Stowe’s Principal Characters

Harriet Beecher Stowe's Important Characters in Uncle Tom's Cabin

Aug 1, 2007

Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe has numerous characters and moves between many story lines. Here is a breakdown of the principal characters and their roles.

Miss Ophelia St Clair: Miss Ophelia is the loving but stern Puritan aunt of Augustine St Clair who brings her South to care for his daughter Eva who was weakly. A New England abolitionist, Miss Ophelia learns the truth about her own prejudices when St Clair gives her the care of the black child Topsy. Miss Ophelia soon learns that saving the heathen starts with those who are among you and not those you send to Africa.

“I’ve always had a prejudice against Negroes,” said Miss Ophelia, “and it’s a fact, I never could bear to have that child touch me; but, I didn’t think she knew it.”

“Topsy, you poor child,” she said, as she led her into her room, “don’t give up! I can love you, though sometimes I am not like that dear little child. I hope I’ve learnt something of the love of Christ from her. I can love you; I do, and I’ll try to help you grow up a good Christian girl.”

Augustine St Clair: Augustine St Clair is a brilliant man who makes his way through life by relying on his charm and whimsy. He approaches the slaveholding customs of the South by practicing benevolent neglect. He seems to hope that through his benevolent neglect he will not have to suffer for being part of an inhumane system. A system that he knows he cannot agree with. After Eva’s death, he experiences an intellectual conversion and prepares to become an abolitionist and free his slaves. Tragically, he doesn’t have a chance to free his slaves before he is killed.

“on this abstract question of slavery there can, as I think, be but one opinion. Planters, who have money to make by it, - clergymen, who have planters to please, - politicians who want to rule by it, - may warp and bend language and ethics to a degree that shall astonish the world at their ingenuity; they can press nature and the Bible, and nobody knows what else, into the service; but after all, neither they nor the world believe in it one particle the more. It comes from the devil, that’s the short of it; and to my mind, it’s a pretty respectable specimen of what he can do in his own line.”

Eva St Clair: Eva is the young daughter of St Clair. Beautiful and intelligent, she becomes friends with Uncle Tom to whom she reads the Bible. As her illness makes her progressively weaker, she draws closer and closer to the truths of the Bible and practices those truths in a way that seems angelic or Christ-like to her friends and family.

“I’ve felt that I would be glad to die, if ym dying could stop all this misery, I would die for them, Tom, if I could.”

Simon Legree: Legree is a vicious slaveholder who believes in working slaves until they drop. He is a hard man and a heavy drinker but never drinks to the point of drunkenness, as he knows the need to maintain his own faculties.

“Didn’t I pay down twelve hundred dollars, cash, for all there is inside yer old cussed black shell? An’t yer mine, now, body and soul?” he said, giving Tom a violent kick with his heavy boot; ‘tell me!’”

Mrs. Shelby: Mrs. Shelby is the wife of Mr. Shelby who owned the plantation on which Uncle Tom and Eliza lived. She had raised Eliza from childhood. She does not agree with slavery and tries to teach her slaves Christianity. As she learns more of the system through the activities of her husband who seeks to stabilize the finances of their estate, she realizes that the system is cruel and inhumane.

“This is God’s curse on slavery! – a bitter, bitter, most accursed thing! a curse to the master and a curse to the slave! I was a fool to think I could make anything good out of such a deadly evil.”

George Shelby: George is the young son of Uncle Tom and Eliza’s owner. In the beginning of the novel, we see him befriending Uncle Tom and spending time with the family. While he teaches Tom to read and write, he is pampered by Chloe and enjoys her home cooking. After his father’s death, George helps his mother take care of the issues surrounding the plantation then leaves to redeem Tom. He makes it to Tom’s side in time for Tom’s last farewells.

"'It was on his grave, my friends, that I resolved, before God, that I would never own another slave, while it is possible to free him; that nobody, through me, should ever run the risk of being parted from home and friends, and dying on a lonely plantation, as he died."

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