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74 pages 2 hours read

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Uncle Tom's Cabin

Harriet Beecher StoweFiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1851

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Chapters 17-21 Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 17: “The Freeman’s Defense”

At the Quaker house, George tells Eliza that he will try to be a better Christian. They prepare for the imminent departure for the last leg of their journey to Canada. Tom Loker and his crew are hot on their trail, according to Phineas, a Quaker man who will escort them. George apologizes again and again for involving them; however, the Quakers contend that it is their moral obligation to help those in need.

George and Jim arm themselves with pistols. The Quakers will help them escape, but they are pacifist; they cannot help the fight if it comes to it. Simeon calms George by reading the Psalm contrasting the end of the good with the end of the wicked.

After many farewells, Eliza, George, Harry, Jim, and Jim’s elderly mother, whom Jim managed to rescue, load into Phineas’s carriage, and they are off. Loker, Marks, and the vigilantes that they have gathered quickly gain on them. After miles of pursuit, they must make their stand in a rocky grotto; there is only enough room for one man at a time to enter, making them prime targets for George and Jim’s pistols.

After some deliberation, Loker decides to go in first. George warns them that he is armed, and that he will shoot the first man he sees.

Marks fires at George, narrowly missing his head. George and Jim agree to take turns firing if the men ascend. Loker gathers his courage and enters the rocky crag; the other men follow suit, excited for the hunt. George shoots Loker through the side, but he advances, leaping toward them. Phineas breaks his pacifist façade and pushes Loker into a chasm, where he lands, badly wounded. Loker’s companions abandon him.

Rather than abandon the dying slave hunter, the party gathers him up to take to a Quaker colony for medical attention.

Chapter 18: “Miss Ophelia’s Experiences and Opinions”

Tom easily acclimates to the life Augustine provides; but feels he is “indolent and careless of money” (305). Tom cannot abide by Augustine’s wasteful behavior, and Augustine gradually grows to rely on Tom’s sound judgement. Tom views Augustine with “an odd mixture of fealty, reverence, and fatherly solicitude” (306).

After Augustine returns drunk from a party, Tom is afraid for Augustine’s soul and tells him so. Tom’s earnestness causes Augustine to vow to try to change his ways and become a more pious man.

Ophelia deals with the problems of being a housekeeper in a disorganized household. She spends her time turning out the house’s cupboards, attempting to bring order to it all. The kitchen is a particularly daunting task, kept in perpetual disorder by Dinah, the cook.

Ophelia tells Augustine that she does not believe the servants are honest. Augustine scoffs at this; he questions why an enslaved human would ever be dishonest. Slaves go to damnation because their masters instructed them badly.

Prue, a long-abused slave woman belonging to someone in the locale, comes to the kitchen, exclaiming that she wishes she was dead. She runs errands for her master, and if she does not come back with the exact change, he beats her mercilessly. Prue is given to drinking; it is how she copes with her life, even if using her master’s change for alcohol earns her whippings. When Prue leaves, Adolph, Augustine’s chief servant, and Jane, a light-skinned servant of Marie’s, berate her. Dinah makes fun of them for pretending to be white.

Tom follows Prue out into the street, offering to help carry her basket. He tells her that drinking will be the ruin of her, body and soul. Prue does not care. In Kentucky, she was used to breed children for the slave market. When she was finally allowed to keep one, her mistress took ill and did not allow Prue to tend to her infant child. It cried itself to death. Prue drinks to drown out the crying. She does not care about going to heaven.

Eva asks Tom about his encounter with Prue, and Tom recounts her story. It appears to affect Eva deeply.

Chapter 19: “Miss Ophelia’s Experiences and Opinions Continued”

A few days later, news comes that Prue’s master has whipped her to death. The news hits Eva hard. Ophelia is indignant; Augustine is not surprised about the news. He contends that good people must harden their hearts to the cruelties of slavery because there is nothing they can do about it.

Ophelia is not satisfied with this response. For once, Augustine vows to speak seriously about the topic. The money that the system produces ensures that, as long as there are profits to be made, slavery will exist, and moral laws will be warped by rhetoric to defend it. He decries slavery as the strong preying upon the week. Evil men are allowed to be the absolute owners of human beings and can legally do whatever they want, with little to no consequences. The things he has seen make him ready to curse his country and the human race.

Augustine came into possession of slaves through inheritance. His father settled in the South, while Ophelia’s settled in the North. He holds a great reverence for his mother, whom he regards nearly as a divine being. To him, she was “a direct embodiment and personification of the New Testament—a living fact to be accounted for” (333). Augustine has a twin brother, Alfred, whose dark features contrast Augustine’s light ones. Augustine did not have the stomach for plantation life, so Alfred took on the family plantation, while Augustine took the New Orleans house and servants. Augustine’s mother’s good nature and kind, pious teachings sank into Augustine’s soul.

Augustine once broke an enormous slave, Scipio, who “appeared to have the rude instinct of freedom in him to an uncommon degree” (345). Alfred and his slave drivers had failed. Scipio ran away and was injured by his pursuers. He was shot and wounded. Augustine took care of Scipio himself, nursing him back to health. He made out free papers for him, but Scipio refused to leave him. He died after contracting cholera, nursing Augustine back to life from the same disease. Scipio was the most loyal servant Augustine ever had. Eva hears the story of Scipio; it sinks deep into her heart.

Eva tries to help Tom write a letter to Mr. Shelby, but they cannot quite manage. Augustine volunteers to write it for Tom.

Chapter 20: “Topsy”

In order to test Ophelia’s idealism, Augustine purchases a dark, mischievous slave girl named Topsy. Ophelia is astonished and dismayed; however, she agrees to take up the task of raising her and reshaping her character as a missionary project. Topsy belonged to a brutal couple, and Augustine could no longer bear hearing Topsy’s screams as he passed by their restaurant.

Dinah, Jane, and Rosa are disdainful of Topsy, so Ophelia bathes and dresses her herself. Topsy’s back is marked with “great welts and calloused spots, ineffaceable marks of the system under which she had grown up thus far” (355). Topsy does not know how old she is, has never been loved by another human and does not know about Christianity.

Ophelia sets about trying to instruct Topsy, which proves very difficult. Topsy habitually steals and lies. Eva is the first person to ever be kind to Topsy, and it affects the slave girl deeply.

Ophelia goes to Augustine, asking what should be done with Topsy. Augustine contends that children like her are common in the South, callused to beatings and with no incentive to be good. Consequently, Augustine does not hurt his servants, even if it makes them act spoiled.

Topsy adapts to life in the St. Clare Household, but continues misbehaving. She is disliked by the other servants, but they leave her alone because of her crafty retaliations when she is wronged. Topsy believes that she is wicked and that she needs to be whipped. Ophelia decides to try to catechize her, though Topsy understands very little of Ophelia’s religious lessons. 

Chapter 21: “Kentuck”

Back in Kentucky, Mrs. Shelby reveals to her husband that Chloe received the letter that Augustine wrote on Tom’s behalf. Mr. Shelby is relieved that Tom is being treated well, but he does not seem to care about redeeming him. He scoffs at Mrs. Shelby’s offer to help economize their finances to raise the money quicker.

Chloe offers to go to work for a confectioner and to give the money she earns to Mrs. Shelby to save to buy Tom back. Mrs. Shelby readily assents. At four dollars a week, it will take around five years to raise enough. George is excited by the idea and writes a letter to Tom on Chloe’s behalf. 

Chapters 17- 21 Analysis

In this section, the Harris family’s bid for escape is depicted as an act of heroism. Chased into a rocky chasm, George gives his pursuers a heroic speech, culminating by saying, “We stand here as free, under God’s sky, as you are; and, by the great God that made us, we’ll fight for our liberty till we die” (298). George claims that his right to liberty is both just and divine. His words invoke the spirit of the American Revolution, and other then-contemporary bids for political freedom. Stowe comments that if George had been a Hungarian man decrying the oppression of Austria, the American public would be sympathetic to his cause. Because he is a black slave in America, “of course we are too well instructed and patriotic to see any heroism in it; and if any of our readers do, they must do it on their own private responsibility” (299).

Ophelia becomes more acquainted with the Southern system, which had heretofore remained an abstraction. The differences between Augustine and Ophelia show the arbitrary sway that geography holds over human destiny. Augustine’s father settled in the South; Ophelia’s, the North. Their differences show the best of both systems and the potential for dialogue that existed between the North and the South. Topsy represents a challenge to Ophelia’s ideals and prejudices. Ophelia, like many Northerners, is abolitionist in theory, but unaccustomed to interacting with black people. She freely admits that she cringes at the idea of touching a black body. Sentiments such as these lead to a society that wants to abolish slavery but have nothing to do with educating or uplifting the former slaves.

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