Prejudice

Eliza and George happens happens to be the most daring among slaves – George is depicted as an intelligent man right at the start with a straight-up invention of a machine, and has classy manners, James Bond style which makes his master jealous, gives a powerful speech (“not my country”) to Wilson, gives a badass speech before gunning down Loker. Eliza has bold and successful journey while carrying Harry, making a daring jump across the Ohio river.

There are two ways of looking at this:

1. By making Eliza and George more white than black, Stowe is trying to make a point that the couple succeeded only because they look white, which makes blending in and receiving empathy from others easier, that it is a privilege to be white.
2. Stowe is ultimately biased in her perception of race, which is why Eliza and George, being of white ancestry, seem to be more active and make aggressive/bold moves in their resistance. Stowe could be implying that those of Anglo-Saxon blood are more capable, which is outrageous but would not be unthinkable at the time. Comparing Eliza and George to other slaves who are black, particularly Uncle Tom, we see there is a great gap between Stowe’s portrayal of the white slave couple and other slave characters. Eliza and George seems to be much more mature and realistic, and we get more accounts of their inner thought processes, while for Uncle Tom, his resistance is passive, and his mind is as pious as the bible itself.  That instance where he freaks out over St. Claire’s drinking problem was just hilariously comical to me, like it came out of a ancient Greek or Roman novel. Her portrayal of several black characters just feels a bit two-dimensional to me.

Possible Influences

Speaking of Greek & Roman novels, Stowe’s portrayal of characters’ actions and emotions feel very inspired by early ancient Greek & Roman literature. If you’re familiar with some of those novels or stories, you’d find that they tend to have very dramatic displays of emotions – characters fainting from love, joy, heartbreaks; characters falling on their knees and literally tearing their clothes and crying, pulling their hair from emotional distress, or refusing to eat or to even live just because they have a crush on some unearthly attractive person, etc. I can’t help but see some of these qualities in Stowe’s portrayal of emotions. To give a few examples: Sam with his speech  about deceiving Haley to help Eliza escape, Eliza fainting from joy when she learns that George was coming, and of course, Uncle Tom kneeling, crying and begging St. Claire to give up drinking.