Harriet Beecher Stowe Quotes

“Can anything be more disgusting than to hear people called 'educated' making small jokes about eating ham, and showing themselves empty of any real knowledge as to the relation of their own social and religious life to the history of the people they think themselves witty in insulting? [...] The best thing that can be said of it is, that it is a sign of the intellectual narrowness—in plain English, the stupidity which is still the average mark of our culture.”
― George Eliot

“There’s no happy ending ... Nevertheless, we might well say that is exactly Harriet Beecher Stowe’s point. In 1852 slavery had not been abolished. Slaves were still on the plantations and many of them were in the hands of people like Legree. Her book was written to shame the collective conscience of America into action against an atrocity which was still continuing. So a happy ending would have been, frankly, a lie and a betrayal. ...

Most of the charges are basically true. Stowe did stereotype. She did sentimentalize. She offered a role model which later offended African American pride. On the other hand, what she did worked. She wasn’t trying to provide a role model for African Americans. She was trying to make white Americans ashamed of themselves. ...

Perhaps the short answer to her critics is to ask, “Do you want glory, approval, all those good things? Or do you want to achieve your goal?”
― Thomas A. Shippey

“You know how often we have longed for a sea voyage, as the fulfillment of all our dreams of poetry and romance, the realization of our highest conceptions of free, joyous existence.
Let me assure you, my dears. that going to sea is not at all the thing that we have taken it to be.
Harriet Beecher Stowe, Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands.”
― Susan Wiggs, Harriet Beecher Stowe

“...it was Harriet Stowe's practice to rise at 4:30 each morning to "see the coming of the dawn, hear the singing of the birds, and to enjoy the over-shadowing presence of her God.”
― Kenneth W. Osbeck, Amazing Grace: 366 Inspiring Hymn Stories for Daily Devotions

“Harriet Beecher Stowe did not write Uncle Tom’s Cabin for Tom, Aunt Chloe, or any black people to read. Her contemporary readership was white people, those who needed, wanted, or could relish the romance.”
― Toni Morrison, The Origin of Others