Literature Network » Harriet Beecher Stowe

"There is no arguing with pictures": stretching the canvas of gender in the art portraits, picture-language, and the original illustrations in Uncle Tom's Cabin.

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From: ATQ (The American Transcendental Quarterly)
Date: 20060601
Author:O'Brien, Sheila Ruzycki

On March 9, 1851, three years after the Seneca Falls Convention called for equal rights for women, Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote a letter to Gamaliel Bailey, editor of the National Era, proposing her nascent story about slavery, gender roles, and religion as a serial and claiming, "My vocation is simply that of a painter.... There is no arguing with pictures, and everybody is impressed by them, whether they mean to be or not" (qtd. in Kirkham 66-67). Stowe's reference to pictures clearly refers in general to her painterly, detailed approach to storytelling which numerous critics ...