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Passing Over: Setting the Record Straight in Uncle Tom's Cabin

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Michael Borgstrom
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Abstract

This essay considers one of the most underexamined characters in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin: Augustine St. Clare's effeminate manservant, Adolph. I evaluate Adolph's critical elision to illustrate how the success of critiques centered on race and gender unintentionally permits other minority identities (and stereotypes) in the book to continue unremarked. While revisionist readings of Stowe's novel complicate racial and gender stereotypes, they nevertheless accept stable (even conventional) categories to describe minority identity. Such formulations foreclose the possibility of seeing other minority identities in the book that intertwine race and gender in ways different from normative standards. In examining Adolph's character, this essay considers how intersectional analysis reveals important representations of social difference—including differences not always acknowledged in present-day culture.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 118 , Issue 5 , October 2003 , pp. 1290 - 1304
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2003

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