Dialect in Uncle Tom’s Cabin

stylistic choice most writers working today do not make; we are merely comparing the texts, not entering them into aesthetic competition). 

It should be noted that Stowe’s dialect is considered largely accurate. This is not to say that accuracy is what makes effective dialogue. In fact, the opposite can be argued. It is true Stowe’s dialect is accurate, and in adhering to such accuracy Stowe does achieve what she considered honorable (especially, of course, for the time period): presenting slavespeak realistically. But, it is also true that in being so accurate the dialect effects dialogue. Dialogue is essentially a mystery. Most fictional conversations consist of completely fabricated dialogue. Certain mundanities are omitted (e.g. “Yeah”), and overall the dialogue is crafted, not dictated from everyday speech. Yet, a successful fictional conversation never reads false because we as readers do not argue with it — we are conditioned to the craft and unreality of this dialogue, though most readers never actually think about how preposterous most fictional dialogue would sound if spoken aloud in a real-world situation. Stowe’s dialogue does in many places feel too real, and thus strained. Characters often seem like they are saying too much, though much of this can be attributed to the way the craft of writing was viewed at the time as opposed to how it is viewed now, generally stripped down in order to couch conversation in subtext, and generally leave the reader with the sensation that each character is never saying everything, even on a subtextual level. Modern dialogue is full of secrets, Stowe’s is more about realistic depiction — and understandably, as slave dialect was poorly represented in the literature of Stowe’s time. 

Let’s look at an example of dialect excerpted from chapter nineteen, Miss Ophelia’s Experiences and Opinions Continued: 

‘Lor bless us! Miss Eva’s gwine to faint away! What go us all, to let her har such talk? Her pa’ll be rail mad.”

“I shan’t faint, Dinah,” said the child, firmly; “and why shouldn’t I hear it? It an’t so much for me to hear it, as for poor Prue to suffer it.”

“Lor sakes! it isn’t for sweet, delicate young ladies, like you, — these yer stories isn’t; it’s enough to kill ‘em!”’ (Stowe 327).

Not all dialogue in Uncle Tom’s Cabin is so dialect-heavy, but this passage certainly represents dialect as it is employed within the novel. And in this passage there is an interesting dynamic: a child speaker and a slave exchanging dialogue. By having a young child speak at a level above that of the slave highlights the lack of intelligence of slaves. Clearly this point was not lost on Stowe.

The most apparent effect of such accurate dialect is credibility. Credibility is the driving force behind Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Stowe clearly wanted to represent slaves as having their own voice, and on a larger plain as human beings. There has been much talk of the opposite to this viewpoint, that the dialect is insulting and inaccurate and makes the slaves appear unintelligent, thus lending to a negative portrayal of slaves. The truth was was that the slaves were unintelligent, they were kept from knowledge. But by employing such accurate dialect Stowe highlights the injustice of literally keeping a human being down and dumb. 

Of course, as modern readers we are not Stowe’s intended audience, and we always must think of the intended audience. At the time it was surely striking to read such accurate slave dialect, though it also must have read as something familiar to the ear of readers, and thus perhaps lose some of its power. Stowe did, however, establish the voice of slaves as uniquely theirs, and in doing this lended a positive effect to Uncle Tom’s Cabin. 

Works Cited

Image via Wikipedia

McDowell, Tremaine. “The Use of Negro Dialect By Harriet Beecher Stowe”, American 

Speech. Duke University Press, 1931. 

Stowe, Beecher Harriet. Uncle Tom’s Cabin.