Pain is inevitable within a society struggling for and against power. This is a central theme running throughout nineteenth-century American literature, especially in work written during the latter part of the century. The causes and consequences, as well as the very nature of the American body and soul in trauma paints a poignant picture of the problems and social changes America faced both during slavery as well as after its abolition.

This is evident in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin and Charles Chesnutt's The Marrow of Tradition where the wounding of both the physical body and emotional soul features strongly throughout both texts. Published in 1853 after the passing of the Fugitive Slave Law, Uncle Tom's Cabin tells of the circumstances of various slaves as they encounter different owners. Tom, the novel's protagonist, is a devout Christian slave who is ultimately beaten to death by his owner, thus...