74 pages • 2 hours read
Uncle Tom's Cabin
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Chapters 42-45Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 42: “An Authentic Ghost Story”
Ghost stories proliferate in Legree’s house. Witnesses indicate that the ghost wears a white sheet. Legree hears these rumors; he begins to drink more often. The night after Tom’s death, he was visited by a specter holding up a shroud that he took to be his mother’s. It entered, whispering for him to come to it. He drinks recklessly and begins to die of alcoholism; nobody visits his sickroom, where he rants and raves.
Cassy and Emmeline make their escape. Cassy is dressed like a Creole Spanish woman, and Emmeline poses as her servant. They make their way to a tavern, where they run into George Shelby. After hearing rumors from other slaves about George’s encounter with Legree, Cassy deems that he can be trusted.
The women board the same boat as George. Seeing her face, George is “troubled with one of those fleeting and indefinite likenesses, which almost everybody can remember, and has been, at times, perplexed with” (598). Cassy becomes uneasy with his evident growing interest and decides to tell him everything. George resolves to help see them to safety.
A Frenchwoman, Madame de Thoux, and her daughter occupy the stateroom adjacent to Cassy and Emmeline. Learning that George is from Kentucky, Madame de Thoux strikes up an acquaintance with him. She eventually enquires about George Harris. George tells her that he has escaped to freedom in Canada. George is confused at her relief; she reveals that she is his sister, Emily.
George tells her that George Harris is an admirable man and that he married Eliza, whose graces he expounds upon. Cassy listens to his description of Eliza and asks from whom the Shelbys bought her. When he says the name Simmons, Cassy faints. They scramble to revive her.
Chapter 43: “Results”
Eliza is Cassy’s daughter. Cassy and Emily de Thoux make their way to Canada. They find the missionary who first gave George and Eliza shelter.
Five years free, George provides for his family as a machinist. He and Eliza have a daughter, and Harry excels in school. They have a happy, content life. George continually strives to improve himself intellectually.
A pastor helps Cassy and Emily seek out George and Eliza’s home. The pastor arranged a specific order for introductions, but Emily disrupts this plan by throwing her arms around her brother. Cassy is calm, until she sees her granddaughter, little Eliza. She looks so much like Eliza did when last she saw her that, in a fit of emotion, she scoops up little Eliza and says that she is her mother. The pastor delivers his intended speech, and the reunited family weeps and prays together.
Cassy’s demeanor completely changes over the following days. She and Eliza bond over little Eliza. Eliza’s “steady piety” makes her “a proper guide for the shattered and wearied mind of her mother” (607). Under this influence, Cassy becomes a devout Christian.
Emily has a fortune she inherited from the death of her husband. When she asks George how she can use it to help him, he asks her to give him an education.
The family decides to go to France, where George attends university. Emmeline accompanies them and marries the first mate of the ship. They remain in France for four years, until political troubles force them back to the United States.
George’s loyalties lie with the black side of his ancestry. He resolves to help lift his race from slavery. To do so, he looks to Liberia as the most likely place for a black, Christian nation. He no longer wants a stake in America; he wants a nation of his own where black people are born free, not granted freedom. He and his family embark for Africa.
Ophelia, meanwhile, takes Topsy back to the North. Topsy grows in favor with Ophelia’s community. Topsy becomes a missionary and heads to Africa.
Thanks to Emily de Thoux’s inquiries, Cassy’s son is found. He had escaped the South, and now makes his way to join his family in Africa as well.
Chapter 44: “The Liberator”
George returns to Kentucky, where his arrival is eagerly anticipated by his mother and Aunt Chloe, who has finally saved enough money to buy back Uncle Tom. Chloe makes preparations for their arrival. Mrs. Shelby finds it foreboding that George only wrote to tell he would be returning; he said nothing of Tom. Chloe speaks excitedly of Tom’s reunion with his children.
George arrives and hugs his mother. He apologizes to Aunt Chloe and tells her he was too late to save Tom. Mrs. Shelby cries out, but Chloe falls into silence. Chloe gives Mrs. Shelby the money she had saved and tries to leave, but Mrs. Shelby stops her. She sits with her, and Aunt Chloe breaks down, sobbing. George sits down as well and tells her of “the triumphant scene of her husband’s death, and his last messages of love” (616).
A month later, George calls together all of the family’s servants. He hands each of them a certificate of freedom. Many beg not to be sent away. On the contrary, George wishes them to stay, continuing to work for him—but being paid for doing so. He will educate them on the rights they now have as free men and women.
Before dismissing them, he tells the group of Uncle Tom’s death and his farewell to his friends and family. George tells them, “Think of your freedom, every time you see UNCLE TOM’S CABIN; and let it be a memorial to put you all in mind to follow in his steps and be honest and faithful and Christian as he was” (617).
Chapter 45: “Concluding Remarks”
Stowe explains how the characters and events depicted in Uncle Tom’s Cabin were drawn from specific people, incidents, and generalities she witnessed or related to her. She reminds the reader that cases such as Uncle Tom’s are all too common, and that “in all southern states, it is a principle of jurisprudence that no person of colored lineage can testify in a suit against a white” (619). Injustice is inherent to the system of slavery.
Stow recounts various instances of the “public and shameless sale of beautiful mulatto and quadroon girls” (619). Even Augustine St. Clare has a real-life analogue: a fair master who was shocked that his slave ran away. Stowe hopes she has done justice to the noble slave owners in the South; however, such figures are few in number.
Stowe explains that she was moved to write on the subject of slavery when the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act passed, requiring the return of runaway slaves. Upon hearing the discussion of fellow Northerners, she decided that anyone in favor of the act could not have a realistic idea of what slavery entailed; she decided to provide one in the form of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. She appeals to the South to search its collective soul. Brutes such as Legree own slaves; the noble masters share in the sin by allowing the system to continue.
Stowe appeals to various demographics of white America, settling on mothers, to act upon their better nature and denounce slavery. An individual can do little; a country can do much. It is America’s job no not only emancipate, but to educate. While former slaves may decide to relocate to Liberia, Stowe believes that they must first receive a Christian education.
Stowe ends this chapter giving an account of successful former slaves, expounding on the possibilities surrounding their Christian, moral education. It is in the interest of the country’s soul to right the wrongs of slavery, to emancipate, and to educate.
Chapters 42-45 Analysis
Stowe wraps up the novel in a fashion typical to sentimental novels. Because this genre uses pathos to move the emotions of the reader through scenes of emotional distress and fulfillment, it is fitting that many sentimental novels end in the marriage, reunion, or death of their characters. The remaining protagonists of Uncle Tom’s Cabin all reach a degree of emotional fulfillment by the end of the novel. Cassy is inexplicably reunited with her daughter; George is miraculously reunited with his sister. Topsy, at last, finds her place in American society—only to use this acceptance as a means to become a missionary to Africa.
In fact, most of the novel’s remaining main characters go to Africa. The country of Liberia was started as a colony by the American Colonization Society as a country for freed slaves to “return” to. To George Harris, the opportunity to migrate to Africa represents an opportunity to help found a brand-new country, free from the prejudices that would exist post-emancipation. As Stowe frequently speculates throughout the text, the potential for a Christian nation in Africa had yet to be tested; according to her, Africa had the potential to surpass the West in terms of morality and forming an egalitarian society.
However, this view was problematic. Slaves were several generations removed from Africa by this point; the international slave trade was outlawed, though the domestic trade continued, meaning most, if not all, American slaves were born in America by Stowe’s time. Another problem with the “Back to Africa” movement is highlighted by Augustine St. Clare earlier on in the novel. Many Northerners were fine with advocating for the emancipation of black slaves but wanted little to do with them afterward. “Repatriation” to a black “homeland” was one solution proposed by white society to wash its hands of the responsibility of helping a newly free population with little to no wealth, no property, and next to no education. Indeed, the last chapter reads as a white, Northern author preaching to whites about doing away neatly with a large segment of the American population after effectively religiously colonizing them through Christianization. Stowe’s insistence on emancipating and “educating,” still having control and therefore implied superiority over former slaves, exposes a persistent ambivalence in the novel that is never truly rectified.
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