Series, Course Put Huck Finn, Uncle Tom's Cabin to the Test

Move over Huck Finn. Could it be time for Uncle Tom's Cabin to take its place as the greatest American novel of the 19th century?

Twenty-two University of Cincinnati students are considering this question right now in a class organized to mark the bicentennial of Ohio and the 150th anniversary of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. Stowe's book, written first as a serial, came out in novel form on March 20, 1852. Stowe created what became one of the best-selling books of all time after leaving Cincinnati, where for 18 years she heard and learned a lot about slavery and the stories of fugitive slaves. Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, published in 1885, has been regarded as the greater work of literature for many decades. Both books have been criticized for their racial depictions.

UC's English Department invites the Greater Cincinnati community to get involved in the debate, too. The 2003 Ropes Series, which begins Tuesday, Jan. 28, will feature seven free lectures and discussions sorting out the issues. Among the speakers will be Jane Smiley, Pulitzer Prize winning novelist and author of the 1996 Harper's Magazine article, "Say It Ain't So, Huck." In the piece, Smiley argues that Huck Finn has been grossly over-valued and that Uncle Tom's Cabin has been under-appreciated, despite its tremendous popularity.

Team-teachers for the UC course, Lee Person and Jonathan Kamholtz, decline to take sides on the question. As scholars, they want to remain open to multiple points of view.

"I don't think it's an either or choice," says Person, head of the English department in the McMicken College of Arts and Sciences. "I think they are both interesting, and interesting responses to the racial situation in this country. They are written at very different times. Twain's book was written 22 years after the Emancipation Proclamation. Stowe's was written in the age of slavery and had a profound impact on the way this country viewed slavery."

Says Kamholtz, a professor of English: "Teachers can't come down on either side. As a graduate student, I would have certainly said Huck Finn. If literature were in the stock market, the last five years would be a good time to buy Uncle Tom's Cabin because it's stock has been on the way up."

For now, student Tara Scherner de la Fuente gives her vote to Huck Finn. " I don't think the Stowe novel is as well written. My opinion could completely change by the end of the course," says the  master's student from Oregon who now makes her home in Clifton.

Ann Berding, a master's student from Brown County, Ohio, and a graduate of McNicholas High School and Loyola University in New Orleans, finds Uncle Tom's Cabin more a morality lesson on slavery, while Huck Finn is comical, dramatic and more accessible to younger readers.

In addition to the two novels, the students will read a variety of other materials, including first-hand accounts of the African American experience to give them some perspective on what isn't addressed in the two novels, as well as contemporary fiction that responds to some of the same issues of race. The students will also read historical and biographical documents, including a letter to the editor Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote under an assumed name to the Cincinnati Journal and Luminary. The letter, dated July 12, 1836, was written in response to a pro-slavery mob forming against the anti-slavery paper, The Philanthropist.

The UC course, which is aimed at graduate students in English, represents the first time that PhD student Alex DeBonis has been required to read Uncle Tom's Cabin. In previous course work, he has been asked to read Huck Finn three times. "I enjoy Huck Finn more. I find it more interesting and the reason is that it's, in a lot of ways, an adventure novel for boys, whereas Uncle Tom's Cabin is more a domestic novel more targeted to girls."

But now that he has read both, he is more convinced that there is a point of contention about which is the greater work of literature. "I think I had the notion there would very clearcut distinctions between what is correct or incorrect. But Uncle Tom's Cabin is more nuanced than I thought it would be. I thought we would be taking a simple text and asking complicated questions about it. But we are taking a complicated text and asking complicated questions about it," he concludes.

Information: (513) 556-3906.

Series Schedule