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영어

This paper examines Harriet Beecher Stowe’s use of domestic ideology in her abolitionist novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Domestic ideology in antebellum America was a pliable rhetoric that served to confine women to their homes but at the same time exalted their moral superiority. It presupposed that women could shape the moral sensibility of their husbands, sons, and brothers. This presupposition comes under scrutiny in Stowe’s novel. At the center of the novel is the strange case of Augustine St. Clare whose inability to achieve any of the social changes he envisions is a source of great puzzlement. Both in his discourse and as a character, St. Clare introduces the conflict between innate disposition and moral education. Domestic ideology is placed under crisis when men fail to serve as the conductor of Christian virtue. St. Clare’s obstinate and unexplainable apostacy brings to the surface the inner contradictions, anxiety, and discontents of domestic ideology. For the most part and especially in her concluding remarks, however, Stowe stays within the confines of domestic ideology. The novel’s immense success, therefore, comes at a price, as the fundamental contradiction at the heart of domestic ideology is raised only to be passed over.