SOURCE: "Doing It Herself: Uncle Tom's Cabin and Woman's Role in the Slavery Crisis," in New Essays on "Uncle Tom's Cabin, " edited by Eric J. Sundquist, Cambridge University Press, 1986, pp. 85-105.

In the following essay, Yellin discusses the influence of mid-nineteenth-century feminist thought on the writing of Uncle Tom's Cabin, emphasizing the roles that Angelina E. Grimké and Catharine Beecher had on the creation of Stowe's female characters.

The trembling earth, the low-murmuring thunders, already admonish us of our danger; and if females can exert any saving influence in this emergency, it is time for them to awake.

-Catharine E. Beecher

But, what can any individual do?

-Harriet Beecher Stowe

The question the narrator of Uncle Tom's Cabin posed to her audience—whom she repeatedly addressed as "mother"—was not new. By 1851, the debate over what American women could do to end chattel slavery had raged for more...