<P> The book has also been seen as an attempt to redefine masculinity as a necessary step toward the abolition of slavery . In this view, abolitionists had begun to resist the vision of aggressive and dominant men that the conquest and colonization of the early 19th century had fostered . In order to change the notion of manhood so that men could oppose slavery without jeopardizing their self - image or their standing in society, some abolitionists drew on principles of women's suffrage and Christianity as well as passivism, and praised men for cooperation, compassion, and civic spirit . Others within the abolitionist movement argued for conventional, aggressive masculine action . All the men in Stowe's novel are representations of either one kind of man or the other . </P> <P> Some modern scholars and readers have criticized the book for supposedly condescending racist descriptions of the black characters' appearances, speech, and behavior, as well as the passive nature of Uncle Tom in accepting his fate . The novel's creation and use of common stereotypes about African Americans is significant because Uncle Tom's Cabin was the best - selling novel in the world during the 19th century . As a result, the book (along with illustrations from the book and associated stage productions) was accused of playing a major role in permanently ingraining such stereotypes into the American psyche . In the 1960s and 1970s, the Black Power and Black Arts Movements attacked the novel, claiming that the character of Uncle Tom engaged in "race betrayal", and that Tom made slaves out to be worse than slave owners . </P> <P> Among the stereotypes of blacks in Uncle Tom's Cabin are the "happy darky" (in the lazy, carefree character of Sam); the light - skinned tragic mulatto as a sex object (in the characters of Eliza, Cassy, and Emmeline); the affectionate, dark - skinned female mammy (through several characters, including Mammy, a cook at the St. Clare plantation); the pickaninny stereotype of black children (in the character of Topsy); the Uncle Tom, an African American who is too eager to please white people . Stowe intended Tom to be a "noble hero" and a Christ - like figure who, like Jesus at his crucifixion, forgives the people responsible for his death . The false stereotype of Tom as a "subservient fool who bows down to the white man", and the resulting derogatory term "Uncle Tom", resulted from staged "Tom Shows", which replaced Tom's grim death with an upbeat ending where Tom causes his oppressors to see the error of their ways, and they all reconcile happily . Stowe had no control over these shows and their alteration of her story . </P> <P> These negative associations have to some extent obscured the historical impact of Uncle Tom's Cabin as a "vital antislavery tool". . James Baldwin, in a 1949 essay "Everybody's Protest Novel", called Uncle Tom's Cabin a "very bad novel"... "ruined by its "self - righteous, virtuous sentimentality", and stated that Stowe was less a novelist than an "impassioned pamphleteer", i.e., a propagandist for the antislavery cause . Edward Rothstein has claimed that Baldwin missed the point and that the purpose of the novel was "to treat slavery not as a political issue but as an individually human one--and ultimately a challenge to Christianity itself"; as a propaganda work it need not necessarily be great literature in order to succeed in its goals . </P>

Where did harriet beecher stowe live when she decided to do the research for uncle tom's cabin