FICTION - summaries and context

List the works of fiction studied for this course, the corresponding authors and the years of publication

• Uncle Tom’s Cabin - Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1852

• Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain, 1885

• Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell, 1936

• To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee, 1960

• Beloved - Toni Morrison, 1987

• The Help - Kathryn Stockett, 2009

What was the background of racial America in 1850, that inspired the events in Uncle Tom’s Cabin?

1850: A Compromise was reached at national level, which was an attempt to maintain a balance between free states and slave states.

• A new, stricter Fugitive Slave Law was implemented, requiring both law enforcers and ordinary citizens to help capture fugitive slaves.

• If they refused to do so or aided fugitives in any way, they could be fined up to $1000 and jailed for half a year.

• Anti-slavery groups argued that the system bribed commissioners to send kidnapped people into slavery and obliged citizens to participate in the slavery system (as they received a lot of money for each fugitive captured and sent to the South).

How did Harriet Beecher Stowe react to the events of 1850?

Stowe was furious about these developments, believed the country expected her complicity in the slavery system - she disobeyed by hiding runaways. She gained experience of slavery from first-hand accounts from runaway slaves.

Give a short summary of the protagonist families in Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Two slave families. Tom, a strong, religious man living with his wife and three young children + Eliza, her son Harry and her husband George. 

George has escaped in order to make money for the freedom of his wife and child who are still enslaved. Eliza herself decides to escape soon after with her son, across the frozen Ohio River. Eliza’s family is eventually reunited thanks to the help of white Quakers (who say they have helped them not out of kindness, but duty to God).

In Uncle Tom’s Cabin, what happens to Tom?

Tom decides not to run away, even when he is sold and transported South, where he saves the young daughter of a slave owner, who buys him out of gratitude. However both eventually die and Tom is resold to an inhumane and brutal plantation owner, who beats him severely for refusing to betray fellow slaves who have escaped. He is eventually beaten to death.

What was the historical context behind Huck Finn?

Set in pre-Civil War American South, specifically during the 1830s/40s. During this time slavery was entrenched in Southern society, slaves considered property.

Assisting runaway slaves, as Huck does for Jim, was not illegal but was viewed as a moral transgression.

• Twain wrote this during the Reconstruction era. Despite the legal end to slavery, black Americans continued facing systemic racism.

In Huck Finn, Twain employs satire and…?

Twain employs satire and regional dialects to expose moral contradictions and hypocrisies of a society that professed Christian values while upholding slavery + hate towards black Americans.

Summarise Huckleberry Finn

• Huckleberry Finn has an abusive father, Pap, who attempts to kidnap him when a local widow and judge try to get custody of him.

• Huck escapes by faking his own death, and meets an escaped slave, Jim, in the middle of the Mississippi River.

• Huck is uncertain about the morality of helping a runaway slave and struggles with his conscience, believing that by not turning Jim in, he is breaking all of society’s and religion’s tenets. He decides to keep Jim’s secret.

• Although Huck finds it difficult throughout the novel to escape from the influence a racist society has had on him, he chooses to ignore society and do what he feels is right.

What quality that Jim has in Huckleberry Finn affects Huck strongly?

It is Jim’s love for his family that affects Huck so strongly, causing him to realise that a black man is capable of loving his family as much as a white man can.

This is significant considering the abusive nature of Huck’s father. A white person was never expected to care about a black person, much less to help one. Huck Finn attacks the social norm of slavery and racism in general

Give the underlying context in which Gone With The Wind was written.

Margaret Mitchell published GWTW during the time in which the USA was experiencing economic depression and it was the era of the New Deal (1936).

By 1934, legal segregation has been firmly established, however many black Americans were denied their constitutional right to vote.

Summarise the plot of GWTW

Set in 1861, protagonist Scarlett O’Hara lives on her family’s plantation, raised by a black nurse called Mammy.

• Scarlett falls deeply in love with a man called Ashley Wilkes, who rejects her. Out of spite she accepts the marriage proposal of Charles Hamilton, brother of the woman Ashley marries instead (his cousin).

Hamilton joins the army and dies of measles. Scarlett learns she is pregnant, gives birth to baby Wade and becomes bored and unhappy.

• Scarlett is pursued by a charming businessman, Rhett Butler, who she engages in flirtation with, flouting mourning customs.

As the war intensifies, Atlanta falls under siege, leaving the plantation in ruins. When Scarlett returns she finds all this, plus her mother dead and her father driven insane…(a lot more happens after this)

Give the historical context of TKAM?

• Published at the height of the Civil Rights Movement (1960), and exposed many leaders, especially white ones, to the harsh realities of Southern racism.

• The 1930s saw efforts of attempted improvement for black American lives E.G. the NAACP pushed for federal anti-lynching laws, but Southern Democrats kept blocking them + New Deal era, gave Americans some access to gov jobs, housing programs, education.

Give the historical context of Beloved.

• References are made to the Middle Passage, which describes the Atlantic trade route in slaves from west Africa to America.

• Refers to the Fugitive Act of 1850, which inspired Uncle Tom’s Cabin

• Refers to the Underground Railroad, an organisation set up by abolitionists to assist slaves in their escape, offering slaves safe house

Give the historical context of The Help

• Novel is SET in the 1960s in Mississippi

• Written during the Obama era, when discussions about race were resurging but still often framed through a post-racial lens.

• One of the main themes was the eventual coming together of the black and white communities in Jackson, Mississippi

• In 1964, Mississippi was embroiled in political turmoil, Freedom Summer, voter registration efforts, etc