Page "Uncle Tom's Cabin" Paragraph 72

The book has also been seen as an attempt to redefine masculinity as a necessary step toward the abolition of slavery.

In this view, abolitionists had begun to resist the vision of aggressive and dominant men that the conquest and colonization of the early 19th century had fostered.

In order to change the notion of manhood so that men could oppose slavery without jeopardizing their self-image or their standing in society, some abolitionists drew on principles of women's suffrage and Christianity as well as passivism, and praised men for cooperation, compassion, and civic spirit.

Others within the abolitionist movement argued for conventional, aggressive masculine action.

All the men in Stowe's novel are representations of either one kind of man or the other.