Uncle Tom's Cabin

American

noun

an antislavery novel (1852) by Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Uncle Tom's Cabin Cultural

(1852) A novel, first published serially, by Harriet Beecher Stowe; it paints a grim picture of life under slavery. The title character is a pious, passive slave, who is eventually beaten to death by the overseer Simon Legree.

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Published shortly before the Civil War, Uncle Tom's Cabin won support for the antislavery cause.

Although Stowe presents Uncle Tom as a virtuous man, the expression “Uncle Tom” is often used as a term of reproach for a subservient black person who tolerates discrimination.

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

He praised John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath” for its descriptions of capitalist exploitation and Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” for the light it shed on slavery in the U.S.

From The Wall Street Journal

In this divided time, the same Washington, DC, paper that named the Fox sisters’ spirit communication one of the “Wonders of the Nineteenth Century,” also ran a serialized story titled Uncle Tom’s Cabin or Life Among the Lowly.

From Literature

The serial was so popular, it was later published as the book Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the greatest publishing sensation of the nineteenth century.

From Literature

Advertisement for the wildly successful book Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

From Literature

In the North, Uncle Tom’s Cabin was thought “admirable” and “too truthful,” and abolition, once a radical idea, became more main-stream.

From Literature

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023