“Now, there's no way with servants, but to put them down, and keep them down. It was always natural to me, from a child. Eva is enough to spoil a whole house-full. What will she do when she comes to keep house herself, I'm sure I don't know. I hold to being kind to servants - I always am; but you must make 'em know their place. Eva never does; there's no getting into the child's head the first beginning of an idea what a servant's place is! You heard her offering to take care of me nights, to let Mammy sleep! That's just a specimen of the way the child would be doing all the time, if she was left to herself.”
Be the first to react on this!
1811-1896
Harriet Beecher Stowe was an American abolitionist and author. Harriet was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, as the daughter of an outspoken religious leader Lyman Beecher. She was the sister of the educator and author, Catherine Beecher, clergymen Henry Ward Beecher and Charles Beecher.
Her father was a preacher who was greatly effected by the pro-slavery riots that took place in Cincinnati in 1834.
Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) depicted life for African-Americans under slavery; it reached millions as a novel and play, and became influential in the U.S. and Britain and made the political issues of the 1850s regarding slavery tangible to millions, energizing anti-slavery forces in the American North, while provoking widespread anger in the South. Upon meeting Stowe, Abraham Lincoln allegedly remarked, "So this is the little old lady who started this new great war!"