Eva. Whats more, we will also focus on the reason of the evident religious consciousness to discuss Mrs. Stowes reconsideration of American society at that time. 江南大学学士学位论文 6 Religious Consciousness of Uncle Toms C
49、abin 7 Chapter3 Characters in the Novel 3.1 Uncle Toma True Black Christian, Jesus Christ with Black Skin In this novel, Uncle Tom is a perfect pious Christian. We would feel almost all the good qualities of Christian on him. He is loving, faithful, Obedient, and full of integrity. All of those are indispensable to a pious Christian. Uncle Tom is saint-like or even Jesus-like, both his experience and characters are quite similar to that of