【文章內(nèi)容簡介】 ry atom of her being. He dies with the word “mother” on his lips, realizing he fails to heed the example of his mother.From Eliza and Augustine’s mother, who have a positive effect on their sons, Stowe reflects her deep emotion at maternal love. In Uncle Tom’s Cabin, mothers provide children with love and also teach them to internalize the value of love.Chapter Two Power of Female as a Wife in AntislaveryStowe appeals American females to recognize their true roles as the guardians of American morals. During the process of assuming this role, she argues they can exert a wise and appropriate influence, and that it will most certainly tend to bring an end, not only to slavery but also to unnumbered other evils and wrongs. Mrs. Shelby’s Charity toward Her SlavesMrs. Shelby, a Christian woman, tries to use charity and morality to get on with her slaves. Although a member of the slaveholding class, Mrs. Shelby is powerless to prevent the slave sales. Forbidden by her husband from using her “practical mind” to settle their financial affairs, Mrs. Shelby devotes much of her time to the efforts for the fort, instruction and improvement of her slaves and is greatly admired by them.A wife, as it sees on the Shelby plantation, may actually be able to do very little to oppose slavery, but she can at least resist mildly and in other words, she can at least protest, conspire and connive. These actions may not be much effective, but at least can help those poor slaves to a certain degree. As to that Eliza can escape successfully, the help from Mrs. Shelby undoubtedly plays a vital role. Mrs. Shelby suggests her slaves, Sam and Andy, had better not seize Eliza. They two, who are eager to please their mistress, realize her intention that she doesn’t want Eliza captured. So instead of helping Haley to catch Eliza they do utmost to delay the catching time. Otherwise, they probably catch Eliza and her boy with hands down.To Mr. Shelby, Tom is only a slave or a kind of property, but to Mrs. Shelby, he is a man with soul. When Mrs. Shelby learns that her husband will sell Tom who once rocked him in his arms as a baby, she feels shameful of him despite having little power to prevent. She refuses to sneak away and hide like her husband, while Tom is being bound and carried off: “‘No, no,’ said Mrs. Shelby。 ‘I’ll be in no sense acplice or help in this cruel business. I’ll go and see poor old Tom. God help him, in his distress’” (Stowe, 36). She enters the cabin of Tom’s, forts him and promises she will buy him back one day. Her tears break down barriers between lowly slaves and their properly sympathetic master.Stowe tends to depict her females as active rather than passive, influential rather than submissive, and strong rather than weak. Mrs. Shelby is a good example. The fact that she fails in protecting her slaves from being sold is not due to any weakness on her part, but is a sign of her husband’s inpetence in managing his estate and so is her later failure to buy Tom back (Sundquist, 89). As Mrs. Shelby offers to give her husband a hand in his financial affairs, Mr. Shelby accuses her of knowing nothing of business. Later, as she offers the practical way of earning money herself by teaching music lessons, her husband accuses her of “degrading” herself. It is only after her husband’s death that she is able to give her ability full play. “Mrs. Shelby, with characteristic energy, applies herself to the work of straightening the entangled web of affairs” (Stowe, 430), and tries to redeem the old slave, Tom. So Mrs. Shelby, as a wife, has developed the notion of her moral superiority of females within the domestic life. Mrs. Bird’s Attitude toward Fugitive Slave LawMrs. Bird is a blushing, little woman, of about four feet in height, and with mild blue eyes. She is a desirable good woman who is timid, weak, angelic, and sometimes prone to defer。 this is a typical description of the heroine in the 19th century sentimental novels. However, instead of being always submissive to her husband, Mrs. Bird turns out to be resolute and handsome and has a determined mind toward immoral things. Perhaps among females of “the nominally free states” Mrs. Bird is the most important model for Stowe’s readers, whose involvement with slaves and slavery is frequent. She persists in questioning her husband about the passage of a new Fugitive Slave Law, which forbids the Northern people to help the runaway slaves, and requires them to cooperate in the capture of fugitives. Mr. Bird is a senator, a shrewd politician who manipulates things in such a way as to serve his or his class’ interest. Thus, he supports the passage of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law. By contrast, Mrs. Bird judges things by the Bible and sympathy. Knowing her husband supports the passage of this law, she says angrily to him:You ought to be ashamed, John! Poor, homeless，houseless creatures! It’s a shameful, wicked abominable law. And I will break it, for one, the first time I get a chance；and I hope I shall have chance, I do! Things have got to a pretty pass；if a woman can’t give a warm supper and a bed to poor, starving creatures，just because they are slaves, and have been abused and oppressed all their lives. Poor things.(Stowe, 81) When Mr. Bird ac