“‘Shadows Uplifted’: The Trope of the Maternal in Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Iola Leroy”

Lynn Alexander

In Iola Leroy, Frances Harper is building on Harriet Beecher Stowe’s concept of the Mother-Savior famously developed in Uncle Tom’s Cabin.  Essentially Harper takes Stowe’s novel and restructures it on two levels.  First, she takes the typical (white) woman’s sentimental novel and complicates it with the issue of race. Second, she takes Stowe’s vision of the ideal, maternal, Christian society built on suffering leading to self-sacrifice and reconstructs it as one built on suffering leading to self-reliance and service to others.